Page 31 - Successful Onboarding

20 • Successful Onboarding

If this example was applied to
an incoming class of 500
new hires in a given year, the
contribution to the Onboarding
Margin would include the
additional retention of 15 people,
and possibly far more impactful,
the additional retention of 24
individuals (as a result of the
59% improvement in regrettable
attrition) that would have
otherwise been considered
regrettable

Figure 1.1 The Gain from Both Level and Mix of Attrition to the Onboarding
Margin

employee to achieve expected productivity levels. The time (and level)
will vary depending on the role, function, and company in question. To
1
quantify the potential gain from strategic onboarding, we calculated what
it would be worth if we could reduce the time to productivity. We then
asked what it would be worth if we could improve the average level of pro-
ductivity—in effect, redefine what we expect out of a prospective new hire
with regard to overall productivity, or contribution. Consider the situation
in which, before an effective improvement, a firm deemed a new customer
service representative “productive” when he could handle eight calls an
hour. What if we were able to produce an entirely new form of value for
the enterprise, maybe in the form of the representative’s ability to connect
the dots between calls, actually detect patterns in customer issues, and pos-
sess the motivation and know-how to properly inform product develop-
ment (or pricing, or channel strategy, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), or
any other critical business activity)?
Figure 1.2 summarizes the potential productivity gains attributable to
strategic onboarding for those new hires who stay with the organization.