Companies spent considerable time, energy and money on finding the right people to operate their business.

Studies show that a positive onboarding experience improves retention, engagement and productivity rates. Yet, there are still many companies, especially those that are new or have fewer than 400 employees, that have ad hoc, incomplete or non-existent onboarding communication.

There are clear monetary advantages to standardizing the onboarding communication in your organization. The 2012 Allied Workforce Mobility Survey holds many interesting findings on this topic, including the discovery that companies that consistently invest time and modest amounts of money in comprehensive onboarding practices are more successful at:

  • Retaining employees
  • Getting employees to full productivity
  • Developing leaders and influencers

How does good onboarding communication create those desirable outcomes? It’s developed and disseminated with two goals in mind:

  • Providing accurate and relevant training and guidance
  • Removing unnecessary distractions

When these two goals are achieved, employees gain comfort with their job and the organization sooner. That leads to strong productivity and engagement.

It’s smart investment to create a complete and repeatable onboarding communication that covers universal topics and establishes the tone and expectations for job-specific training and guidance. Most often, this is done through modules that can be used on-demand or in a facilitated setting.

Consistency Becomes Easy

Ever experience one employee being told A and other employee being told B? Even if both pieces of information are accurate and relevant (and they both seldom are), the disconnect or confusion that results becomes an unnecessary distraction. Time is spent comparing notes, expressing frustration and taking more time in the future to verify what’s being said.

Standardized onboarding communication gives everyone the same information. Consistency provides structure fosters confidence in management and the organization.

Players Know Their Part

Once you’ve created your standardized onboarding communication, ideally in the form of module, you give a helping hand to the people who need to directly or indirectly support it. People like senior execs, the full HR team, IT support, and direct supervisors and managers.

If they know what’s being shared with new employees, they are better positioned to reinforce accurate and relevant information. They can see what is being said about their role and accountabilities in terms of helping new employees fit in and thrive.

Undoubtedly, you’ll tap people in other departments for onboarding content. Be sure to also bring all their immediate colleagues into the loop once the module/program is finished so they can be equally supportive.

All Kinds of People Save Time

You know those people providing content for the onboarding communication? An incentive for them to help you is time saved down the road. Remember, an employee with accurate and relevant information about how and when to get IT support (as an example) will fit in and be productive sooner than if he or she has to guess at, scramble for or rely on coworkers for answers. It should also save the IT support team (again, as an example) time. Time they currently spend answering common questions or repeatedly addressing easily preventable issues.

When gathering content for your onboarding communication, ask universal areas (e.g. HR, IT, maintenance, security):

  • What questions do you wish employees would stop asking? (e.g. How do I…? Where do I find…? Do I have to…?)
  • What are the most common issues/requests you receive? (e.g. lost passwords or ID badges, reporting damaged or broken equipment, how to use software, how to change address/personal information for benefits)

Doubles as Ongoing Resource for All Employees

If you create comprehensive onboarding communication that covers attendance policies through to wellness program offerings, you’d be wise to deliver the content in a way that is universally accessible. Commonly, this is done through an intranet. It then automatically becomes an on-demand resource for all employees.

Let’s face it. Sometimes you don’t pay attention to information until you need it. It’s great to tell new employees how to get a replacement ID badge. But will they remember what to do two years later on the one day they actually forget their badge at home? Unlikely. And, the process may have changed in that time anyway.

If you make your onboarding communication module digital and searchable, anyone can quickly find answers to universal problems.

Manager’s Get a Foundation

As mentioned above, managers play a part in reinforcing what’s in the onboarding communication module. However, their main role is to give their new team member job specific training, support and information.

Standardized onboarding communication that covers the universal basics, provides direct supervisors and managers with a foundation upon which they can build. They can determine how to tie team/department/division goals, expectations, policies and processes to the universal ones that apply to all employees. This creates a more cohesive experience for the employee, leading to improved onboarding outcomes.

Real Measures for Smart Changes

With standardized onboarding communication, you can easily identify the segments that work and parts that may need improvement. Because everyone is receiving or gaining awareness of the same information, application of that information should be consistent, right? In theory, yes. In practicality, you may find (for example) that a high percentage of new employees aren’t following proper security protocols. Taking a look at what and how you are communicating about that topic gives you the ability to make changes that matter.

Ability to Drip, Not Flood

Standardizing allows you to relax. Too often, the people responsible for onboarding are so concerned about not giving the right or enough information that they overwhelm new employees with a flood of info.

In the words of the designated onboarder at a company of 64 employees: “I had no idea how much I was dumping on employees in their first week until I started turning it all into a standardized program. No wonder their eyes glazed over!”

Better to be frantic about getting the right and relevant stuff into the communication module and entire onboarding program. Then you – and the new employee – can relax a little. The information can come in drips as needed instead of a flood that bursts through then disappears.

Building Your Onboarding Communication

As with everything, the first step to improvement is the commitment to do something different. Then comes action. There are many ways to start creating standardized onboarding communication.

If you’d like a boost to get rolling and staying on the fast-track to completion, this template might be for you.