Onboarding is emotion

Five psychological principles for good onboarding

Every organisation that regularly takes on new people should answer the following questions honestly: 'How much money do you spend on recruiting good staff?' and 'How does this relate to your investment in onboarding these people?'. Exactly!

Many organisations refer a new employee especially to managers and direct colleagues. Only ten percent of companies structurally reserve a budget for onboarding. This is remarkable, because proper onboarding is crucial for a company to hold on to its employees.

The facts

25% of all new employees leave their organisation in the first year.
The number of employees leaving the company peaks in the first 45 days.
46% of starters resign from their first job within 18 months.
4% decide to quit after the first working day.

What difference can you make with proper onboarding?

A huge difference. Proper onboarding increases people’s commitment and makes them productive sooner. It leads to stress reduction, higher satisfaction, and retention of new staff. In short, the costs of a good and structured onboarding programme can be recovered in no time.

Onboarding is all about emotion.

When it comes to onboarding, organisations first think about all kinds of practical matters, such as admission badges and codes, access to systems and folders, the proper work clothing. However, onboarding involves a lot more than this.

Onboarding is about responding to a new employee’s emotions. Eventually, the idea is that new employees perform their job well, of course, but onboarding is not a matter of ticking off checklists. You should have an eye for the psychological challenges a new job evokes in people. This is exactly what we do with our onboarding packages: TinQwise Newbies.

Newbies is based on five psychological principles

It is all about motivation. New employees are motivated to show what they are capable of in their new job. The first three months are decisive: without a good onboarding programme, the employee’s motivation and energy levels will go down dramatically. With meaningful and nice to-dos, Newbies ensures that people retain their drive. With a pre-boarding programme for the first working day, we kindle this drive.
The focus is on the new colleagues. This may sound obvious, but many companies primarily send information. They concentrate on the company, so new employees do not feel noticed or committed. TinQwise Newbies ensures that employees are taken seriously. We do this by making them realise what they need and how they can contribute.
Onboarding is not a checklist. It is not about ticking boxes on a to-do list. It is not about offering as many onboarding activities as possible, but rather about what these activities mean to the new employee.
Give new employees room to demonstrate their abilities. New employees want to show what they are made of. The sooner they feel they can contribute in a meaningful way, the better. With Newbies we make people think about what they can do and contribute, and about what strikes them as a newcomer. It gives them a more positive feeling than experiencing what they cannot do yet.
Onboarding is change. To create a bond with people and give them a sense of belonging, you need to support the onboarding process. In great outline, the employee passes through the following stages:

1. I am starting

2. I belong to the company

3. I know my colleagues

4. I have thorough mastery of my job

5. I collaborate nicely

6. I develop

7. I contribute

8. I belong to the company/I feel connected

Newbies makes new employees reflect knowingly on their feelings and analyses where they are in their transition process, so that we can make adjustments and offer additional to-dos, for example.