Some terms are used interchangeably and important differences are overlooked. Onboarding and orientation are among them, and perhaps two of the most significant ones.
Let us delve into some statistics before understanding these differences better.
- 69 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.
- New employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58 percent more likely to be with the organization after three years.
- Organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50 percent greater new-hire productivity.
Onboarding is one of the most important steps to organisational success. Calculate your investment in employee experience processes and what percentage of that investment is in your onboarding processes. No matter how much you do afterwards, do not overlook the destructive effect of negative impressions on the first day of work and beyond.
How an employee is treated throughout the onboarding process and during their first few days on the job will have a huge impact on their experience, overall wellbeing and performance in your organisation.
Onboarding is not about putting a new employee in a meeting room alone or with a few other people and showing them a video. You can show them company and training videos as a step in your orientation process, but that is not how onboarding works.
Let’s look at the differences between orientation and onboarding:
- Onboarding is an umbrella term that refers to the entire recruitment journey of an organisation. Orientation usually includes induction, the process of formally integrating new employees into an organisation.
- For new hires, orientation is a one-off event where new employees are introduced to your organisation. The focus is more general. Onboarding, on the other hand, is a series of activities and training (including orientation) designed to help new employees become successful employees.
- By its nature, orientation can last an hour, a day or a week. Onboarding is a process that can take up to a year.
- Orientation aims to familiarise the new employee with the company’s vision and values in general. Onboarding is a process that provides more detail on topics such as job training, best practices and company policies.
- Onboarding is aimed at long-term employee engagement, performance, productivity and return on business investment. Orientation is the physical and emotional integration of employees into their new environment and preparation for on-the-job training.
- At the end of onboarding, employees are ready to contribute to the organisation. Orientation aims to prepare employees for the intensive training programme that lies ahead.
- Onboarding gives employees time to fully understand their role and focuses on improving their performance. Orientation puts them at ease and paves the way for them to learn the rules of the job.
- Orientation is usually the responsibility of HR. Onboarding involves the employee’s team, the team leader, senior management and HR.
It is actually very clear: for the employee who begins to understand the company with orientation, onboarding is a journey to understand the scope, the meaning, the value, the team, the friends and the ecosystem to which they will be connected.
Recruitment programmes become meaningless if they do not align the needs and expectations of new hires with the needs and expectations of the organisation.
If only 12% of employees believe their organisation is excelling in the recruitment process, management teams may be overlooking major issues.
Don’t you think employees deserve better?
Moodivation’s answer to the onboarding process
The Moodivation technology basically creates a feedback environment within the company. With our tailored onboarding survey, you enable all employees to give feedback with the freedom to remain anonymous. Each new employee shares their experience on their new journey with regular onboarding surveys. More importantly, with Moodivation, they experience that their new company is open to all feedback from them.