The onboarding process can be one of the most overlooked areas for organizations needing a quick win in the overall employee experience. Instead of leveraging this process as a way to drive engagement and create a lasting impression, some organizations tend to deliver a subpar experience or forego the practice altogether.

Employees want an onboarding experience, but all too often they only get an orientation session and a handful of paperwork to sift through. However, employees should have an onboarding experience that gives them not only deeper insights into the business, but more connectivity into the culture, the people and the history.

According to the ADP Research Institute, the majority of employees want employers to take time to orient new employees to the policies, benefits and culture of the employer, yet many firms don’t make this a priority. This is strange, because from an employer perspective, onboarding was the number one choice in some of my 2017 research into talent acquisition priorities.

Using Onboarding to Highlight Values

Onboarding is considered to be in the top three drivers of talent management ROI. In order to create lasting engagement from the first moments of interaction with new employees, organizations should think about the strategic impact of their onboarding process.

For example, when I began at Pinnacle Solutions years ago, the CEO and cofounder talked about his military background as the foundation for why the company existed and how its values were brought to life. It helped to solidify the “story” every new hire received and made it possible to connect with the emotional aspects as well as the logical ones.

The story not only grounds a new hire in the organization’s mission, but also in the bigger impact and opportunity that exists. This is just one example of an onboarding practice that attempts to connect workers at a deeper level beyond just policies and procedures.

For other examples of how to put this in practice and how to use social connections to drive value for new hires, be sure to check out the rest of my article on the ADP Spark blog.

Is onboarding working well at your company or could it use some work?