All too often, companies make the same hiring mistake: They assume that having a great, talented candidate say yes to the job means that the hard part is over. Maybe that’s true if you don’t value creating a lasting relationship with your new employee – but if you do, then you should be paying special attention to your employee onboarding process.
This may come as a surprise, but onboarding has the potential to make or break your new hire’s experience and retention rate: 69% of employees are more likely to stay for at least three years after a great onboarding experience. This has also proven to create 20% higher engagement, 50% higher retention and 54% higher productivity.
Every executive knows that keeping employees retained for longer saves the company a ton of money down the line. The very first place to start is with your onboarding process for new employees. Webinars have become an increasingly popular option to host an engaging and effective onboarding experience that will make your new employee feel properly welcomed and thrilled to have joined the company.
Read more to find out what steps you can take to achieve a successful employee onboarding webinar:
1. Follow The Three Key Pillars of Onboarding
Every onboarding webinar should follow the same structure for maximum success: Every onboarding webinar should follow the same structure for maximum success:
Basic company information:
This includes explaining the paperwork that needs to be done, payroll processes, vacation policies, and any other basic office information.
Understanding the role:
This portion should go over the exact job duties the new employee is expected to fulfill, the skills needed to carry out those tasks, and making sure that each party is on the same page about the new role.
Demonstrating company culture:
Finally, the company should always strive to show its culture and employee experience by explaining the company’s mission and core values. If the company has perks or flexible work policies, this is a great place to show those off.
2. Include The Right People
Every onboarding webinar should ensure that the right people are along for the ride. For employee onboarding, this means at least one representative from Human Resources, one manager from the new employee’s department, and one coworker who can serve as a friendly face and mentor during the onboarding process. Having each of these roles on the webinar gives them the opportunity to shine where it’s needed in the webinar’s structure: HR can speak during the company information portion; a manager can speak during the “understanding the role” portion; and a coworker or mentor figure can speak about the company’s values.
3. Make It Interactive
The problem with most onboarding experiences is that they’re – well, boring. They turn into long lectures that make it difficult to comprehend and retain valuable information. Thankfully, using a webinar to onboard your employees allows for gamification, which has been proven to help adults learn faster and retain more information. Whether it’s by incorporating a chat function, live polls, or a Q&A section, you can be sure your webinar will be engaging from start to finish.
4. Get Post-Webinar Feedback
One of the most valuable benefits of hosting an onboarding webinar is that you can easily distribute necessary materials immediately afterwards, and at the same time ask your new employees for feedback on the entire process. With the click of a button, you can learn what you’re doing right with your onboarding, and how you can improve for the next employee.
Webinar.net has proven experience helping companies and HR departments across the world build their own onboarding webinars. If you’re interested in learning how a webinar could improve your own onboarding process, get a free demo!
