Page 28 - Successful Onboarding

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THE BUSINESS CASE

FOR ONBOARDING

An R&D manager at a large consumer electronics firm wanted to improve
the time it took to get new hires working at their best. This manager felt
that a more comprehensive onboarding program would help new hires
gain better and quicker access to the specialized knowledge they needed
to excel in their jobs. Yet when our client tried to get his chief technology
officer to invest in new hire onboarding, he received an unenthusiastic
response. More effective onboarding seemed like an intriguing idea,
but it wasn’t worth funding over other priorities and wasn’t clear what the
payoff could be.
Few operating leaders today appreciate the full value that effective
onboarding can deliver. This is understandable given onboarding’s posi-
tion as an emerging discipline with only a short history. This is a shame
because on an intuitive level, onboarding makes a good deal of sense. The
dollars we spend to recruit Grade A talent have mounted over the past
20 years because of a number of factors, including tightening of the labor
force and the increasing value of knowledge workers in a service-based
economy. Other factors, as some have argued, are the wider emergence
of external recruiters who have an economic interest in fostering higher
salaries; talent shortages; the never-ending cycle of hire, attrit, and rehire;
and the associated stream of finders’ fees. In fact, the cost of attracting tal-
ent approaches 30% of a new hire’s annual salary. Imagine the added value
if firms possessed a centralized, focused, properly resourced function to
incorporate talent into the firm, so there was less of a need to rehire.

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