Thorough Onboarding Increases Employee Retention

Onboarding is the structured process that welcomes a new employee and helps them feel secure, prepared and productive in their new role. Good onboarding pays off: employees who feel well received perform better, are more satisfied, and stay with the company longer. Onboarding matters just as much as the recruitment process itself, in fact, it's part of it. Here you'll learn why onboarding matters, what role the manager plays, how to build a good onboarding plan, and how to use test data to tailor the process to each individual.

Onboarding means welcoming the new employee and giving them the information they need about the company, the job and their colleagues. Doing it well takes time, but it pays off for both company and employee. Research shows that employees who feel prepared and well received perform better and stay with the organisation longer.

Attracting and recruiting the right candidates can be hard work. Once you've found the right person and the contract is signed, the focus shifts to building a solid onboarding plan for the new employee. Someone who has a good onboarding experience performs better, is more engaged, and is easier to retain. Good onboarding pays dividends.

What Is Onboarding?

Onboarding covers everything that helps a new employee settle in quickly and pick up the knowledge and behaviours they need to succeed in their role. It's about far more than the practical side (laptop, access, an induction programme); it's about building confidence, aligning expectations, and giving proper support from day one. It calls for a structured process tailored to the person and their new role, with both the hiring manager and HR prepared for the task.

Why Invest Time in Onboarding?

The point of onboarding is to make sure new employees feel welcome and get off to a quick start. That builds loyalty and engagement within the company. Onboarding ensures new employees pick up the knowledge and behaviours that let them contribute effectively, whether through an induction programme or a dedicated mentor.

One common pitfall is when a company makes promises during recruitment that the employee later feels weren't kept. That can lead people to leave quickly. New employees who don't feel well informed also tend to perform worse and face a higher risk of stress, which is bad news for both employee and company.

Why Does Onboarding Matter So Much?

Research suggests it takes around 80 days for an employee to reach average productivity. Good onboarding gets you a self sufficient, satisfied employee who can create value for the company sooner. That's why it matters that the organisation, and particularly the manager and immediate colleagues, is prepared and genuinely engaged in giving the new employee a good start, even though it takes time.

The Manager Plays a Critical Role, Including When Onboarding New Managers

Once you've found the right candidate, onboarding begins. You may already have processes in place for how onboarding should run and what it should include, but the immediate manager's role is still crucial. The manager needs to make sure any promises made are kept, and that the employee quickly understands their purpose within the company. It's worth asking whether the manager is prepared for this responsibility, and whether they've been given the time to do it well.

The same principle applies when onboarding a new manager, only more so. Here a leadership report like OPTO+ Leadership can give you a shared, data driven starting point for aligning expectations and planning development from day one.

How Do You Build a Good Onboarding Plan?

Tailored processes built on structured frameworks, checklists and templates go a long way toward giving the new employee a strong start. This helps not just the new employee, but the manager, HR and everyone else involved in introducing them to their work.

Effective onboarding sets the framework for the new employee's start and keeps expectations aligned between them and their manager throughout. It gives the employee a natural way to raise challenges, ideas or questions, the kind that tend to come up early in a new job. Tailor the introduction to each person's individual needs; it gets better results and makes the employee feel genuinely welcome.

Put Test Data to Work in Onboarding

If you tested the employee with a personality test, a cognitive test or a typology as part of hiring, that data is genuinely valuable for shaping how onboarding should go.

Say you already know you've hired someone who's highly structured and detail oriented. It's worth planning around that: build a detailed, well organised plan, schedule meetings properly, cover all the relevant details, and follow through on commitments and timing. It sounds obvious, but we're all different; if structure and detail aren't naturally your strong suit, it's worth paying extra attention to giving the new employee a good start.

Test data lives in the Master People Platform, where you can pull up reports and insights and put them to work directly in onboarding. That way, onboarding stops being a generic template and becomes a process tailored to the individual.

Good onboarding:

• Increases employee engagement and motivation
• Shortens the time it takes to get up to speed
• Reduces stress
• Increases employee satisfaction and retention

Onboarding Can Be an Expensive, but Essential, Investment

There's no getting around it: onboarding is expensive and time consuming, but it's a necessary investment that companies should build a system around and prioritise. Many people who leave a job within their first year say it's because "the job didn't match my expectations", despite all the time and effort that went into a structured recruitment process, interviews, cognitive tests, personality tests, references, case assignments and everything else designed to secure the right match. That's why it matters to be clear in your communication, both in the job posting and in interviews, so candidates go in with realistic expectations about the job and the company.

A poor start can get expensive: a bad hire that ends early costs recruitment, training and lost productivity 

The organisation's, and the manager's, focus on the new employee shouldn't stop the moment the contract is signed. 

What Does Successful Onboarding Look Like for You?

There's no single formula that guarantees onboarding success. It depends on plenty of factors: the company, the industry, the role, the person. What matters is a structured process, so think about what quality actually looks like for you and what would make onboarding most valuable for your new employee. Use what you already know about the person to meet their needs as fully as you can during their time as a newcomer to the organisation.

One thing is certain: time and money are both well spent when onboarding succeeds and the new employee performs and thrives in the job.

Frequently Asked Questions About Onboarding

Why does onboarding matter? A good start increases engagement, satisfaction and retention, and gets people productive faster. It typically takes around 80 days to reach normal productivity; good onboarding shortens that journey and lowers the risk of an early resignation.

How long should onboarding last? There's no single right answer, but onboarding should span the first several months, not just the first few days, with regular check-ins to review satisfaction, tasks and expectations.

How do you use test results in onboarding? If you tested the employee when hiring them, you can use those insights (personality, cognitive level, type) to tailor onboarding to the individual, for example how much structure, information and follow-up they need. The data lives in the Master People Platform and can be used directly.

Is there software that makes onboarding data driven? Master isn't an onboarding workflow system, but the Master People Platform provides assessment data (personality, cognitive level, typology) that makes onboarding targeted and data driven, and it can sit alongside whatever onboarding process you already run.

How do you onboard a new manager? The same principles apply, tailored to a management role, ideally supported by a leadership report like OPTO+ Leadership, which gives you a shared, data driven starting point for aligning expectations and planning development.