Page 52 - Successful Onboarding

The Business Case for Onboarding • 41

Proficiency at innovation has proved lucrative for many firms, but it’s
awfully hard to become the next Apple. With onboarding, you don’t need
a lot of new technology. Simply roll up your sleeves and become more
thoughtful about the way your firm incorporates its new talent, and you
can help your firm uncover vast stores of previously hidden value.
Given all that onboarding has to offer, here is a final argument for the
leader who’s still dubious about changing the way his or her firm incor-
porates new hires: The competition probably is not yet doing onboarding
well, so an opportunity exists to create competitive advantage. Firms that
act early will hold a unique weapon in the battle for high-potential labor.
Prospects are always more inclined to work at a firm that’s regarded as a
superior place to build a career, and a strong onboarding program will
stimulate that impression by helping new hires build better careers. Firms
that hasten to embrace strategic programs will also realize earlier produc-
tivity gains, generating profits that they can in turn reinvest to assure even
greater value-creation going forward.
We’ve just added up the great value strategic onboarding can deliver, but
we have yet to explore exactly what strategic onboarding entails and how
the various elements working together can help deliver the Onboarding
Margin. This is the work of the next chapter. If you opened this book
thinking state-of-the-art onboarding is just a standard orientation made
better, perhaps by a new software program, cleaning up an administrative
mess, or a few extra hours or days of initial training, then you are in for a
pleasant surprise.

Appendix: An Economic Analysis of the
Onboarding Margin

We wanted to test widely the economic impact the Onboarding Margin
might have on various companies if onboarding was adopted successfully.
We created a model based on a conservative set of assumptions, testing
across a wide set of companies to measure impact on attrition, productiv-
ity, profitability, and ultimately total shareholder return—in the form of
market capitalization. Ours is not a perfect analysis, but it displays—albeit
directionally—what is at stake for operating entities.