Looking beyond the numbers – why resourcing needs to consider the whole employee journey

Resourcing has traditionally been focused on simply filling positions – but when it comes to your complete employee lifecycle, and business bottom line, this can be decidedly short sighted.

It isn’t enough to simply make a hire – you must ensure that they stay for the long haul. And if a new recruit’s initial experience of working for you isn’t completely satisfying, you risk a high level of attrition, especially within the first half-year. According to Brandon Hall research , 51% of organisations found that most new-hire attrition comes in the first six months. If you want to keep those recruits, you need to see onboarding as a marathon, not a sprint.

Some recruitment functions might seem to drop their responsibilities the minute an employee signs on their contract’s dotted line. However, more progressive ones look at retaining and developing candidates far beyond their start date, and an integrated approach, which collaborates with the rest of the business, is essential to supporting these goals.

Delivering on the promises made to candidates during the attraction, pipelining and interviewing process will build engagement and keeps them with you for the long term. If there’s any gap between what they’re offered and the reality, they’re liable to slip through the cracks.

There’s a shortfall in terms of how employees experience onboarding. According to Gallup , only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organisation does a great job of onboarding new joiners. However, when managers take an active role in onboarding, employees are 3.4 times as likely to strongly agree that their onboarding process was exceptional. And those with an exceptional onboarding experience are 2.6 times as likely to be extremely satisfied with their place of work.

Your new employees pass from point to point within your business – but the hand-offs within the journey need to be seamless. It’s resourcing that first picks up the baton, and it needs to oversee its handover from attraction through early life and sometimes beyond. Bringing in line managers first and foremost, then talent management, learning and operations, creates a seamless journey that keeps employees excited and motivated and accelerates their development and productivity.

Leadership from the front, that truly focuses on people as an ongoing investment, is key.

Losing that investment before your business benefits is a costly mistake to make. For instance, learning and development, often cited as a key reason for talent leaving one organisation and joining another, can, and should be, an essential part of onboarding. Directing key learning compliance requirements to the right people, at the right time during their early path within an organisation, in an easy-to-understand and engaging format, is crucial. And if this journey isn’t satisfying, the opportunity to deliver on your recruitment promise is lost.

The right onboarding approach doesn’t finish with the resourcing process; it continues with an overall employee journey. Capita’s Onboard tool links with every relevant part of your organisation, bringing them into the process at the point when they’re most needed. Candidates simply follow a manageable, staged process; prompts optimise outcomes, automatically reminding the relevant parties of the role they play. Line managers are brought into the process and updated on its progress, facilitating meaningful contact and relationship building. The best of human and digital interactions are facilitated.

There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all method – or at least, not one that works. Capita’s Onboard tool includes a surveying feature, which allows you to identify areas for improvement as they arise. For tailored employee engagement, it allows you to develop an enhanced understanding of your new recruit and what they need to thrive from their management, learning and more. When candidates are expected to jump through hoops to prove their capability, an enjoyable experience can motivate them to keep jumping.

Many people working in resourcing find themselves trapped in a constant loop of refilling the same roles, time after time. An enhanced onboarding experience can break this cycle, keeping those sought-after individuals in the positions you hired them for.