New onboarding best practices research for managerial and professional staff shows the levels of employee engagement, leavers and those at risk. Find out the reasons why new starters leave and problems with the onboarding process.

Onboarding Best Practices for Managerial and Professional Employees

Onboarding new starters is key to preventing high early attrition rates. Whilst demographic differences are important to recruitment and retention because one size does not fit all staff.

This is true of employee engagement strategies and taking on new employees. Staff engagement improves productivity, customer service and employee retention. Therefore tailoring initiatives to your staff is key.

Managerial and professional staff turnover can incur high costs for organisations. That’s why it’s important to use exit data to improve talent management.

This research demonstrates the specific needs of onboarding new managerial and professional employees. In 2014 great{with}talent researched 1,909 new starters to test their staff engagement levels.

This chart shows the number of new employees who are actively leaving, at risk and engaged.

Read: New Sales Employees Onboarding and Staff Engagement 2014.

Compared to the overall new employees sample of 7,490 new starters there are more leavers among professional and managerial employees. The results show that these new staff are above average for early attrition.

This shows that a higher percentage new professional and managerial employees are willing to leave within the first 12 months of employment. Whilst an even greater amount are ‘at risk’.

This makes staff engagement initiatives important for employee retention. Early attrition can cost organisations due to recruitment. Moreover, there’s the resources spent on cover work and losses through lack of productivity.

Read: How to Calculate Staff Turnover Rate with Exit Process Cost Calculator.

The top reason new starters listed for being ‘at risk’ of early attrition is the pay and benefits package (48%). This is significantly higher than the overall group (42%) who ranked it in second place.

Similarly, potential for progression through the organisation (47%) was rated higher. This occurred despite it being the top concern for the whole sample of employees.

Likewise training and development opportunities (30%) is more of an issue though it climbed the list from fifth to third. Whilst a work-life balance (30%) mercifully remained at the same percentage.

Additionally, the nature of the work itself (29%) lowered to the bottom of the list but remained at the same percentage. These are worrying results.

Unfortunately, during the economic crisis talent was still as likely to voluntarily leave organisations. Therefore after recruitment the onboarding process is equally as important for employee engagement.

Read: The Definition of Employee Engagement and Why Worker Engagement is Important.

Onboarding Best Practices

Firstly it’s important to be honest with potential employees. This can also take place during the onboarding process.

This will give new starters a realistic impression of their role and the company. This will help avoid any disappointment and inform new employees of the opportunities for progression.

Furthermore, there are many ways to engage employees on a budget. Organisations can use mentoring, shadowing, low cost rewards and creating a collaborative culture. These techniques can cheaply train employees and give them a forum to ask questions.

It’s particularly crucial to identify skill gaps and inform staff of alternative routes to progression from the outset. Research shows this is particularly true with male employees.

It’s clearly important to offer competitive pay and opportunities. Yet, lateral moves can allow for low-cost skills building and may include a move to an area with more scope for future progression.

The differences between new professional and managerial employees and new starters as a whole shows the importance of collecting onboarding and exit data. It can easily and cheaply improve employee engagement and staff retention in 2014.

Contact great{with}talent and increase “speed to performance” of new managerial and professional employees with their onboarding tool:

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(Main image from The Greener Avenue)