Onboardings - 3 opportunities to rethink how to leverage onboarding inside an organization

Clémence VANALDERWEIRELDT, Group People Experience Director at Richemont

Clémence VANALDERWEIRELDT, Group People Experience Director at Richemont

The life of an employee with an organization is a journey with variations of intensity, with high peaks and cliffs, and ideally, at some point, a little bit more serenity acquired through experience… but soon to be challenged by new opportunities. In that journey though, there is evidence, a point not to be missed that has a capacity to connect and retain a new joiner, the famous ‘onboarding’. This moment is so decisive on the impression it gives, it might define the stickiness and predict your attrition rate. It is a concentrated expression of your organization culture, and a match-making moment. It might also be the fastest way to acquire or to lose a customer, as we all come to realize the criticality of the engagement of the business performance and that across all sectors.

This is true and provides a background to all organizations effort to invest in enhancing their onboarding, both through offering a better digital experience, consolidating all the steps of the onboarding cooking, and reallocating the efforts on strengthening the human relation.

Nevertheless… Is that enough? Is the onboarding a box we can tick and move away from once people are in?

If we are moving from career as linearity, and encourage a more exploratory perception of growth, it feels light. Same, in a fast-changing environment with hyper competitive EVP messages, it sounds a little bit risky not to revisit the onboarding feeling through time.

Therefore, I would like to consider 3 opportunities, to push the boundaries of what onboarding means: the investment capital, the community building, and the career passport approach.

"Onboarding moment is so decisive in the impression it gives, it might define the stickiness and predict your attrition rate"

1. The feeling on investment:

If we dig into what is happening through onboarding, we cross multiple dimensions. We received information, we handle the administrative work, we start to understand where we are going… but we also receive a strong signal from the organization. It is a period where the organization is investing on us and builds a debt that plays a role in the stickiness. It is great we do it once, but as a capital, it can dissolve through time if not moderated the right way.

2. The community building:

The number one element that surfaces from onboarding… has nothing to do with the information you’ve received. But everything is connected to the social experience. What you remember is who you’ve onboarded with, and how the feeling of sharing a synchronous experience with a group of people created boundaries between you. Again, it is great but how do we leverage on once you are inside the organization through work communities might be the missing point.

3. The career passport:

With the evolution of the work environment, the versatility expected of employees, the volatility of demand… we will need to change fast, and to think about onboarding not just as on/off but as transitions. Accelerator of performance, to help you step up quicker and faster. A framework to increase the support to employee experience in the phases of professional acceleration. 

If onboarding is a key to a successful experience, it probably has a potential to be revisited through time, and leveraged to play a role in building employee fidelity. And not just as the acquisition moment. So let’s think about onboardings and move away from careers and relations as linear journeys.

Digital Experience