Employee Onboarding : Statistics, Trends and Best Practices

Organizations used to think of onboarding as the automation of paperwork – a “set it and forget it” approach focused on ensuring all the new-hire documentation was completed in a timely fashion. But nowadays, in an increasingly competitive talent landscape, where employees determine whether to stay at a new job within their first six months, onboarding must play a much more important and expanded role focused on employee activation and retention.

Owing to the changing business dynamics and long training periods, organizations need to start the skilling processes right from the time the new hires receive their joining offers. Onboarding and Pre-boarding programs can act as effective mediums to help new hires from campuses and lateral hires become job-ready by upskilling in new-age technologies or skills of the future.

Few studies have been going on how Indian companies are approaching employee onboarding. This involved understanding the current state of the onboarding process in the organizations, the role of onboarding technology in accelerating skill development among new hires and how pre-boarding can fast-track the skill readiness of a new hire.

Some Statistics from results of surveys done by various agencies

1. Only 13 percent organizations are leveraging pre-boarding as a mean to train and upskill talent.
2. In most of the organizations, onboarding is limited to employees’ induction into the organization’s history, mission, and values.
3. Only 24 percent organization are utilizing a dedicated onboarding technology solution.
4. Employees that feel undervalued look for other jobs.
5. New hires who undergo proper onboarding also outperform their non-onboarded peers within three to five years.
6. Nearly 20% of employees don’t believe that their companies will take care of them.

Here is a look at Top trends in employee onboarding.

Personalisation
Imagine a restaurant serving you your favourite meal, exactly the way you like it, without having to ask. You’d be impressed right?

Personalised onboarding is kind of the same principle. More than just providing the right training, personalisation is about making the new hire feel like their expertise, preferences and interests have been taken into account in almost every aspect of their onboarding.

In other words, a strategic onboarding program must be personalized to the individual being onboarded and their specific needs. The program must account for their role within the organization, their prior experience, their current skill levels and, ideally, their personality.

Cultural Assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a movement striving to smooth a new hire’s transition into a company. More than just a “mission, vision, values and strategy” presentation, cultural assimilation is about designing activities and interventions in which new hires find out what it’s like to work in an organisation.

Organizations want to achieve from their onboarding strategy include “orient new employees to the organization’s vision”, “familiarize employees to the culture of the organization”, and “foster a positive experience for new employees.”

Skill Onboarding
To speed up the process of skill onboarding, organizations are not sticking to just one way of making candidates job ready. While Mentoring (49 percent) and Classroom training (40 percent) are popular mediums of delivering training, Online Training emerged popular among organizations to fast-track the skilling during pre-boarding and onboarding (50 percent). It was found that online mediums have been quite effective in speeding up the training processes and enhancing the learners’ engagement.

Data Driven Improvements
Thanks to built-in survey tools and integrated performance management processes, businesses now have both qualitative and quantitative data available to them. Employers can track trends in performance against engagement levels, and pinpoint specific aspects of the programme that may be impacting onboarding outcomes.

Social Networking
It is no wonder, that more and more businesses are giving digital savvy recruits social intranet access almost as soon as they are offered a job. Social enterprise software opens up opportunities for new hires to connect with other staff, learn more about the business, post pictures or videos, talk about interests and hobbies, get advice, and build networks all before they even start their job on day one.

When implemented well, social intranets are boasting staff participation rates of up to 85%.

Digital Onboarding
The overall adoption of technology solutions in onboarding is yet to reach critical mass in India. Currently, 24 percent of the organizations responded that they are utilizing a dedicated onboarding technology solution. One of the reasons for this resistance could be lack of a defined onboarding process or over-dependence on human resources to conduct the onboarding process.

Top companies like L’Oréal are already developing apps to update and streamline their onboarding while others are investing in onboarding systems, all in the name of engaging and retaining their new hires.

Even beyond the new hire process there are opportunities for organizations to employ strategic onboarding: consider onboarding programs when an employee moves into a new role or position, joins a new team, transfers locations, and so on. These present golden opportunities to reinforce the individual’s value and importance within the company and ensure their work remains tied to positive business outcomes.

With Onboarding being a focus, now it's a great time for organizations to examine their current onboarding program to see if it plays a successful role in activating and retaining employees – after all, they may be the organization’s most valuable asset.

Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big Libraries...

This is one of my favorite Jim Rohn quotes. Do you spend more money on books or big televisions? One thing that has always amazed me is when an individual will not think twice to purchase a new car or dress, yet choke on his tongue when he consider spending a small amount of money on books.

Let's see why successful people spend time on books, education and knowledge.

Desire vs Ambition : A difference 

We all desire a bigger house, a better job, and a newer car, but only very few are willing to do what it takes to get there. The habits of the most successful people in the world are not a secret. In fact, they are pretty widely known. Every self-made millionaire and billionaire businessperson invest in their own education. They have ambition, not just a desire. This means they read books and trade publications, attend seminars and workshops.

Gear up for success

If you have the ambition, you will set the conditions up for your success. If you don’t read, if you don’t attend conferences and workshops, it’s not too late. Start now! As they say, the best time to plant an oak tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is NOW!

Below are few home libraries for some CEOs of leading companies

Bill Gates Library 

An enormous library houses a manuscript Gates paid more than $30 million for.

The 2,100-square-foot library has a domed roof and two secret bookcases, including one that reveals a hidden bar. On the ceiling you'll find a quote from "The Great Gatsby" that reads: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it."

The library is home to the Codex Leicester, a 16-century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript that Gates bought at auction for $30.8 million in 1994.

Elon Musk Library

Billionaire Elon Musk says he was 'raised by books'. Books have been an important part of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s life. In an interview with Esquire magazine, Musk said when people ask him how he learnt to build rockets, he often likes to say it is because he reads books. He have a towering library with white selves in his 20,000-square-foot French Nouveau mansion. Musk also use his iPhone for reading books

As a child, he would often retreat into fantasy and science fiction, to cope with being picked on, according to a profile on him in the New Yorker magazine, and these books helped him shape his future self.

Jeff Bezos Library

In 1994, attracted by the rapid growth of Internet, Bezos quit his job as VP of D.E. Shaw & Co. and moved to Seattle. During the cross-country drive from New York to Seattle he wrote the business plan for an online book store that was called Cadabra. Which he later renamed as Amazon. The e-commerce billionaire bought a 26,900-square-foot former museum-turned-residential home in Washington D.C., which is now the largest house in the nation’s capital. The house have two large libraries which act as Study for Bezos

I would like to end this article with another famous quote from Jim Rohn…

”Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune.”

The Productivity Booster You Have in Your Pocket, But Probably Don’t Use

The world’s 230 million knowledge workers are frazzled. Modern life is an interminable cacophony of emails, notifications, messages, alerts, feeds, data and information. 70% of us look at our phones within 30 minutes of waking up. All this causes stress. With multiple notifications on multiple apps on multiple pages of our devices, where do we start? Who will help us?

Fortunately, almost all of us already have a personal assistant. It’s a piece of software on a device you own: the intelligent assistant (IA). We carry IAs around on our laptops (Microsoft’s Cortana), phones (Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Bixby) and smart speakers (Amazon’s Alexa, Baidu’s Little Fish). You probably have more than one. There are an estimated one billion IA-enabled devices in the world today. With smartphone penetration in the UK and US approaching 70%, it’s easy to believe that there will be as many intelligent assistants as human beings in a just few years. That billions of people will soon have an assistant 24/7 is a staggering prospect.

Leading Virtual Assistants from Tech Giants

Driving this change, of course, are the tech giants. IAs are one of their top priorities. Google Assistant stunned the crowd at I/O 2018 with natural-sounding phone calls to unassuming restaurant and hair salon staff. Siri is now making recommendations based on your activity and schedule. Alexa is starting to understand general user intent. Google’s big advertising slogan on digital billboards today is “Make Google do it.”

Source: HBR  July 19, 2018

Click here to see the complete article

8 Reasons You should be Running Regularly

1. Helps you live longer
A study published in Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that runners tend to live longer than those who don’t perform this form of exercise regularly. The study followed 1,000 adults (aged above 50) for 21 years. At the end of the study, 85% of runners were still alive while only 65% of non-runners were active.

Another study by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed that running or walking for even 5 – 10 minutes a day reduces the risk of death from all causes, including cardiovascular disease.

2. Endorphin levels rise
Running causes your brain and nervous system to secrete neurotransmitters called endorphins. These feel-good chemicals are responsible for that euphoric "runner's high" that makes you feel like you're on top of the world. Endorphins also prevent the transmission of pain signals, letting you feel nothing but good vibes. See you later, crummy feelings.

3.Running strengthens your knees (and your other joints and bones, too)
It’s long been known that running increases bone mass, and even helps stem age-related bone loss. But chances are, you’ve had family, friends, and strangers warn you that “running is bad for your knees.” Well, science has proven that it’s not. In fact, studies show that running improves knee health, according to Boston University researcher David Felson in an interview with National Public Radio.

According to Felson, They know from many long-term studies that running doesn’t appear to cause much damage to the knees, When we look at people with knee arthritis, we don’t find much of a previous history of running, and when we look at runners and follow them over time, we don’t find that their risk of developing osteoarthritis is any more than expected.

4. Running is easy and convinient than other Sports/Gym
Running doesn’t require a ton of equipment. “If you’ve got shoes, shorts, and a shirt, you are good to go". You can’t say that about many other workouts. No machines, dumbbells, or even mats required. You can run anywhere, Running will take you a heck of a lot farther than the four walls of your gym. “You can run anywhere in the world. There are literally races in Antarctica and the Sahara Desert,” You can run at any time, The trail is never closed. Whether you want to get in a workout at 2pm or 2am, you can go for it.

Your dog can run with you, Dogs typically aren’t welcome in the gym. But they are right at home on the trail. They even get endocannabinoid-fueled runner’s highs similar to those of their two-legged friends.

5. Sleep is better
Running uses up your energy in a healthy way. It also regulates your sleep schedule and limits insomnia. As a result, you'll be ready to curl up once bedtime comes around. Running also improves the quality and duration of your shut-eye, ensuring that your mental and emotional integrity is in good shape. The American Psychological Association even shares that if most Americans slept more, they would be happier and healthier. Running can help you with just that.


6. Setting goals becomes easier

Becoming a regular runner takes self-motivation and focus. It also happens to double as excellent practice for creating goals and pushing yourself to meet them. After all, every single running achievement comes with the realization that you have what it takes to go the extra mile (pun intended). Remember, it doesn't matter if these goals are big or small. Everything adds up in the end. And when you gain experience setting and meeting goals, you'll be more likely to apply it to other areas of your life. Cheers to that.

7. Keeps you healthy
Surprisingly, apart from overall health and mental benefits – walking and running are good for our vision as well. A research conducted in 2013 showed that those who walked or ran an average of 5 miles per day had 41% lower risk of developing cataract and age-related vision loss or blindness.

Although the exact reason for the benefit is still unknown, most health experts suggest that running decreases the probability of developing Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure which can contribute to the development of cataracts.

8. You’re Born to run

Running is the best workout because it’s the most basic human form of exercise, using your own body, weight, and two legs to propel yourself forward. It’s as functional as workouts get. Running can help your disposition all day long. study done in  Switzerland found that running for just 30 minutes every morning for three weeks significantly improved subject’s mood and concentration levels throughout the day.