Why are so many onboarding experiences bad?

A recent online survey of 4,000 office workers in the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand by cloud-based webonboarding.com revealed that over a third of new starters have had bad onboarding experiences in their organisations.

These experiences led them to regret joining the firm or to leave the job altogether. In fact, 22% of respondents changed their minds before their official start.

For example, 36% of those surveyed said they did not have basic equipment such as a computer on their first day. This caused them to feel like they were joining an unprofessional company.

Fifty-six percent of workers said they did not receive full training and have a sufficient induction plan – when support is seen as pivotal to the overall development of a new employee.

“The findings of our research have highlighted extreme flaws within the onboarding process that are having detrimental effects on global businesses. Major themes throughout were neglect, disorganisation and a lack of engagement,” said Adam Reynolds, CEO of webonboarding.

“Remarkably it seems to boil down to businesses failing to invest the time and focus you would expect to receive in the first few months of joining a new organisation.”

Among those surveyed, 71% said they would have settled into their role quicker had there been a better process in place.

Sixty-nine percent said a good onboarding process would have improved their overall job performance.

Reynolds highlighted the need to prepare all required equipment, materials and training for increased engagement of the new employee.

“Our aim with these results is to make businesses sit up and listen,” he said. “We wouldn’t treat our customers like this, so why would we treat new staff with such disregard?”