The Definitive Guide to Onboarding in 2024 (2024)

When onboarding new employees, you have just 44 days on average to influence their decision to stay long-term. That's a vanishingly short window of time—and a high-stakes one, considering that employee turnover typically costs $7,500 to $28,000 per new hire.

Will your new hires turn into dependable, dedicated team members? Or will a bad first impression send them running, taking your sunk costs with them? It all depends on the quality of your onboarding process, which needs to be as deliberate, comprehensive, and structured as every other HR process at your company.

Despite its importance, effective onboarding remains one of Corporate America’s most elusive golden geese—rare and hard to catch, but worth the effort. To find out what employees want—and need—from onboarding, BambooHR surveyed 1,500 full-time US employees and interviewed 40+ recent new hires.*

We found that new hires’ biggest frustrations with onboarding include:

• No clear points of contact for questions (65%)
• Not enough training on company products/services (62%)
• Lack of access to essential tools (58%)
• Technology issues (e.g., malfunctioning computers, lack of setup, etc.) (51%)
• Not having a single person acting as an onboarding guide (50%)
• No clear manager (44%)

Read on to discover how to avoid these pitfalls—plus everything you need to know to build an onboarding process that’s destined to impress. We'll cover best onboarding practices, the benefits of consistent, inclusive onboarding, and helpful tools to hit all the right notes for every new hire.

*Editor's Note: All names and identifying information have been changed to protect privacy. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Good onboarding introduces new hires to the expectations, skills, tools, people, culture, and other educational resources they need to be successful at your company. It also lays the groundwork for how the rest of the relationship will go and helps new hires anticipate the job’s potential impact on their long-term career goals.

As a form of “organizational socialization,” the onboarding experience marks an often emotional beginning of what’ll hopefully be a long and fruitful working relationship. And as many employees think of new positions as a way to launch or advance their careers—adding yet another layer of expectations—onboarding is an opportunity (for the company and new hires) to make a critical first impression.

Our 2023 survey revealed new hires' hopes and expectations about the onboarding experience:

For better or worse, your company’s onboarding processes—formal or informal, virtual or in-person—will say volumes about the way things are run at your organization. But that isn’t to say all of one and none of the others is the best approach.

Instead, think of where and how to blend the formal with the informal, and the virtual with in-person, for a comprehensive, flexible, and inclusive onboarding process.

Onboarding exists on a spectrum of formal and informal approaches and processes. We recommend leading with a structured, formal onboarding process but leaving room for informal personal touchpoints along the way.

After accounting for all the necessities, like paperwork and IT support, and streamlining processes as much as possible, you can then focus on welcoming and integrating new people into an established organization with a more personal touch.

Formal onboarding processes are often associated with enterprises, but in truth any company can dial in a formal process for new hires.

A formal process provides clear structure and oversight, including:

• A defined onboarding timeframe with specific timelines and milestones
• A structured process for completing new-hire paperwork
• Scheduled training sessions, workshops, and shadowing opportunities
• Scheduled, staggered check-ins, performance assessments, or feedback sessions
• Assigned mentors, guides, or “onboarding buddies”

While formal onboarding can create consistency for new hires, there's a risk it may become inflexible or impersonal. And while it's important to treat all employees equally, a one-size-fits-all approach to education, training, and socialization could unintentionally discourage managers from accommodating new hires' needs on an individual basis.

Informal onboarding describes a more organic and unstructured approach to integrating new hires, focusing more on learning as you go than facilitating guided interactions or trainings. Startups or small companies may take this approach by default, but sticking to this style of onboarding gets messy quickly.

In our survey, for example, one in five workers (20%) said their company didn’t do anything to facilitate networking or interpersonal support between new hires and their coworkers. This is an example of an informal, sink-or-swim style of onboarding.

• Office tour
• Introductory team lunch
• Signing physical onboarding paperwork
• Workstation setup and IT support
• Job shadowing and check-ins with a mentor or onboarding buddy

• Welcome video
• Food delivery gift cards and virtual meet-and-greet
• Digital pre-boarding packets with e-signatures
• Equipment delivery in time for first day
• Regular virtual 1:1s and pairing sessions with mentor

An employee onboarding program can extend anywhere from a week to several months. Some companies may even schedule onboarding activities for their employees’ entire first year. Of course, what works best will depend on the role and organization.

In fact, employees themselves are fairly divided on what they like best. 86% of employees prefer having at least some time to ramp up, but more than half (56%) say they need just one or two days to ease into the swing of things.

Similarly, 36% of employees expressed frustration over long onboarding processes, citing boredom or feelings of exclusion—but 30% of employees want a slower, more gradual onboarding process before being expected to perform their full responsibilities.

So how do you figure out what the right timeline is for your employees?

Collect feedback from new hires, so you know what to tweak or overhaul about your processes. And create specific goals for what you hope to achieve. It’ll be easier to pinpoint, measure, and assess the strong and weak points of a defined program than to fine-tune an informal, shoot-from-the-hip approach.

Compliance

Neglecting training on security and safety protocols, federally regulated policies, and other aspects of compliance exposes your organization to legal risk.

Clarification

Without clarity—about their role, your expectations, and the company’s organizational structure—even the most experienced new hire will have a hard time finding their feet at a new organization. Clarification is the essential onboarding pillar that’ll ensure a faster time to productivity.

Culture

This C introduces new hires to the formal and informal organizational norms of your workplace. Ideally guided by your mission, vision, and values, your company’s culture is its personality and compass, so failing to incorporate the Culture pillar into your onboarding rolls the dice on whether your new hires are ultimately pointed in the right direction.

Connection

Connection is more than getting familiar with an org chart—it should focus on facilitating productive, collaborative connections with key colleagues. And as the final of the Four Cs, it may mean the difference between having merely-there new hires by the end of the onboarding period or unleashing empowered, engaged professionals who are ready to hit the ground running.

Failing to make a good first impression can leave new hires feeling misaligned or uncertain about their future at a company. Take Blake’s story, for example. We met Blake in November 2023, when we interviewed 40+ new hires at companies around the world about their experiences during the onboarding process, and their story highlights the importance of starting off on the right foot by honoring the information employees provide about their identities.

When Blake started a new job, they were pleased to be given the option to select nonbinary pronouns in their onboarding paperwork. But they were soon disappointed by the disconnect between pre-boarding and introductions with new coworkers. "She/her pronouns were still mostly used,” said Blake, “which kind of stinks.”

Although they tried to assume the best by acknowledging that some colleagues may have been unaware, the experience still stung. “It just didn't feel great on my part—like my identity wasn't honored."

1. Increased Productivity

Good onboarding doesn’t just increase a new employee’s capacity for productivity. It also boosts a key HR and onboarding metric—time to productivity (TTP), which describes the time it takes for new hires to acclimate and start contributing at full steam.

2. Increased Retention

65% of employees know if a job is the right fit within the first month, which means every second of those first 30 days will make or break your retention metrics. As you welcome new hires with effective onboarding, you build a strong case for staying long-term at your company.

3. Improve Understanding of Role and Expectations

Onboarding should provide new hires a clear understanding of their role, your expectations, and the performance metrics you’ll use to assess them. This sets them and their supervisors up for a meaningful first performance review, complete with aligned expectations and actionable feedback.

4. Improved Understanding of Company Culture and Team Dynamics

No company is too large or profitable to be immune to “broken culture syndrome” and its toxic, foundation-crumbling effects, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Onboarding ensures new hires understand and align with your org’s culture, values, and norms from the beginning, and directs the course of your mutual long-term success.

5. Minimize Wasted Investments

Losing a single new hire to early turnover can cost you between $7,500 to $28,000 in sunk costs. Failing to implement an onboarding strategy is like dropping the same amount of chips on a craps table and rolling the dice. There’s no reason to take that kind of risk with your hiring investment. Onboarding hedges your bets and paves the way for exponential growth.

6. Create Comfortable Employees

One of our new-hire interviewees, Lyle, shared a little about his onboarding experience as someone with autism, and what contributed most to his comfort as a new employee.

7. Increase Transparency

Onboarding is your chance to reinforce promises made during recruitment and set up realistic expectations for the future. It’s also your chance to reduce uncertainties and mitigate anxieties by being upfront about how your organization will serve to advance their own goals as they contribute to yours.

8. Build a Sense of Trust

The best onboarding creates an inclusive culture where every employee can thrive in mutual trust and respect. A few of our interviewees shared their thoughts on how HR can create an inclusive onboarding experience.

For Emma, whose mental health condition qualifies for protection under US federal law, it was important to be treated just like anyone else. “I don't want my colleagues, my coworkers, or my bosses to see me differently,” she said. “That would induce anxiety for me. I'm happy to fly under the radar and just be seen as one of the herd.”

Jon expressed similar sentiments. “We kind of focused on training and not so much on my identity,” he said. “I don't think my identity played a role in any of these interactions at all, which is what I wanted.”

9. Reduce Workload for Other Teams

Effective onboarding produces confident, self-sufficient new hires who are less prone to making mistakes others in the company will need to fix. Additionally, when new hires are given a designated and equipped support system as part of their onboarding experience, other employees and teams aren’t being pulled from their work to offer impromptu support and training.

HR pros are experts at spotting poor onboarding practices.

We found that 79% of HR professionals know if a job is going to be a good fit for them within the first month, compared to 65% of other workers. It’s especially unfortunate when a poor onboarding experience repels the very people who'd be tasked with improving it.

So how do you begin improving the onboarding process at your company?

Keep Track of What Works and What Doesn’t

Regularly review and update your onboarding program to incorporate best practices, industry trends, and feedback from stakeholders (e.g., HR, hiring managers, and new hires themselves). New-hire surveys should be a part of every onboarding strategy, as well as staying up to date with new technologies and tools that can enhance the onboarding experience.

Create Room for Flexibility and Personalization as Needed

A standardized process doesn’t work for every situation, which is why your onboarding should be prepared to evolve and adapt to the changing needs of your organization, and even the individual needs of your new hires.

For Emma, a new job came with an overwhelming amount of online training—much of it irrelevant to her specific role. "It's hours and hours of training that I have to do on my own unpaid time outside of work hours," she said. “It's just something that everybody has had to do, but a lot of it is irrelevant to my role. It’s very frustrating."

In situations like this, HR pros have an opportunity—and a responsibility—to seek out feedback and advocate for more efficient practices that reduce employees' discontent.

Define Trackable Metrics to Gauge Success

Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics to measure the effectiveness of your onboarding process. These metrics could include employee retention rates, time to productivity, engagement levels, or feedback scores.

By tracking these metrics, you can objectively evaluate the impact of your onboarding efforts and identify areas for improvement.

Be Receptive to Feedback and Quick to Accommodate

Create a culture of open communication from day one by actively seeking feedback from new hires and other stakeholders involved in the onboarding process. Encourage them to share their experiences, suggestions, and concerns during or immediately after their onboarding period. Be responsive to their feedback and make necessary accommodations or adjustments to address issues or gaps they’ve identified.

Pro tip: If requesting feedback from a large number of employees or new hires, provide a way to give it anonymously to encourage honest (i.e., critical) feedback—the most useful type of feedback you can hope for if your goal is to improve.

For example, BambooHR® provides all of the above and more, including a Get to Know You questionnaire as part of the new-hire pre-boarding packet.

New employees shouldn’t have to learn their way around your company from the school of hard knocks. Give them the welcome and tools they need to have a positive experience and watch them thrive alongside your company.

Create better first days.

BambooHR helps you build an effective onboarding process with customizable onboarding checklists, welcome emails, and new hire packets—so every new hire feels welcome on day one.

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