Onboarding Insights from the Culture and Values Sessions at HR Virtual Summit

Culture and Values at HR Virtual Summit 2022

In the Culture and Values track at HR Virtual Summit 2022, attendees learned about better processes for onboarding employees, tips for how to manage hybrid and fully remote teams, and how the role of trust plays into doing your best work.

For an example of the kind of actionable advice HRVS attendees received this year, let’s take a closer look at Catherine Mattice’s session, Using Your Employee Onboarding Program to Reinforce Company Culture.

Understanding the Differences Between Onboarding and Orientation

Catherine Mattice, the Founder and CEO of Civility Partners, taught attendees how important it is to understand the differences between onboarding and orientation. Often, these two activities are confused by HR leaders and other executives. As Catherine put it, rather than focusing on orientation tasks and trying to make onboarding as speedy as possible, you should be infusing company culture into your onboarding program and making it an ongoing process. You can do this by leaning into your company values.

“Rather than focusing on orientation tasks and trying to make onboarding as speedy as possible, you should be infusing company culture into your onboarding program and making it an ongoing process.”

Onboarding is Critical for Retention and Productivity

On average, it can cost a business between six and nine months of an employee’s salary to replace them. For an employee making $60,000 dollars per year, that comes out to between $30,000 and $45,000 dollars in recruiting and training costs (SHRM). Other costs of turnover often include recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity. Catherine also pointed out the cultural impact of turnover: “If someone is already thinking about leaving, they might see that turnover as the catalyst to their own decision to leave.”

Making sure you get your onboarding process right is critical for retention, employee satisfaction, and productivity. In fact, Catherine shared that new employees with a stellar onboarding experience are 18 times more committed to their employer (BambooHR).

Only 12 percent of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees (Gallup) and 58 percent of organizations say their onboarding program is focused on process and paperwork (TalentPulse).

Instead of focusing on orientation—traditionally, a stack of paperwork and video training sessions new employees must fill out and watch—orientation should be just one of several activities that are part of your onboarding program.

Onboarding Best Practices

Catherine asked her attendees to audit their own onboarding activities by sharing a list of onboarding best practices. Check out the list below to see where your company stands:

“Onboarding shouldn’t be seen as an activity that lasts for one meeting, one day, or even one week; it should overlap into the first months and quarters of a new hire’s first year at the company.”

Everyone at the organization is involved in onboarding, from HR to leadership to employees.
Your company begins onboarding employees before their first day.
Your company makes it a point to set both job and behavioral expectations.
Socializing new hires is a top priority in your onboarding program.
Your onboarding agenda is for 3 months or more.
Onboarding is a celebration.
Onboarding incorporates the vision, mission, and values at your company.

To hear more from Catherine and learn about what you can do to improve your onboarding practices at your company, watch for updates from BambooHR about HR Virtual Summit. Catherine’s session will be available to watch soon!

We’ll also be posting more key takeaways from the other tracks at HR Virtual Summit. You’ll find best practices and so much more for each of the session tracks: Benefits and Compensation, Career Growth, Wellbeing, Employee Experience, and HR Newcomers.