85,000 USD – profit or loss?
The constant rotations of today’s labour market are ever increasing. Therefore, one can understand the growing interest of employers in human resources. In fact, up to 28% of new employees have already quit within 90 days. When presenting these statistics, you can see why employers are spending more than ever on recruitment processes to find the right people and put huge resources into onboarding new employees. All in order to prevent the average cost of 85,000 USD per wrong recruitment. Yes, you read that correctly, it costs 85,000 USD on average to pick someone who doesn’t stay.
With such a breathtaking figure and the appeal of the increased recruitment and onboarding resources, is it not very strange that only 14% of employers actually evaluate this phase? They focus on taking the opinion of their employees at a later stage to maintain their engagement so that they do not leave the company. However, what does it help if up to a third of those employees never even get there?
Some of the most common reasons why new employees quit shortly after their employment:
- Unclear instructions on tasks: results in newcomers feeling stupid.
- Misleading interviews; new employees feel cheated about roles they were promised compared to their real ones.
- Unclear why things are done or done in a certain way; new employees have not fully understood the structure, culture, visions and goals of the organization, resulting in them feeling lost.
The choice between profit and loss
Could it be that employers today are so keen on trying to find the right person. By having the industry’s most spectacular onboarding. As well as, and inviting employees to the fanciest team-building lunches that they simply forget to actually ask about their first weeks at work with onboarding surveys? Imagine if the 90% who had thought of quitting at least once during their first 6 months had the chance to have their voice heard. How many of the 28% who gave up within 90 days could have been saved by timely action? How many times has the opportunity to convert 85,000 USD into a tangible corporate investment been missed out on?
The employer decided to hire – not the new employee
The aforementioned reasons are examples of pitfalls that could have been minimized for future onboarding periods. But only if only they had surfaced in time. At the very least, there would have been a chance of retaining new employees who had experienced any of the reasons mentioned. A simple objection to this statement is of course that the person in question was “not good enough”. Or that they were “not ambitious enough” for the organization. But here, employers should not forget that it is thanks to their own recruitment process that the person was sitting there. The company itself are the ones who have decided in favour of this one person, ahead of other applicants, based on specific criteria. If the recruitment process is optimal, this scenario theoretically should not even occur.
What are the shortcomings?
We can conclude that when employees are well established in an organization, they are the focus of internal surveys. We can also say that employers invest great resources to make onboarding and new employees’ first months as instructive and memorable as possible. Studies carried out in this area remain unclear. However, how an area which is allocated so much effort and resources, is not even evaluated. Especially, considering the huge costs that may be at stake and talent that could be lost.
By now, an easy solution worth testing has been provided several times. Simply start evaluating your new employees’ first time at the company, their onboarding. In the short term, this provides the opportunity to act quickly and keep new employees so that they do not become one of the 28% who quit within 90 days. Leaving a bill of 85,000 USD and forcing the start of the recruiting wheel again. In the long term, the quality and implementation of the onboarding period will, of course, be improved when problem areas are identified and remedied.
Another positive effect is it indirectly analyses the recruitment process . If we return to the list of common reasons why new employees give up so quickly, one of the reasons shows a clear relationship with the recruitment process. This indicates that there is often a gap between what is introduced and discussed during the recruitment process compared to how the real job actually is. The only chance to minimize this gap is to get an idea of how the gap was actually created. It will also be possible to improve the recruitment process.
In other words, ask your new employees’ opinions at an early stage with onboarding surveys. To increase the chance that they will still be part of your company to answer your future employee surveys.
For more tips and tricks on how to best ask for feedback during one of the most important periods for you and your new employees, read more about onboarding surveys here
