New Employee Onboarding Metrics

Measure and Improve Your Onboarding Experiences

It’s no secret that we live in a data driven society. Statistical research and application have revolutionised the way business is conducted and evaluated. So, it comes as no surprise that statistical data, such as employee onboarding metrics, can be mined and utilised for strategic decision-making. This is especially valid when dealing with such a complex process like the staff onboarding process.

This article will discuss how new employee onboarding metrics can provide organisations and HR professionals with insights that are beneficial for continually improving the onboarding process. Hence, using onboarding metrics can contribute to better talent retention and employee engagement. 

Onboarding Matters. So Do Onboarding Metrics

The onboarding stage of an employee life-cycle is one of the most critical stages for employees. Much more than a singular orientation event, the onboarding process ensures that you are going through a set of events and procedures that will acclimate you to the organisation, its mission and purpose. Moreover, it ensures your integration within the team, and understanding of your job and your duties.

Thus, it goes without saying that onboarding should be optimised so as to empower you. You want to achieve the best possible performance in your new role. Hence, onboarding should give you all the knowledge, skills, and confidence to shine in your new position. 

Furthermore, given its importance, onboarding needs measuring in order to gather the data and evidence meant for continually improving employee’s onboarding experiences. This is where the HR metrics for onboarding come in.

Something as important for the employee life-cycle as the new hire onboarding demands scrutiny and measuring (utilising KPIs for the onboarding process). Hence, measuring the onboarding process and activities is an effective way to explore the onboarding programme’s fortes and shortcomings. Furthermore, the onboarding success metrics will reveal the degree of effectiveness of your process.

Employee Onboarding Metrics

Using KPIs for the onboarding process will help the key stakeholders involved with talent acquisition and talent retention make strategic decisions, and adjust existing processes.

Must-have Features for Impactful Employee Onboarding KPIs

Onboarding KPIs (key performance indicators) are useful tools for a quantitative measure of performance over time for a specific objective. In fact, KPIs provide specific targets and milestones for judging the progress, thus creating insights into the progress and process.

As such, using KPIs for the onboarding process will help the key stakeholders involved with talent acquisition and talent retention make strategic decisions, and adjust existing processes, as new data gets generated. 

A good and impactful onboarding KPI will:

1. Set a specific and clear objective.
   
2. Set a goal that is realistically attainable and that is relevant for the organisation.
3. Be based on a clear timeline.
4. Will be able to measure the journey and progress towards the end-objective.
5. Provide clear information regarding the progress made towards achieving the objective.
6. Track and measure factors such performance, timeliness, efficiency and quality. 

Most Used KPIs in Human Resources

There is no magic formula that can tell you how successful and effective your new hire onboarding process is. There are, however, numerous employee onboarding KPIs that will provide you with valuable information. 

We can differentiate between three categories of HR metrics and we will include examples for each of them.

Recruitment Metrics  

1. Employee headcount,
2. Cost per new hire (including the cost for onboarding a new employee and the cost of training a new employee)
3. Offer acceptance rate,
4. New hire turnover rate.

Related to Monetary Value and Revenue

1. Revenue per employee,
2. HR to employee ratio,
3. Overtime Hours,
4. Time off and absence rates.

Performance Metrics

1. Retention rate per manager,
2. Statistics on reasons for personnel leaving,
3. Employee satisfaction,
4. Turnover rate.

5 Key Onboarding KPIs

We have selected five specific KPIs for the onboarding process. We will discuss them one by one in the following section.

1. New Hire Satisfaction Rate

New-hire satisfaction levels data can be obtained through the employee interviews and onboarding surveys. In fact, these are key parts of an employee experience roadmap.

2. Training Completion Rate

Regardless of its content, training constitutes an important step in onboarding new employees. Be it learning about company policies or gaining soft or hard skills needed to fulfill your role, training is key for all new employees.

Thus, it is important to know if training is being completed, and in case of a negative answer, the reasons for this situation.

3. New Hire Retention Rate

The new hire retention rate measures how many newly hired employees decide to stay in the organisation for a defined period. Thus, there is a fixed formula for calculating the new hire retention rate of your organisation. The variables that you need for calculating your employee retention rate are: the total number of new hires and total number of remaining employees.

So, to get your employee retention rate divide the number of employees that stayed with your company through the entire time period by the number of employees that started on day one. Then, multiply that number by 100.

4. Time to Productivity Rate

The time to productivity rate measures the time-span from your first day at work until you achieve the expected productive output.

For all job roles, there is an expected time to productivity rate. Of course, the role and level of seniority will be influential. So, for a very complex role, there might be a higher time to productivity rate. The same can apply to newly grad positions.

Thus, the time to productivity rate can be a solid indicator of your onboarding performance.

5. Engagement Rate

Employee engagement can be defined as your level of emotional involvement and commitment to your working organisation and its mission and goals.

The degree of employee engagement is a strong indication of the health of the employee-employer relationship and the employee’s drive to innovate and stay productive. In fact, engagement is linked to a proactive approach towards your work and is the Driving Force behind your employee performance.

A good onboarding programme should provide you with multiple social benefits. These will reflect in your engagement rate.

New Employee Onboarding Metrics: Conclusions

Onboarding can either become a new employee’s source of pride about how and what was done well. Or, it can become the source of criticism when onboarding goes wrong. This is why the metrics for the onboarding process can help you see what is actually working in your onboarding process. And what isn’t working well.

With the right software tool you can optimise your new hire onboarding experiences. introdus, employee onboarding software, offers a full package for managing your pre- and onboarding processes. In addition to pre- and onboarding modules, personalised content, a framework for a buddy program, introductions to the team and company leaders, introdus allows for the implementation of quantitative tools that provide performance metrics.

Onboarding metrics will provide insights into the success of your onboarding process and a big-picture view of what is really working and what is not working so well.

Our blog HR contains a large selection of articles on the topic of onboarding. Many of them have downloadable tools. We highly recommend you to check out our sample onboarding plan for new employees. And our 30 60 90 onboarding day plan.