Page 53 - Successful Onboarding

42 • Successful Onboarding

We started with six industries and representative companies from each
(relying on publically traded companies for ease of access to necessary
data), as follows:

• Aerospace & Defense: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell
International, Northrop Grumman
• Energy & Utilities: Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Constellation Energy,
Halliburton
• Financial Services: Bank of America Corporation, Citigroup,
Franklin Resources, Goldman Sachs
• Healthcare: UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, McKesson,
Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson
• Technology & Telecom: Cisco Systems, Google, IBM, AT&T
• Consumer Packaged Goods: PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Procter &
Gamble, Coca-Cola

These companies were all selected for their size and representative nature
by someone outside of our Organization Development and Onboarding
practice; that way, we could ensure a lack of bias with regard to any knowl-
edge of these companies’ current state of onboarding. All of these com-
panies were treated equally with regard to the assumptions about potential
impact, irrespective of any knowledge that we had on the current state of
their onboarding efforts. The objective was to build and test a broadly
applicable model, not to pass judgment on the performance or impact of
any particular company.

Onboarding Margin: Attrition Effects

Our next step was to determine the hypothetical impact suboptimal
onboarding might be having today on the overall economic performance
of the businesses. We started with the current cost of attrition. To calculate
the cost of total attrition for an organization, we applied some common
numbers by industry for average attrition levels. Aerospace and Defense,
12%; Energy and Utilities, 15%; Financial Services, 15%; Healthcare, 12%;
Technology and Telecom, 15%; Consumer Packaged Goods, 10%. Next
we determined the total number of individuals leaving each benchmark
company a year. Given the current economic condition at the time of the