Flickr: Jeroen Kransen

Induction and staff onboarding play a large role in bringing new staff up to speed with staff culture, processes and safety rules.  Yet, orienting new employees to both their workplaces and their jobs is one of the most neglected functions in many organizations.

Frequent complaints about induction programs are that they are overwhelming and boring.  Employee handbooks no longer cut it when welcoming a new employee to your company. Nor does making new hires sit through PowerPoint presentations with a disengaged staff member.

In fact, research has found that employees make the decision in their first week of work as to whether they will stay with the company or not. This makes the first week a crucial milestone for every employer to make sure that they correctly induct staff for the best results.

The cost of poor orientation is huge.  Benefits of properly designed induction programs include decreasing the start up costs of getting the new hire up to speed with their job, saving supervisor time, reducing employee turnover and improving overall job satisfaction.

Research has found that the best types of induction programs include face-to-face time, video training modules and involve senior management.

Best of all, using some video training actually reduces the costs of induction and improves the consistency and recall of messages.  Senior management can also feature in the training videos to lessen the time they are required for inductions.

In 2006, Taleo conducted research (Onboarding: Speeding the way to productivity) that found that 54% of respondents believed that onboarding was not consistent across their organization.  Improving the consistency of training messages vastly improves the productivity and even safety of your staff.

Most companies are surprised to know that face-to-face induction programs can be very expensive to facilitate, given the length of time required by the trainer and the new staff member. Yet, once a video induction program has been created, the cost can be as low as $9 per new hire.

Ultimately, it is the hidden cost of poor induction and onboarding that has possibly the biggest impact on return on investment.

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