Eighty percent of employees decide whether to stay with or leave a job within the first six months, says DJ Chhabra, president of Enwisen, a Novato, Calif.-based firm that provides employee onboarding technology. In fact, the first six weeks of an employee's tenure strongly influences that decision about the job.

In the war for talent, employers cannot afford to waste one hour and must make sure that their employee retention strategy starts with quality employee onboarding. "When you think of the lifecycle of an employee, the first step is getting them engaged. It's much more important than getting them enrolled in the 401(k) plan," says A.G.

Lambert, vice president of product marketing at Saba, a talent management firm based in Redwood Shores, Calif. "You don't want to fumble the onboarding process." Chhabra concurs, noting that seamless onboarding makes such a difference because "those first weeks are when employees feel most vulnerable. Ineffective onboarding only raises the risk that you'll lose them."

Lambert says benefit managers must change their thinking about onboarding away from paperwork and benefits enrollment to a new approach he calls a "new hire curriculum."

Both he and Chhabra offer advice on how benefit managers can avoid onboarding missteps.

Three major areas of focus

Chhabra highlights three areas that combine to create a well-planned onboarding program: productivity, socialization and total rewards.

Productivity, he explains, addresses "having all services available [for new hires] - a place to sit, an e-mail account, access to all the systems they need and their boss knows they are starting that day so there's someone to greet them."

Also part of being productive, Lambert says, is making sure employees have a clearly defined job role and understand the expectations for their work.

"In terms of retention, setting expectations on day one will help make new hires successful," he says.

"When someone first comes on board, it's hard for them to reach the bar if they don't know where the bar is set. Although clear job roles and expectations are a real challenge for employers, benefit managers can engage managers to make clear connections for all employees, not just new ones."

One Saba client, Best Buy, focuses heavily on this area with its seasonal employees, making sure that they all have the technical education that they need to differentiate the many products sold in stores, including computers, televisions and cameras, Lambert explains.

Socialization involves not only introducing and acclimating employees to the products and services the company provides its customers, but also the services available to them as employees - things as simple as casual Fridays and complimentary coffee service that Chhabra says "usually are only communicated by other employees as new hires go along."

Introducing new hires to a mentor in their early days can assist in this aspect of onboarding, Lambert adds. Lastly, total rewards are the area that benefit managers are most familiar with, but generally don't communicate as well as they could to new hires, Chhabra observes.

"This is where employers need to communicate benefits - health plan options, 401(k) plan, EAP, discount program - but also make sure employees understand their full value," he says.

"New hires need to leave that session feeling like, There's more to being part of this company than my base salary and bonuses.' It drives better retention and leads employees to sign up for benefit programs they may not have otherwise," he adds.

'Day-zero' approach

Chhabra encourages employers to shift new-hire onboarding from day one to "day zero," which is how he describes the weeks after an employee accepts a job offer but before he joins the organization.

"During those weeks, employees can fill out paperwork, designate beneficiaries and emergency contacts, as appropriate, and begin evaluating their benefits options." And, music to benefit managers' ears, he adds, "employers can automate that process." Through Enwisen, "as soon as an employee accepts an offer, we can e-mail them a link to a personalized site for the employer and employee, and secured by a login and password," Chhabra explains.

"The site is customized to the position they are taking, with information about their manager, direct reports, division and all expectations and conditions that apply to their role." In addition, new hires can download all paperwork - I-9s, W-4s, direct deposit forms and others specific to an employer.

"It's savings for employers in terms of automating the process, and saving paper and administration costs," Chhabra says.

"There's also savings in terms of productivity for new hires and HR staff and added to improved employee relations, [day-zero onboarding] can result in millions in savings." Although she can't yet quantify the savings from shifting to an automated, day- zero approach, Cindy McKenzie, senior vice president for enterprise application services for Fox's multiple entertainment groups, says, "HR is thrilled, IT and security is thrilled and our hiring managers are happy as well."

Fox enlisted Enwisen's services after years of what McKenzie describes as the "typical onboarding process.

The day employees started, they immediately went in to do paperwork with HR, while [other departments] tried to get their security badge, office spaces, network ID all set up. But that whole process was left to individual hiring managers, and it wasn't consistent. So generally, after spending half the day with HR, an employee got to their desk at noon and there was nothing."

Tired of struggling through high turnover and long gaps in filling open positions, Fox commissioned a talent management study to see what they could do better. The study revealed that better employee communication and onboarding could prove valuable, leading to the organization's relationship with Enwisen.

Now that Fox's onboarding is consistent and automated across its multiple sites, new hires start day one with their network ID, e-mail address, phone extension, completed HR paperwork, security badge and even parking space already set up.

Plus, McKenzie says, "It's completely paperless, which keeps with a company goal." Fox also uses automated onboarding to streamline benefits enrollment for new hires. With the extra time savings, new hires can spend their early days getting to know the company, their co-workers and their jobs.

Although Fox has only been using the system for little more than a month, "The feedback has been very good," McKenzie says. "It's hard to prove there's a cost benefit to onboarding employees better, but everyone we've talked to says they like the new process and having a consistent onboarding experience has leveled the playing field for all of our employees."