Each year, millions of college graduates enter the workforce, bringing new ideas and perspectives to the working world. It’s a welcoming change for many businesses, especially those in need of more workers to relieve persistent challenges caused by the skilled labor shortage.

With entry-level workers entering the workforce and an ongoing struggle to retain skilled trades workers, it’s imperative for learning and development (L&D) and human resources (HR) departments to do their part to evaluate and improve the hiring process, from recruitment to signing the offer letter. Developing an employee-focused onboarding experience can help increase the likelihood of new hires staying long term.

So, what’s at the top of the check list for revamping onboarding? The answer is to revisit onboarding programs to make sure they’re setting up college graduates for long-term success.

Get to Know Gen Z Grads

Adjusting to a new role can be challenging enough — but starting your first full-time position can make the experience even more overwhelming. While every new hire faces internal knowledge and processes from day one, first-time workers also face having to learn how to succeed in a new environment.

A Paychex report, “The Future of First Impressions: Embracing AI in HR for Better Onboarding,” found that 29% of employees who are dissatisfied with their onboarding processes plan to look for a new job within three months. To retain employees, businesses should consider reviewing their onboarding materials so that it leaves a positive impression on new hires. This can also include learning more about your new employees, like what they hope to learn in their role, what they can bring to the table and lastly, what they expect from the workplace.

Another Paychex survey, “Navigating the New Workforce: Engaging Millennials and Gen Z in the Workplace,” found that the individuals surveyed in the two youngest working generations, Generation Z and Millennials, feel it’s extremely important for their workplace to encourage work-life balance (85%), recognition (66%) and autonomy (64%). They may need to gravitate toward companies that offer career growth and development opportunities, and structure and transparency can go a long way. As such, they look for organizations that share that point of view.

Gen Z workers tend to be values-driven and are more likely to seek out organizations whose priorities align with their ethos. These workers generally prefer companies that are transparent about their decisions, embrace social justice and value diversity and inclusivity. These organizational priorities often can influence their preferred management and communication styles and the expectation for managers to communicate feedback openly, honestly and respectfully.

Best Practices for Better Outcomes

To better ensure your onboarding process covers what new graduates need to thrive, consider:

• Leaning into what matters most. When getting workers up to speed, it’s critical that you lead with and continuously emphasize the key takeaways from each training, presentation, or material. This is especially critical when training workers who may not have any experience in a professional setting, as they will be relying on you to tell them what’s most important and what’s not. People can’t know what they don’t know—and recent grads may be learning it all from you.

• Cutting down on jargon and assumptions. Learning the established process in a new organization is difficult, but figuring out the unspoken norms or in-group language in a workplace is even more challenging. The learning curve steepens when transitioning from academic to professional environments, as theoretical understanding and practical applications may not always align. If you’re looking to make sure recent grads feel comfortable and welcome in your workplace, take the time to determine whether certain practices or terms are common knowledge or they’re just your knowledge. 

• Talking to existing staff. Connecting with both recent and more tenured hires can help you gain insight into nuances of your operations that you may not have experienced first-hand. Invite staff members to share the blind spots they realized they had after their onboarding experiences, the things that surprised them when joining the company, and the obstacles they see their newly hired peers face in the first few months on the job. This process can help you determine what’s working and what’s not. In The Future of First Impressions, a Paychex survey on the use of AI in onboarding, 41% of new hires suggested personalized onboarding plans to help them address skills gaps.

• Extending the timeline. Most HR professionals expect onboarding to take between 3 and 6 months, but for new grads, it might take even longer—and that’s OK. After all, a person can only learn so much so fast. If you’re hiring first-time workers, extending your onboarding programming throughout their first year might make sense, as well as establishing a buddy or mentorship program to continue the support. You may also want to remind other employees that the six-month expectations they have for these workers may need to differ from those they have for a more experienced new hire. 

• Using tech to support the process. Though learning new systems is often seen as overwhelming, the opposite may be true for Gen Z workers joining your ranks. Digital natives often feel more comfortable interacting with people and information online than with hard documents or in-person meetings. Getting them up to speed with your self-service HR platform as soon as possible can help ensure they have easy, continuous access to necessary information and documents. It can also streamline administrative work for your team while increasing retention as The Future of First Impressions survey showed that AI-onboarded employees are 30% less likely to quit within a year than those onboarded without AI.

More Than a New Job

The transition from student life to “real life,” which—as I’m sure many recall—comes with a parade of unexpected and sometimes unwelcome surprises. New grads aren’t just learning what’s expected at your company; they may be learning what’s expected at work in general. Add the persistent headlines expressing reservations about Gen Z’s preparedness for joining the workforce, and it’s not hard to see why they might feel more daunted than previous generations.

So, while students prepare for their next chapter, learning and development professionals should start preparing for them. By making sure your onboarding materials can cater to the unique needs of first-time workers, you’ll not only set your teams up for success—you’ll be on your way to them into talented and tenured staff.