9 Employee Onboarding Mistakes You're Probably Making

And appreciate I've got everybody on mute today so that we can roll through this, probably go for 30 to 45 minutes and take any questions afterwards. Probably dial in a lot of those offline. They tend to be more specific with this topic. So once again, thank you. My name is Matt Beatty. Today we're going to take a look at some of the common onboarding mistakes that companies make and how to fix them. Got a pretty diverse audience of people and industries and roles looking in today. So going to try to give everybody a little something that they can take that's actionable away from this and use it at your organization. So if you have any questions, you can email them to support@ergpayroll.com, and we'll try to reply directly to your question. You will also receive several free templates as a follow-up to this meeting, so keep a lookout for those. If you're watching this as a recording, you can email support@ergpayroll.com with the subject line Onboarding templates for the free templates. So our agenda today is we're going to talk about some of the drivers of why you need an onboarding program and what it means to put an onboarding program in place. We're going to talk about some of the common mistakes that companies make, the 9 most common mistakes that we see when consulting with our clients, and then what some of the fixes are for those mistakes. So please look forward to your feedback. Was it valuable? All that good stuff after the fact. Don't hesitate to let us know. We're going to go ahead and dive right into the content. So a little bit about me and why I'm maybe one of the right people to discuss this topic with you today. I've been in the HR field for over 12 years, and that's in a host of capacities, whether it be in frontline management, frontline HR recruiting, HR technology sales, HR consulting, et cetera. I've interviewed, hired, and fired literally thousands of people in my career. I don't know if I'm proud of that or not proud of that, but that's the reality of it. And so onboarding has been a big part of that. I currently own and operate a payroll and HR support firm called ERG Payroll and HR out of Columbia, South Carolina, and also an employee onboarding, employee onboarding software provider known as Covert HR at coverthr.com. So I've chosen onboarding as my primary focal area in my research and my study because I believe it has the biggest impact. And the research tells us that it has the biggest impact on retention, engagement, and ultimately the productivity of your employees, which is where we're really going to focus a lot of time today during the conversation. And so, as you can see by the screen, this is what I love to do, this is what I'm passionate about. That's what I think makes me the right person to have the conversation with you today. And hopefully we can, we can share things together that will help us to get better at this as a team. So what are the drivers? Why do people— why are more and more people looking at onboarding programs for their organization? And we'll define what onboarding programs are in just a moment. So the number one reason that people are looking at this is to get their employees more productive faster. So We definitely want to make sure that we're allowing people to get productive as quickly as possible, and an effective onboarding program is one of the best ways to do this. And so I just want to preface part of this conversation by saying you're going to see several charts. Hopefully you can see my mouse scrolling around out here from this study, Aberdeen Group research project that was completed in March 2013 about employee onboarding programs. And really what they were able to do was to separate 230 organizations into best-in-class, average, and laggards. And how they quantified that was that the best-in-class organizations had 91% employee retention and the processes in place to achieve that, and the laggards had about 30% employee retention over a 12-month period. And so You know, what we want to do is focus on these, these big picture items of getting employees more productive more quickly, having better employee engagement, and then retaining them longer. Right. And then we'll also talk about that fourth bar of better assimilation of new hires. So that's one of the— these are several of the drivers behind why people are putting onboarding programs in place. So let's kind of demystify what onboarding is. So You know, the first thing that makes onboarding a challenge for us is you put onboarding onto a Word document and Microsoft doesn't even recognize it as a real word. So that's, that's our first challenge is that this isn't a longstanding tradition of having amazing onboarding programs. It's a relatively new lexicon. It's a relatively new piece of vernacular for all of us. Only 37% of organizations have actually invested in strategic onboarding for longer than 2 years. It's something that's relatively new in its focus and it's relatively, you know, it's changing daily, weekly, monthly to get better and better. But what it's not. So let's talk about what it's not. It's not orientation. So that's what I want to make clear. There's— while it's a hot topic and there's a lot of people think, oh yeah, how do I get this new hire into my organization? It's not this one-day thing that you go through with people where you go through their new hire paperwork and You kind of walk through the benefits and, you know, that's all a part of onboarding and orientation is a part of onboarding. But onboarding is really more of a 90-day process of orienting and integrating new hires so that they can deliver results as efficiently, effectively, and energetically to your team as possible. So, you know, you're going to have all these components of a great orientation of describing the history and mission and teaching employees about the rules of the company, but that's not it. There's a little bit more to it. So, um, what we're really trying to improve, like I mentioned earlier, is the productivity. And the numbers show us that people with an effective onboarding— formalized onboarding program in place can expect to see 60% greater year-over-year improvement in revenue per full-time employee. So Once again, take a moment to let that sink in. If you don't have a formal onboarding program in place today, or you're unsure about what it means, hopefully this will give you some great background on it. But let's look at the end goal, and that's just to get more out of our team. And we get more out of our team by giving them a more fun, productive environment to be a part of and engaging them from the start. And a great onboarding program will help you to do all those things. So Let's look at why it's really important from another perspective, and that's the cost of turnover. So we definitely want to make these people as productive as possible, but we want to keep them around. Turnover costs are very high. Better onboarding can help you to prevent early turnover for 1 in 4 new hires. So I know some of you on the line have very high turnover. You think about some of the different ways that you can reduce that and get the most out of your team members when they come on board. An effective onboarding program is going to help you to drive those hard dollars out of the process, increase the productivity. You know, when people are leaving, it's putting a huge strain on your remaining employees, and also, you know, it's sort of perpetuating more turnover. So we definitely want to nip turnover in the bud, and an effective onboarding program is a great way to get started on that process. So, all right, so let's, let's take a deep breath. We've found that perfect person for the job where we've made the offer, the glass slipper fits, and now we're going to get into actually bringing this person into our organization. So what is the first mistake that a lot of folks make? You know, the first mistake that we see a lot is waiting to the first day to start the onboarding process. And so this means a few different things. It doesn't just mean waiting until the first day, which we'll talk about in a second, but it also means not being proactive. Prepared on the first day. So, you know, I remember about 10 years ago I started my first day with a company, a very large company. I was kind of surprised by this, but I showed up. I wasn't exactly sure who to ask for. I wasn't sure where I should park. I kind of had to guess based on my previous meetings of what the attire was for the dress. I get in there, very happy to see me. The one person who was expecting me was happy to see me and ready to start walking me through my my orientation, but they didn't have my computer ready. I wasn't able to do some of the orientation activities. It's, you know, I didn't have all the information in hand. And once again, it's been 10 years and I still remember. So make sure first and foremost that you are prepared on that first day when they get there. And there's some very simple ways to make sure that you are prepared for that, that we'll talk about in a moment. But also let them complete that paperwork before day 1. So you can provide the forms for your new hire prior to them coming on site, the W-4, the I-9, some, some high-level information about the organization, and let them know what to bring with them. So you can communicate all those details that we talked about— start time, schedule, documents. One of the simplest ways you can do this is just to create a checklist, a very simple checklist, and use your sort of technology of choice to make this happen. You know, we use obviously an onboarding program for it, and I think that's a very effective way because it allows you to just reuse the same checklist over and over again, and it was built for the task. But you can accomplish this in a simple Word document or a Google document. You know, create the email template, save it in your draft and whatever your email client is of, hey, here's what I'm going to send to every new hire prior to their first day, and all I've got to do is fill in the blanks. And then that's going to allow you to save the time because one of the main reasons people skip on providing all these details is it takes time away from our busy day, right? But if you've got a process in place that's easily repeatable and has templates there that you can use, and it becomes very simple and it's much less likely to get skipped. So another tool that I hadn't even, uh, you know, you'll see here on the screen, you can also allow people to interact with some of the tools that they'll be using as part of your team prior to coming on site. This is something we do all the time. These are some similar tools to what we use, and that allows them just to get familiar. If it's a new piece of, you know, sales technology that they haven't used before, they can do a little bit of research on it, get familiar with what they have to expect. So the employee likes it, it's great for you, it gets them that much closer to being productive on day one. And so once again, if you're able to create these sort of templates and checklists, The next step of that is having a calendar in place. So, you know, you've got all their information ready, you've got their logins ready, their equipment ready. Now you've got their training schedule with all the appropriate parties. Now look at this. Now when they come in on Monday morning, you're focused on getting productive right out of the gate rather than a 3-hour meeting with HR or 3-hour meeting with you going through the paperwork, making sure all the T's are crossed and I's are dotted. It becomes just a couple-minute review of the process instead. And so if you look at this screen, you'll notice, you know, obviously we point to that first day where they can get in and start focusing on some of those new hire activities. But you'll see that this is a template that is built for any individual, and it is also something where, you know, we'll talk more about this later. You look at the end of the week, we're testing the knowledge, we're testing based on what they have gone through, through the week. So Start to communicate that information prior to day 1, and then that first week you can start to get more out of the individual when they get on site. So get your process started earlier. Mistake number 2, this one is all too common. So your process just isn't long enough. You know, we touched on this for just a moment earlier. The big problem is if you're not making the process long enough, you're really not getting them to productivity any faster. So I like this because we see this all the time with our clients. It's, you know, they come in for that one day of orientation, then they get thrown to the wolves and they're expected to be productive based with little or no guidance. And so, reiterate, it's not a one-day affair around onboarding. It's a, you know, it can be a one-month, two-month, three-month affair depending on the complexity of the job. But you need to have a plan that aligns with that. So Onboarding is something that is very different by organization, but what you want to do is start to align the onboarding process with your goals for the position. So best practice here is to look at where you want this person to be at 30 days, where you want them to be at 60 days, and where you want them to be at 90 days. And what do you need to do to get them there? So now we back up to that calendar we just looked at, and we've got a 30-day calendar with some very high-level goals at 30, 60, 90. And then what do we need to put in place over the course of those 30, 60, 90 days to actually get the individual to meet those milestones and hold yourself responsible one time on the front end for a role to be able to get that much more out of your people on the back end every time you bring on a new hire. So make sure you're extending that process beyond that one day, one week timeframe. Give yourself enough time to really make it something that's measurable and something concrete. As part of your onboarding program. So the third mistake is you just don't manage— you just don't leverage technology to manage the process. And, you know, this can be a variety of different things. There's a host of different free resources out there. There's a host of paid resources. You can use your preferred blend of different things. You know, you're really wasting your own time creating a paper-chasing scenario if you're trying to do all the new hire information in paper. You're also creating new storage headaches for yourself and audit situation. Uh, you know, the IRS has allowed us to store I-9s electronically. Take them up on that offer. Uh, I often ask people if they do paperless onboarding, they say, yes, we use Dropbox and emails with PDFs. And that's great, but that employee is probably printing out the things off the email. Then they're bringing them to you and you're scanning them in. And then you've got paper copies of people's sensitive information. And then there's still a lot of back and forth around the process. So, you know, I recommend looking at some different ways of integrating e-signature into it. So you can look at an onboarding program that actually has e-signature inside of it, such as this, or you can go to someone like a DocuSign who allows you to e-sign documents. If you have fewer new hires, that's usually a good route to go. We use them for a host of different things. But if you have a lot, that can get pretty expensive. Their plans range in size. But so You know, if you give me a stack of paperwork as a new hire, I start filling that information out, then I hand it back to you, then you make a copy for my file, then you put it in multiple folders, and maybe my manager needs access to a certain piece of documentation. It becomes a big challenge. So find the simplest way for you to leverage technology to give everyone easy access to the information. Now, one other piece that I'll talk about here that's really overlooked when you talk about utilizing technology in the onboarding program is using video. So the screen doesn't really talk through it, but we're doing it right now. Take the things that are— you find yourself explaining over and over again to a new hire that only take 5 or 10 minutes, but you're explaining them and there's really not a lot of consequence or meat to it. Go ahead and record that with a screen capture tool so you can just share those videos. And they're— even if you work for a large company, these are much better because they're more personalized. They're coming from the management team. They're not, you know, all glorified with background music and all that. You want something that's a little bit real and that your team can get behind and it just walks them through what it's like to work there. So use a tool. The tool we use is called Snagit by TechSmith. It's fantastic for video capture, you know, but don't really— don't fall back on videos for everything. You know, you just want to use some of those smaller things that can be done in 5, 10-minute bursts. But the really important things like reviewing the mission, like reviewing what you stand for, the why behind your company, you want to have that conversation with your employees personally or have a champion from your team have that conversation because that's really important. And it shouldn't be about having a placard in the lobby. It shouldn't be about a corporate video. It should be about what it really means to you as an organization. So Use technology. The government allows us to utilize it. It's important that we take them up on that offer because they don't often allow us to use technology for everything we want to utilize it for. So, and then definitely put some videos in place. Save yourself that time over time. So mistake number 4, we just touched on it briefly, but this is a really big one, is you don't highlight the why of your business. So I'll talk a little bit more about what that means. Oftentimes people, they highlight the, you know, benefits, and we'll talk about that in a moment. They highlight, you know, what the job is, what you'll be doing, you know, all these great little things about the how and the what, but they don't talk about the why. And this is really important in the year 2015. People want to get behind a cause. Social responsibility is bigger than ever. And people want to know that they're part of something that's bigger than themselves. And so there's a reason why you started your company. It wasn't just to fix teeth. It wasn't just to create widgets. It wasn't just to serve food. There's more to it than that. And it's important that your employees know why. Why does the company exist? What's the mission that they can get behind? And, you know, I look at this circle here. So why is kind of the core belief of the business. It's why the business exists. The how is how we fulfill that core belief, and the what is what the company does to actually execute on that mission. So most people are doing this backwards. They spend the bulk of their time focused on the what and the how, and they never actually get to the why of their company. So really overlooked. I highly suggest, you know, this is the Golden Circle from Simon Sinek's great book, Start With Why, very compelling book. Definitely make you think about what is the why behind your business and something you want to share. So make sure your team knows the why and they can rally behind it and they can be a part of it and you give it to them in a way that's edible and palpable for them. So mistake number 5, so you're mishandling a lot of employee documents and I feel like we could probably put 9 or 10 mistakes right into this one bucket. And I know a lot of you are out there waiting for this piece of it. So we'll definitely talk about the different components of the paperwork that is required based on your state. And there are sort of some core pieces that the government is going to require for— that's a, you know, they're both time sensitive when you look at a W-4 and an I-9. Federal Form I-9, for those of you not familiar, is due within 3 days of the first day of work for pay. It verifies lawful ability to work in the US. Both the employee and the employer must fill out. So the employer— or the employee, excuse me, must present their identifications. You as the employer must examine them. And you know, if you're looking for the list of acceptable identifications, it's on that last page and you You know, you must retain for a designated period of time the I-9 and make available in case of an audit. Uh, W-4 is for your tax information. It's where an employee is going to define their withholdings. Uh, and this is also part of the new hire reporting process and must be reported within 20 days of hire. Uh, there are, uh, varying W-4 requirements by state. So check with your state if you're not here with us in South Carolina. In South Carolina, we're just required to fill out the federal W-4. You are also required to— excuse me— fill out a Notice of Exchange and Subsidies. So this helps to determine their eligibility for coverage. If you do not offer healthcare coverage today, it lets an employee know that they— if they're eligible from you or if they're eligible for going on to the exchange. Relatively new piece of documentation here, so make sure that you've added this to your new hire paperwork. Now let's talk about these, these documents in a little bit more detail. So the I-9 storage piece is something that people often struggle with. The I-9 needs to be kept separate from the employee file. So it should be kept in a separate file under lock and key that your employees do not have access to. And if you are maintaining all identifications with that, which you should be, you should either be maintaining all or none. Then you need to have those copies of those IDs with the I-9 forms separate from the employee files. Now, the other thing that people get hung up on is separating medical information from employee files. So this means anything. Anytime somebody came to you and brought a doctor's excuse because they were not at, uh, going to be at work that day, I usually recommend keeping any benefits-related information separate from their employee file just because it'll help you. You know, it's better to be safe than sorry. We recommend just keeping everything that could potentially have any medical information on it away from their employee file. But what I'm going to do for everybody on this call, anybody watching, is I'm going to give you an employee filing checklist so you know everything that goes— it should go in the employee file, everything that should go in the medical file, everything that should go in the I-9 folder. And you can accurately and simply reference this checklist as you're going forward. So a lot of people making mistakes in a host of different areas, whether that's not providing the notice of exchange, not properly storing the I-9 information, you know, forgetting to sign is also a big one. It is your responsibility once you see those identification pieces of identification on the I-9 to sign off that you've seen them and to write the forms of ID in there and put all the information on that, on that page of the I-9. So make sure that you're doing that. Here's my best practice I would recommend to you as a takeaway from that. Well, here, let me stop and hit pause real quick on these violation penalties for I-9s. So if the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division comes out and audits you and looks at your I-9s, they're going to look at a minimum of $110 fine ranging all the way up to $1,100 per file that's wrong. So that's for each I-9 you don't have stored properly. So I-9s are the most critical piece of information storage that you're going to have because these fines can be outrageous. If you've got 20 employees and all 20 of their I-9s are stored improperly, then you're going to be starting at $2,000 and moving on up. Well, actually you're going to be starting at the over 50% number down there at the bottom. So that is a healthy number. And as we all know, the, they have the, the Department of Labor has been actively hiring more auditors. Uh, they are not hiding this. They brought in over, uh, I think $500 million last year. I'm not checking those numbers. Uh, it's a different presentation. You can check out on our YouTube channel about, uh, wage and hour audits. Um, but what I would recommend you do as a takeaway here is create 2 sample employee files with notes and stickies on everything that needs to be filled out and why and how. So this way you can refer to the file every time you have a new employee come on board. You've already got an I-9 filled out with all the sample information, put stickies pointing to where it needs to be signed. Put notes on it, sticky notes on it of anything you need to try to remember. If you just take the 20 to 30 minutes it takes to sit down and create these 2 sample files, probably won't even take you that long, it will save you an abundance of time down the road because then it becomes a repeatable process too. So the person behind you, you can just hand them these sample files. They know what needs to be in the file and what doesn't. You'll be able to hand— the reason I say create 2 is you'll be able to make sure you always hold on to one and hand one to the new employee so that they can look at it when they're filling out the new hire paperwork, if you have them coming on site and doing paperwork, or whatever your case is. So definitely recommend creating the sample files with the information related— why do you need to fill this out, what is it, and how do you do it? And that'll, that'll help to eliminate a lot of the time if you're having troubles with properly filling out the forms and storing the forms. So mistake number 6, you are not highlighting the benefits of working at your company. So I think a lot of people, the reason that this becomes— and it seems like you, you think that you'd be doing a great job of this, but the challenge is that I think a lot of people, once they have somebody in the door, they think they've already got them, they've accepted the offer, the job's over, they're already on site. But here's the bottom line, is that something like 50% of new hires are deciding in the first 18 days of employment whether or not they'll be looking for a new job in the next 12 months. And so you really want to make sure that you're, you're keeping them engaged, you're selling them on the benefits of working at your company, and you're telling them about every little perk you have. So even as an organization, I mean, we're a small company, we don't have the best benefits in the world. We don't have all the accoutrements of a large organization to be able to provide to our new hires, but we're focusing on the things we do have, right? So is it the simple things like paid volunteer time or your health plan, or maybe you've got some sort of wellness program in place? Whatever your perks are, you need to make sure that you not only highlight this information during the new hire and onboarding process, but you also give employees easy access to take advantage of the benefits. So that's the, that's the one thing is, is it really a benefit if I don't take advantage of it? Right? So if you offer me paid volunteer time, but I don't ever cash it in when I go to volunteer because I just forgot it's available to me, then is it really a perk because I'm not taking advantage of it? So when the other employer comes along for 50 cents or a dollar more an hour and you lose that person, and their actual total income with you was much higher based on the things that you were offering them, then that's going to be, you know, part of the challenge and part of the reason you're going to lose top talent to some of your competitors. So make sure that you are highlighting the perks of working there. My suggestion, one of the best ways to do this is to get yourself a world champion like this guy. Take one of your existing employees— and that's a picture of me from college— Take one of your existing employees who takes advantage of your benefits and make them your benefit champion and have your new hires go to them to learn more about the benefit programs. And the bigger your team, this may be more than one person, but have a person that really utilizes everything you have to offer, no matter how small, and they will get excited about it. They will love explaining it to them. They will know this stuff inside and out.. It will take some of that responsibility off of you, and it will also give the employee a little bit more engaging look at how they can actually utilize some of the things that you offer them. So make sure you get a champion, and, you know, that accomplishes two goals. It helps you to eliminate the fact that you're not properly explaining all the benefits, get the employee more engaged. And then later on down the road, let's make sure we're following up and we're keeping it in front of them over time so your employees know what's available. Not just one time during this onboarding process or one day as part of orientation, but consistently. We're consistently delivering a message about the benefit programs available to the employee. So mistake number 7: your process just isn't fun, and that includes for you. So if it's not fun for you, that's going to show to the employee. If it's not fun for the employee, that's going to really impact their ability to get engaged early on. It's going to make your culture look like a downer. So if you've got an onboarding process that is like pulling teeth and it's just sitting in front of videos that they shouldn't be sitting in front of, they're 2-hour-long training videos that are not broken up properly and they're doing tasks that are just mundane and they haven't had a chance to really socialize with the team, then you're missing out on one of the best, most highly proven ways to engage employees early in the process. So we talked about this study earlier and some of the key takeaways from it. So one of the biggest improvements in year-over-year improvement of business metrics is through gamification. So we see tremendous increases in employee engagement and tremendous increases in reduction of employee turnover by utilizing gamification as part of the onboarding process. And I know you're thinking to yourself, like, whatever, so I'm supposed to be like Google and put ping pong tables in my lobby, or what, what do you mean gamification? Well, that's not exactly what we're talking about. So gamification is taking some of your new hire processes and turning them into something a little bit more fun. I think the easiest example that we recommend all the time, and that we actually use our employee onboarding software to perform is the scavenger hunt, right? So why don't you take— you've already backed into this calendar of 90 days worth of tasks that you need an employee to create, to complete, to get to align to those goals of how productive and how on point you want them to be after 90 days. So why not start to mix some of those things into a scavenger hunt? So the example I always think of is You know, how much quicker do they get to meet the team if they've got a task in their scavenger hunt that is find 4 employees with pets and get the names of the pets and, you know, different things. Find the man back in the warehouse that wears the red hat on Thursdays. Whatever it is, some fun ways. Make this part of that new hire checklist. Turn it into a little bit of a fun game. There's a host, a ton of different other ways you can start to add gaming to it. Is it, you know, bingo boards where go find these 5, you know, You've got to complete bingo by the end of 30 days, and here's all the different things that you can get bingo through. We've started to integrate some of this, like I said, with our onboarding platform, and the feedback has been tremendous. You know, the, the benefits of this are starting engagement very early. You're shining a light on your company culture, and you're really driving down turnover like we saw from those statistics earlier. So find a creative way, and if you need more creative ways. Don't hesitate to reach out to make your new hire process more fun, and I'll tell you, it'll be not just more fun for that new hire, but for everybody. So think about how much fun your people are gonna have when they've got this random new hire coming up to them saying, "Hey, where's that guy that wears the red hat on Thursdays?" or "Who around here has cats?" and they can, they can start to play some of those fun games with each other and really break up the monotony of the daily routine. So mistake number 8, we're winding down here, just a couple more. So you're not involving others in the process. So no matter if you are a 7-person small business, if you're a 200-person manufacturing facility, you have got to involve others in the process. And so what does this mean? Well, it means first of all, we look at ownership of the process. So best-in-class organizations had a lot higher percentage of allocating ownership outside of either the department head or the executive. So we really need to look at ways to bring buddies, peer mentors, and/or individual business units into the process. So do you have a person on your staff or multiple people that could be your buddy or mentor every time you bring on a new hire? Highly recommend this. Mentorship is one one of the most proven ways to bring employees up to speed faster. And then getting them involved with some of the pieces of the puzzle for the onboarding process is only going to further engage the mentor and the new hire. It is a win-win. It also, as you start to look at the process, it creates a lot more— when you involve other people in the onboarding process, not just from a purely tactical perspective of performing some of the tasks, but also from a strategic perspective, it's going to give them ownership in the process. It's going to give them more of a feeling of a stake in the success of that new hire. And that's going to be valuable to everybody involved. And so once again, we're trying to prevent that, you know, burnout for you as whether you're an HR administrator or a small business owner. These tasks can be tiresome. So spread some of the love out. It's going to save you the hassle and it's also going to be better for the new hire and better for the rest of your team. So definitely get others involved as much as possible in the process. So mistake number 9, you're just not measuring what success looks like in an onboarding program. And I think this is the culmination of really the entire process is, you know, we've, we've heard it said a million different ways, inspect what you expect. You know, if you don't have a target, you'll miss every time. Onboarding is no different. So you've got to make sure you've got goals in place for the new hire. You know, some of the ways that we can look at setting goals, backing up into that calendar earlier. But, you know, I'll stand by his quote first before we talk about some of the best practices you can use here. And that's, you know, the only thing worse than training employees and losing them is not training and keeping them. So you've got to make sure that the employee development is at the forefront of this onboarding program. It is going to be what's most important to them. People crave and desire the ability to get better at their job, and it's going to be most important for you because it's going to help you to meet those expectations as far as what you want to get out of employees. So as far as measurements, here's, here's a very simple couple of things that you can start to measure that will help you. So the first thing is you want to measure all 3 phases. So pre-hire, new hire, and after assimilation. So the easiest way, one thing you can start to do is start to survey the new hires at these points and check their pulse, right? So it's just a quick 5 to 10 question survey as soon as they get hired, maybe at the 30-day mark, maybe at the 90-day mark, and understanding how engaged they are at that point. And if you need some sample questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. You want to measure your first-year retention. So after one year on a rolling year, what are you— how many of your people are you retaining and how many are you losing? If you don't know, you don't have a benchmark of what you're shooting for on the success of your onboarding program. And then you can start to look at some of these other pieces of where are these successful people coming from when we do lose people. And so we know that, you know, prior to onboarding, during our recruiting efforts, where are we actually getting the best qualified candidates from? And then we look at the survey piece, we find out what actually matters to people so we can start to diagnose at the end of 90 days, what do you remember most? What stood out to you during your onboarding process? What was effective? What was not effective? And then you can make tweaks, make changes, and you can start to understand what's going to be most effective for your team. It's not a one-size-fits-all based on industry and based on business model. So make sure that you're setting proper expectations with the employee from the start. You're reviewing the job description and aligning that with the job that is actually being performed. That is probably one of the biggest misconceptions is that as we go through this onboarding process, employees don't actually know what's expected of them. They just know they've got a job to do. So make sure they know what's expected of them and find a way to measure the results of that effectiveness. So to kind of summarize all this, we've had all these mistakes and we've thought about great ways of improving them. I hope you're not making all 9. I hope you were making, you know, maybe just a couple. We've given you some great things to think about and to implement at your organization. But a few other foods for— a few other things, food for thought as you're strategizing and putting this together. You know, I'd make sure that your brand and mission is consistent throughout the entire process. And that starts from pre-hire to hire to the daily work-life culture. Do your onboarding objectives align with your business objectives? Are they— are you actually implementing a program that is going to help you to achieve your business goals? And is the information visible and integrated to other stakeholders in the organization to have visibility into the program and into the success of the program? Is it integrated, active, actually affecting their life on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? And once again, implement or integrate your learning and performance initiatives into your onboarding program as you look at ways to extend and develop the most from the program. The biggest thing is consistency is key. So as you look at all this, don't get overwhelmed. Choose the pieces that are going to work best for you and that you can roll out and that you can get started and you can improve upon and continue to monitor those. And you will, you will find that success will be right around the corner as long as you can maintain the consistency and create a process that is most effective for your team. And just to reiterate, as we all know, you know, this is one of my favorite quotes. Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS, right about Raleigh. Kerry, excuse me. So 95% of my assets drive out the gate every evening. It's my job to maintain a work environment that keeps those people coming back every morning. So make sure you're creating a work environment that your people love to be a part of while they're achieving the goals. And that all starts with why. Why are we doing this? What are the reasons behind us, behind our goals? And what is— does success look like? So go ahead and make sure that your team understands that and you've given them a reason and a passion and you're treating them the way they deserve to be treated as great members of your organization. I just want to say thank you so much to everybody that took the time out of their day. As I mentioned, my name is Matt. I'm with ERG Payroll and HR. You can reach out to us anytime at ergpayroll.com or you can Email me direct at matt@ergpayroll.com or follow us on Twitter @ergpayroll. So excited to have everybody join us today, and we look forward to talking to you soon. Thanks so much.