How to provide personalised onboarding experience

Personalising an onboarding experience is critical to ensure its success for new hires and the organisation, according to the new CEO of Enboarder.

Dan Finnigan recently spoke with HRD about how organisations can reduce the challenges of onboarding new employees.

"It's about creating a personalised journey," Finnigan said. "They need to personalise the onboarding experience and make it as easy, convenient, welcoming, and stress-free as possible."

This "personalised" onboarding journey begins with trusting a new hire and directly asking them what their needs are.

"Ask them directly what it is they are hopeful for, anxious about, and what resources they need to be successful on the job," Finnigan said. "If you respect them enough to hire them and invest in them, you need to respect and trust their instincts regarding what help they need."

Aligning new hires to the organisation

Finnigan offered the advice as he underscored the importance of aligning the new hire and management, as well as the new hire and HR, regarding the first 90-day expectations.

Of course, this alignment also requires employers to be transparent with their new employees.

"It's also about being transparent with what the expectations are for the new employee and the new role so the new hires can share with their new boss where they think they're good and feel prepared and ready, and where they need to either learn some new things, or meet some people who can mentor them quickly," the CEO said.

Successful onboarding to avoid churn

A successful onboarding experience is critical if organisations want to retain their workforce at a time when employee churn has been going up since 2021.

Source: The 2024 New Zealand Staff Turnover Survey Report from LawsonWilliams

Finnigan said one of the top reasons why employees leave their job is because of their boss – either because they don't trust or like them, or they're afraid of them.

This makes their role in the onboarding experience important.

"Having an onboarding experience that is led and only implemented by the human resources department is nice, but it's not as good of a welcome to the company, and it's not as effective in increasing retention," Finnigan said.

"What companies need to do is take what is typically a pretty positive experience when a hiring manager picks one candidate over many others and extends that warm feeling of being the chosen one beyond the acceptance and the first day on the job."

Finnigan, who has decades of experience in the HR tech market, recently took up the mantle of chief executive officer at Enboarder, which enables managers to keep tabs on, follow up with, and be engaged with their direct report during the critical 90-day period.

"It's a very exciting opportunity, and I'm really enjoying this so far."