Onboarding – the difference in times of skills shortages

The topic is red-hot: skills shortages and labour shortages

Everyone is talking about it, you can read about it everywhere in the media and we also see it every day with our clients. It is very difficult to find suitable and qualified staff. And if you do finally find the right person after an extensive search and a lot of budget, he or she soon moves on to the next best job that comes along.

In my meetings with our clients, they always ask me the same question: What can I do to find employees and keep them?

In our opinion, the key to employee retention is successful onboarding, which starts with the first interview.

It has been proven that successful onboarding can reduce staff turnover in a company by up to 24%.

But what is successful onboarding?

This topic would go far beyond the scope of this blog entry in detail, but I have summarised the key points here from our 20 years of experience with over 800 clients per year.

Generally speaking, onboarding can be divided into two phases:

1. Before the person has been hired
2. After the person has been recruited

Before the person is hired, it is important to identify as well as possible whether the person has the necessary basic requirements to be happy in the job. Of course, it is also important to check whether the potential candidate will complement the team or fit into the team structure.

Here is a rough overview of the questions we have identified (apart from the professional competences) in order to be able to implement the onboarding successfully:

1. Before the person has been hired

• Does the person have the right personality traits for the job?
• Does the person’s personality structure fit into the team?
• Does the person really want to work for the company?
• Is the person socially intelligent or empathetic towards others?
• How important does the person consider him/herself or is he/she aware of his/her position?
• What motivators does the person have? (For types of tasks, see the article from 04.05.23: It’s high time to rethink employee motivation! | LinkedIn )
• What appreciation language does the person speak?

We evaluate these questions with the help of a recording tool so that we receive comparable and measurable results.

Once the company has decided on the candidate, the next steps in the onboarding process begin. The goal here is to establish identification with the company as early as possible, even if the entry date is perhaps still 2-3 months away.

It is important to treat the person as if they had already started working on the job:

Are there company events where the person can already be invited?

Are there important information mails where the person can be directly included in the distribution list so that he or she feels that he or she has been thought of when starting work?

Does the person have a birthday in the period before starting work and is congratulated?

Can the person already be involved in important team decisions?

2. After the person has been recruited

In addition to the theoretical content that needs to be taught for the job, it is important here to further deepen identification with the company and to create integration into the team. A key to this is psychological security in the team and the feeling of creating self-efficacy in one’s own work.

Psychological safety: How safe do your team members feel to admit mistakes, to show vulnerability and insecurities among themselves or to speak unpleasant truths? How strong is the trust among them? Psychological safety is an essential success factor for the efficient cooperation of your team and for the underlying relationship of trust among the team members.

Self-efficacy: How do I achieve relevant influence on the whole organisation or in my team? How can I have a positive impact on the whole organisation so that other people or teams can benefit from it? The influence that a person achieves beyond his or her own department creates recognition and appreciation as well as positive examples for the entire organisation. Self-efficacy can be experienced when the work makes sense and benefits other people.

If you want to know how your team is positioned in these issues, I recommend our free self-analysis for teams: Team Dysfunctions Self-Assessment | BITOU

In order to substantiate these theoretical principles in practice, I would like to report on a prime example in the field of onboarding:

A client of ours from the hospital sector has been holding monthly onboarding events for newcomers to the company for two years.

On the first day of work, all new employees from different departments come together and receive a short welcome from the management level. Afterwards, the new employees set up a joint chain reaction.

This workshop has the following effects on the new employees of the company:

• An experience has been created which is directly linked to the company
• You get to know other new people (also from other clinic areas) and thus have direct contacts and connection opportunities
• They get to know superiors and a space for exchange is created (psychological safety)
• They have the feeling that they are important to the company & are being seen
• They have created something together in the team and have already experienced self-efficacy on the first day.

Why individualisation increases team spirit

Whether it’s your own branding for a recognisable and individual image, individualisation of the content of our team events and team developments or the new conception of team events, we offer you the whole range of individual solutions for your company-specific event.