Company onboarding marks the final step of recruitment and the first step of the employee experience. To ensure you retain new employees and give them the motivation to invest in the company, its success is a crucial challenge. How to succeed in the onboarding journey of new employees? What are the steps of a good HR onboarding? The Wobee team tells you everything!
Company integration, also called "onboarding", is a set of measures and actions put in place to welcome new employees.
This journey aims to familiarize newcomers with their work environment so they become operational quickly.
While it varies depending on the candidate and the company, onboarding remains an essential step for major HR issues such as employee engagement, talent retention and employer branding.
A probation period that ends in a departure represents a considerable loss for the company. In some sectors, such as IT services firms, turnover can reach 25%!
According to Mercuri Urval, nearly 1 in 2 employees considers leaving their company during the probation period.
A study by Josh Bersin shows that 22% of new hires leave their job within the first 45 days and 4% do not show up after their first day.
A successful recruitment process is useless without investing in effective onboarding.
Employee engagement is essential. An engaged employee is more productive, more creative, less often absent and better able to act as an ambassador for the organization. Everything hinges on the first impression: an employee disappointed by their onboarding journey quickly loses motivation.
According to Gallup, only 6% of French employees say they are engaged at work.
According to BambooHR, organizations with an onboarding strategy see a 33% increase in highly engaged employees.
Hiring pressures are real, and organizations struggle to find candidates who match the positions on offer. Beyond salary, what counts today is the employee experience on offer. The promise of a strong experience helps you stand out from competitors and considerably increase the number of qualified applications.
According to APEC (the French executive employment association), 82% of companies report difficulty recruiting managers and professionals.
The French Ministry of Labor reports that 71% of employers say they face hiring difficulties.
Onboarding newcomers plays a fundamental role in employee retention and remains a highly profitable long-term investment.
According to Glassdoor, successful onboarding improves talent retention by 82%. Go2nextlevels and OfficeVibe report that 58% of employees who went through an onboarding program are still with the company 3 years later.
An effective onboarding journey considerably reduces the newcomer's learning and training time, quickly making them effective and productive. In short, investing in a structured, well-thought-out onboarding journey delivers a positive return on investment.
According to Glassdoor, a successful onboarding period improves productivity by 70%.
Pre-boarding is an essential phase of the onboarding journey for new hires.
It keeps you connected with the new hire during the period between hiring and the actual start date, which can sometimes last 3 months, in order to secure the hire and keep the employee motivated.
To do this, you can invite the future employee to events (after-work gatherings, seminars, etc.), organize meetings with their future team (team lunch, video call, etc.) or plan a tour of the premises so the employee gets a glimpse of their workplace.
According to ParlonsRH, 17% of new employee arrivals are not announced.
During the onboarding process, HR sends all teams an email introducing the new hire with a fun description. Email remains the most common and easiest channel to set up, but HomeExchange innovated by turning it into a ritual for every new arrival. It is now something everyone looks forward to whenever a new employee arrives.
For the new employee, it helps to:
To do this, it is a good idea to give them a welcome handbook in which they can read, at their own pace, everything they need to know about the company.
Some organizations have chosen to develop a dedicated internal platform.
For its onboarding, BlaBlaCar decided to design an internal platform that centralizes all the information a new hire needs when joining the team. The platform also hosts introduction videos made by employees for employees to share their knowledge.
The goal is to help new employees understand how the company works and is organized, while saving valuable time in communicating information.
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The first day at the company remains a key onboarding milestone.
The purpose of the onboarding day is to:
A successful onboarding day includes, at a minimum:
Corporate culture is paramount at L'Oréal. The group therefore launched its "Fit Culture" mobile app, designed to help employees discover the company's values and internal culture through interactive games.
Onboarding does not stop at the end of the first day, far from it!
Of course, the new hire now knows more about their role and the company as a whole, but there is still a way to go before they are fully autonomous, productive and socially integrated.
According to Bleexo, it takes on average 6 to 8 months for a new employee to become fully operational.
While many companies still end the onboarding journey after one month, it is strongly recommended to extend it until the end of the employee's probation period, and ideally until their first work anniversary.
The first months are crucial for employees as they continue to learn and build up their skills in their role.
In the same vein as L'Oréal's approach to corporate culture, Saint-Gobain has introduced customized serious games for training new employees joining the group, particularly salespeople. This gamified approach is an excellent way to keep learners interested and engaged throughout the training and improves knowledge retention.
When a new employee arrives, they can spend a whole day with a member of another team. This "walk in my shoes" day is very beneficial for building connections between teams and presenting the missions, challenges and practices of the organization's different departments .
Beyond putting actions in place to keep supporting onboarding and the new employee's adjustment, the first months are also an opportunity for the company to ask the employee about their onboarding, gather constructive feedback on the effectiveness of the process and satisfaction with it, and improve it continuously.
This approach is a win-win: for the employee, it is a chance to share how they feel and what they need to grow; for the HR function, it is a chance to get feedback on internal processes from the people most concerned.
According to Kronos, 55% do not measure the effectiveness of their onboarding at all
To follow up, HR can put in place:
During the onboarding of a new employee, the company runs hands-on workshops to gather their feedback on the onboarding experience and find out whether they have everything they need to take up their role. This allows HR teams to provide any missing elements and adjust their approach for future hires.
To ensure better onboarding, Wobee's software offers a comprehensive solution that simplifies and optimizes the onboarding journey for new employees.
With Wobee, you can improve your new employees' experience, reduce turnover and strengthen your employer brand. For more details, visit Wobee !


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