Dive Brief:
- Onboarding can sometimes emphasize volume over clarity, according to a new Adobe report that found that employees reported getting an average of 13 onboarding documents and spending about 12 hours looking over materials in their first week at a new job.
- However, employees said only 60% of the onboarding materials they receive are necessary. Meanwhile, just 56% of employees reported retaining more than half of the information they receive during onboarding, with another 44% saying they retained half or less.
- The amount of paperwork, policies, training materials and administrative tasks employees need to navigate when starting a new job can become overwhelming, even as these processes become more digital, per the report.
Dive Insight:
When these systems are disorganized, it can negatively impact employee confidence, clarity and early job performance, according to Adobe, which surveyed more than 1,000 employed people in the U.S. who started a job within the last two years.
One in four employees said their onboarding was confusing or contained gaps, which ended up having “a significant or moderate negative impact on their job performance or confidence,” per the report. In addition, more than 1 in 5 employees said their onboarding experience made them question their decision to join a company.
The results underlined how challenging it can be to process large amounts of information in a short period of time. For the top 10% of employees, the onboarding process could include more than 30 documents that can take more than 35 hours to review.
Role-specific responsibilities and expectations were the most retained topics, while, IT information, legal and compliance requirements, and artificial intelligence use policies were among the least retained.
Meanwhile, 38% of employees said their onboarding didn’t include any information on corporate AI policies at all. When employees did receive AI policy information during their onboarding, 38% said they retained less than half of it, with 14% reporting that they retained “little to none of it.”
In a June interview, the vice president of HR and talent management at ServiceMaster Brands, parent company of Merry Maids, Two Men and a Truck and Two Men and a Junk Trunk, told HR Dive that successful onboarding also includes follow-up, sometimes months or even a year afterward.