How to keep onboarding costs down without cutting corners
There’s no doubt that onboarding new employees can become very expensive and time-consuming for your business. Most hiring processes will involve writing job ads, running interviews, carrying out background checks, and organizing training for new hires, keeping HR managers and teams super busy. And pushing budgets.
In fact, according to Deloitte, the average US employer spends about $4000 and 52 days on hiring a new employee. That’s a considerable amount of time and money to invest in bringing new staff on board.
However, because onboarding plays such an important role in any business, it’s not something that you want to neglect or dismiss. Remember, each individual who enters your organization has an impact on your company culture. So you need to know how to deliver successful onboarding programs for your staff, while being careful not to blow your budget.
Sounds tricky, but it can be done! Here’s how to keep onboarding costs down, while still making sure the process is successful for both the employer and their new hires.
Save money by reducing staff turnover
With successful onboarding, you’ll be able to reduce your staff turnover rate, saving you money.
Employee turnover is a huge problem in today’s workforce. Approximately 45% of companies estimate their total turnover costs to be more than $25,000 per person. From advertising to interviewing candidates and educating new hires, filling an empty position can add up to an enormous expense.
When you’re investing so much time, effort and money into this process, you want new staff members to stick around. To do this, you need to find the best solution for onboarding and training your staff. The best tech tool to use for this? eLearning.
Using eLearning to reduce onboarding costs
From software solutions to online resources, technology can be your best friend when it comes to reducing onboarding costs.
Using eLearning for onboarding allows you to develop a perfectly customized training program for each individual employee. With the right Learning Management System, you can create short, concise online courses that are tailored to the exact needs of your team members. Because the fact is, not all staff need to know the same skills or the same selection of company policies.
You want your onboarding program to reflect that, with content that covers only the relevant workplace safety, policies and procedures, and HR contacts that new hires need. Taking onboarding online allows you to do this, keeping staff engaged and focused, while also providing an effective way for managers to monitor and gauge employee performance.
There’ll be no need for expensive training facilities, speakers, or printed materials that require updating – with all your modules, assessments and reports online you’ll save significantly over time.
Include mentoring as part of the onboarding process
Another way to reduce costs is to include mentoring in your employee onboarding process.
Mentoring is an easy way to use existing, internal resources, rather than spending money on external training consultants or programs. Pairing new employees with veteran employees in on-the-job mentoring, costs you nothing, while also working to reinforce a supportive and welcoming environment for new employees. It also allows new hires to receive informal feedback from someone who has actually been in the role, which can be invaluable for professional development.
Mentoring also has benefits for the veteran employee doing the mentoring. In fact, you might like to read our previous article on the many benefits of mentoring for employees – they include increased knowledge sharing, improved skill sets and the opportunity for constructive feedback and support.
In this way, mentoring relationships will not only save your company money, they also help contribute to a more collaborative, trusting and positive culture for all staff in your organization.
Yoav Vilner, co-founder of Ranky startup marketing agency, agrees that many big companies are using mentoring for onboarding, as “an easy and cost-effective way to train a new hire in the everyday roles and responsibilities of their new job. Moreover, the new hire has someone to turn to besides a supervisor for real advice, honest conversation and encouragement in their new role.”
Keen to read more about onboarding? Check out these two earlier articles on:
