The Great Resignation. The Big Quit. Whatever you may call it, the numbers do not lie: More than 4.4 million people, a record 3% of the U.S. labor market, left their jobs in September 2021. While that rate decreased to 2.8% in October, 4.4 million people in October, millions of employees are still quitting across all industries.
Given the past, two years amid the COVID-19 pandemic, this news is not shocking. In the wake of the pandemic, millions of workers across the globe discovered they could work from home, and if employers weren’t able to accommodate certain flexibilities, they could find it someplace else.
As a result of this shift, organizations are adapting to meet current employee expectations. Successful employers are defining clear goals and expectations for recruiting and onboarding to retain talent, especially in regard to their remote employees. According to an onboarding survey on Glassdoor, 91% of employees who rated their onboarding process as effective felt a strong connectedness to their work, and were 18 times more likely to feel committed to the organization. Employers that are intentional during the onboarding process and set their new hires up for success, will output a higher return.
Create Engaging Content
The average attention span is 20 minutes. Likewise, the average attention span in an in-person learning environment is approximately 10 to 18 minutes. When it comes to online learning, the attention span decreases further to seven minutes. Onboarding remotely has its conveniences; however, if it is not engaging, it is safe to assume that it will not hold employees’ attention — especially amid a pandemic.
Employers can mitigate wanning attention spans by integrating engaging content with videos. When creating multimedia content, a major consideration to keep in mind is video length. The average length of a YouTube video is 11.7 minutes, which based on the average attention span can be considered lengthy. For new hires to retain information, the content should be broken down into bite-sized chunks of content, no longer than five minutes.
Another technique to help employees retain information during a remote onboarding is to create interactive content with opportunities for participation. Include a quick summary at the end of a video with a review of lessons learned, leave recap quizzes in between modules, request feedback after each lesson or gamify the content with an interactive branching scenario. Overall, integrating creative content with multimedia videos is helpful during a remote onboarding because it helps new hires stay engaged.
Leverage Customizable Solutions
There’s no one-size-fits-all employee, so there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach to onboarding. With adherence to best practices to follow, organizations should be flexible when selecting a modality that will yield targeted results.
Today, options in technology permit organizations the flexibility to build learning and development (L&D) solutions that can connect with essential workplace systems. Open-source learning management systems (LMSs) can integrate with other third-party products, allowing employers to tailor their organization’s programs. It also simplifies the process of adding new technologies as they emerge with the organization’s existing systems, thus fortifying L&D solutions for the future. With 85% of adults worldwide disengaged from their work, providing more consistent and formal practices powered by technology can improve the onboarding process through an integration of easy-to-remember content.
Set Them up for Success
Successful onboarding should be measured beyond just having the tools to facilitate job training and company culture. Organizations have to invest in their new employees and set them up for success. Schedule unstructured virtual meet and greets with new employees in the first several weeks and provide upfront expectations with regular check-ins from supervisors.
According to EHS Today, before the pandemic, 60% of U.S. workers indicated that they felt trapped in an unhealthy work-life balance because of the lack of a boundary between the two. 73% of respondents to a Flexjob survey indicated that they had a better work-life balance thanks to working from home. According to a survey on Gallup, time preservation is a key factor for wanting a hybrid work schedule because it grants workers the flexibility between balancing work and personal obligations, therein improving well-being.
This is especially fundamental when ensuring new team members are being supported toward success. As the world heads into another year of the pandemic and more workers transition to remote work, employers need to adapt the onboarding process by creating engaging, customized content to successfully integrate new employees, no matter where they are working from.
