Increasingly, candidates are our customers, hiring processes are collaborative, and talent acquisition and marketing are attracting top talent and managing company reputations via a powerful employer brand. We are part of one global economy, using one global talent pool, and leveraging a myriad of data sources to make decisions.
However, recruiting has traditionally been a cost center and measures of success have been focused on efficiency. Those organizations that have embraced more modern recruiting practices are grappling with old metrics. Today’s most effective hiring organizations are leveraging talent analytics to optimize recruiting efforts for a competitive advantage.
Moving Beyond the Administrative
Onboarding is so much more than an administrative checklist. It’s a critical juncture in HCM between the talent acquisition and talent management processes. According to a recent IDC survey, 77 percent of organizations say that onboarding is at least “very important,” yet statistics on the level of sophistication of current efforts don’t bear this out.
After the recruitment and offer phases, most organizations go into radio silence mode until a candidate’s first day. Lagunas said that 63 percent of new hires completed forms online prior to their first day, but only 37 percent received calls from their hiring managers and 25 percent received a detailed schedule for their first week. Only 15 percent of employers asked for candidate feedback prior to start date and 17 percent provided multiple communication channels (access to a new hire portal, etc.). In order to elevate onboarding, Lagunas suggested solidifying answers to the following questions:
- When will onboarding start? Don’t leave everything for Day 1. Pre-onboarding is now a best practice.
- How long will onboarding last? It often extends beyond the first day and even beyond the first month.
- What kind of impression will we make? How do we want employees to feel? Challenged, appreciated, amped up? Pre-hire and the first day or two are the ideal times to shape these emotions.
- How will we support socialization? We need to connect new hires to an organization’s mission and values, and foster meaningful connections with co-workers.
- What role does everyone play? In addition to HR, what should hiring managers, business unit leaders, and executives be doing to facilitate assimilation?