What Data Tells Us About Onboarding Success (And What HR Teams Should Track)
Is your onboarding strategy working?
If the answer is “I don’t know,” then you’re not alone. 47% of HR teams don’t measure their onboarding success.
Good onboarding is key to a successful employee journey. It quickly gets new hires up to speed and ensures they feel valued from day one, encouraging long-term retention and productivity. However, just 12% of employees agree their company gets this process right. Unengaged employees and high turnover are the result.
Want to know how to avoid these scenarios? Keep reading as we explain how to measure the effectiveness of your onboarding program in setting new hires up for success.
Why Should You Use Data to Measure Onboarding Success?
Using data to measure onboarding success helps you see if your current processes and systems enhance or negatively impact key areas of the organisation. This includes everything from employee experience to recruitment and finances.
Here are two key benefits of tracking data onboarding insights:
1. Boost Retention
Metrics like training completion and turnover reveal aspects of your onboarding process that could be made more engaging. For instance, if new hires don’t finish modules and then leave the company shortly after, this could highlight a problem with learning and development delivery.
Addressing these challenges ensures new hires have all the tools required for day-one readiness and feel confident and motivated going into their new roles. That’s why employees who have had a great onboarding experience are 69% more likely to stay with a company for three years.
Lowering turnover and improving retention rates also reduces hiring expenses. Replacing employees who leave costs between 50% and 200% of their annual salary, plus the cost of the valuable knowledge lost along the way.
2. Enhance Efficiency
Australian human resources professionals spend an average of 40 to 60% of their time on manual administrative tasks, or 15 to 20 hours per week. Using data can help HR teams assess where this time could be reduced through onboarding automations.
If slow time-to-productivity is the issue, try automating contract creation and document reviews. These tools reduce HR teams’ workloads and prepare new hires for the role more quickly. You’ll also boost revenues and see a faster return on investment in their training.
Which Onboarding Metrics Should HR Teams Track?
Tracking metrics like employee retention, productivity, turnover, and satisfaction provide the best indicators of onboarding success for HR teams. Let’s take a closer look at each one:
Onboarding Time
Onboarding time covers the days or weeks taken to fully onboard a new employee, from the job offer acceptance to adding them to the roster. This data highlights the efficiency of the HR tools used to complete paperwork and integrate new hires into your organisation.
Infinite Aged Care had an onboarding process that was too complex, as demonstrated by their 7- to 10-day onboarding time. Recognising this metric allowed the residential provider to simplify these processes, reducing onboarding to just 45 minutes per employee.
They also boosted speed-to-roster and won the Best Tech Stack award at the ITAs, beating tech giants like Deloitte and Optus!
Time-to-Productivity
Time-to-productivity is the length of time it takes new hires to reach full competency in their roles.
Track this metric by monitoring how long it takes employees to perform duties without additional support. You could also set short and long-term performance goals to boost motivation, like making a specific number of sales or mastering an essential skill.
The real key to success is measuring confidence levels. Employees may be achieving the role expectations, but if they feel stressed or anxious while doing so, it may be an indication that onboarding didn’t cover all the necessary areas.
Training Completion Rates
Organisations offering strong learning programs are 17% more profitable than competitors. However, typical completion rates for online courses can be as low as 4%.
Low rates indicate that new hires aren’t developing the skills they need during onboarding due to poor training design and delivery. Learning materials are often too complex to understand, which can overwhelm or fail to engage the employee.
This is a top concern in tightly regulated industries such as health and aged care, where specific training certifications are critical for onboarding compliance.
Turnover Rates
Employees who feel supported and connected to the company culture are four times more likely to be engaged. On the other hand, those who have a poor onboarding experience (or no onboarding at all!) can’t connect to the company’s mission and feel less obligated to stay, hence increasing turnover.
Calculate your employee turnover using the following formula:
Turnover Rate = Number of Employees Leaving / Number of Employees at the Start
Monitor these rates at 30, 60, and 90 days to identify where onboarding issues lie.
Retention Threshold
Whether at 30 or 90 days, the retention threshold refers to the point when most new hires leave.
On average, 30% of employees leave within the first 90 days, but rates are higher for businesses in traditionally high-turnover markets. This may be because the job doesn’t match their initial expectations or due to the lack of a proper welcome to your organisation during onboarding.
Employee Satisfaction
Tracking engagement through surveys can help you identify how happy new hires are with the onboarding process. 82% of employees feel that being engaged and happy at work is a key productivity driver, highlighting the benefits of this metric for your entire organisation.
Measure satisfaction through your Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). Distribute surveys asking “On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this organisation as a place to work, based on your onboarding experience?” Responses fall into three categories:
- Detractors: Employees with scores below 6 indicate low satisfaction.
- Passives: A 7 or 8 is given by employees who feel neutral about the organisation.
- Promoters: Scores above 9 show that employees are satisfied with their onboarding.
Then, to calculate your eNPS, simply take the number of detractors away from the number of promoters. Scores between 10 to 50 are good, while anything below 0 signals low employee onboarding satisfaction.
How to Collect Onboarding Data
Collect a mix of qualitative and quantitative data by using purpose-built onboarding software to streamline tracking. Here’s how to get comprehensive data insights and check in frequently with new hires:
Use the Right Data Types
Quantitative metrics provide the necessary numbers to help you identify onboarding patterns, while qualitative metrics offer the reasons why. If you’re noticing high absenteeism rates during a new hire’s first 90 days, arrange a one-to-one meeting to discuss why this may be.
Compare the data collected with industry benchmarks. Some industries, like hospitality and healthcare, have naturally higher turnover rates than professional services, for instance, so ensure these benchmarks are relevant to your organisation.
You can then create a clear, step-by-step plan to help HR teams improve onboarding.
Check in Regularly
Onboarding is more than just signing paperwork during the first few days of an employee’s journey. It’s an ongoing task that involves fully integrating new hires into the organisation’s culture and setting them up to successfully work towards your mission.
So, don’t wait until the end of onboarding or when an employee has left to find out what went wrong — track metrics during onboarding, too. This helps you develop a strong point of comparison and gather real-time feedback, before making quick changes to boost new hire happiness.
If training completion rates are low, for example, HR may check in and find that employees are struggling to access the right materials. You can then signpost them to their personalised training portal to avoid delays, boost confidence, and keep new hires engaged.
Use Onboarding Software
One of the most convenient ways to collect onboarding data, especially for high-volume onboarding or bulk recruitment drives, is by investing in onboarding software. This generates and tracks metrics automatically across the entire workforce, saving your HR team precious time.
Secure online dashboards provide deeper insights into HR metrics, keeping data all in one place with accurate timestamps. These detailed records help with compliance by ensuring you’re always audit-ready, while reports show senior executives that the software is worth your investment.
Comprehensive onboarding software also offers the tools to help you implement any changes identified by these metrics:
Contract Creation
Powerful contract and document assembly workflows promptly collect employee details, then populate all onboarding forms, meaning there’s no need to enter new hire details more than once.
This allows HR teams to generate and issue personalised contracts in record time, then review online through secure e-signatures. Faster onboarding means employees aren’t left waiting, creating a more engaging employee experience.
Personalised Onboarding Portals
Secure onboarding portals contain all onboarding documents and training materials ready for new hires to complete at their own pace. Customise these materials to your employees’ ideal learning styles to boost engagement, including training videos and step-by-step guides.
Personalised portals therefore offer everything new hires need to prepare for their roles confidently and quickly become part of your organisation’s culture.
Enhancing Your Onboarding Strategy with HR Insights
Well-informed onboarding strategies are crucial in shaping the employee journey and successfully integrating new hires into your organisation. In the long term, they help build a strong culture and brand, supported by an engaged, motivated workforce.
Want to streamline your onboarding data collection and analysis? Book an Onboard Express demo today to discover how our automated workflows can help.