The Importance of an Effective Onboarding for the Success of New Employees

The Importance of an Effective Onboarding for the Success of New Employees

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When starting a new job all employees undergo a process called onboarding as they are integrated into the workplace and learn all the skills, knowledge, and behaviours required to succeed in their new role. This term comprises part of the broader concept of organisational socialisation, which refers to the transformation of a new employee from an outsider to an inside member of the company. Previous research indicates the vitality of onboarding for successful outcomes for the new employee, with a survey from Bowers et al. finding that positive or negative onboarding experiences significantly influenced respondents’ job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and job embeddedness in the workplace. Furthermore, Blount reviewed five past studies into the onboarding process and concluded that organisations with a high quality and more holistic onboarding programme also had improved employee retention. This evidence indicates the importance of an effective onboarding programme in protecting against adverse workplace outcomes such as poor engagement, job dissatisfaction, and high employee turnover.

It also leads to the question of what employers can actually do to make their onboarding process more effective for their new employees so they can facilitate more positive outcomes. One response to this question is by creating an onboarding programme that follows Bauer’s framework of the four C’s of onboarding. The first of these four C’s is Compliance, which refers to all the mandatory paperwork, policies, and regulations that the new employee needs to be given and to sign, and the second C is Clarification, which pertains to ensuring the new employee’s understanding of their role and what is expected from them in the workplace . The third C is Culture and covers all the organisational norms and traditions in the workplace the employee must learn, whilst the fourth C is Connection, which encompasses the networks and interpersonal relationships the new employee must form in their workplace . Bauer states that in order for onboarding to be the most effective for new employee success all four C’s must be applied consistently and systematically to create a ‘proactive’ level of onboarding, arguing that using only the first two C’s alone as a basic induction checklist or using all four C’s inconsistently and without structure is not as effective.

Following the publication of the initial framework, Bauer later added a fifth C to fit into the framework after Compliance and Clarification as a bridge to Culture and Connection that she called Confidence. This refers to the new employee’s own psychological feelings of efficacy and empowerment after the initial two levels of onboarding in facilitating the success of the remaining levels of Culture and Connection during onboarding and ultimately succeeding in their new workplace. Following this, a sixth C of Checkback was added into the end of the framework to identify the value of collecting feedback from employees on their experience of the onboarding process.

The first level in the framework, Compliance, might be mandatory and basic in onboarding but research has shown that it can still be adjusted to enhance it’s effectiveness for employee success. For instance, Ford and Bauer argue that digital onboarding techniques used during the COVID-19 pandemic can be leveraged to make current onboarding more effective. They say that utilising a pre-onboarding online portal to sign paperwork and access documents can allow the onboarding process to begin prior to the employee’s actual first day which arguably makes a more effective overall onboarding by reducing cognitive overload and thus creating a more efficient first day and in-person onboarding. As such, to promote more successful employee onboarding by reducing cognitive overload and increasing engagement with the process employers could be encouraged to conduct the first stage of onboarding online prior to the physical first day of work.

The second level of onboarding, Clarification, is also considered to be mandatory and basic but can also still be tailored for maximum effectiveness. For instance, Chillakuri found that a sample of Generation Z employees were more likely to leave a new job in the first few months when their work did not align with their expectations of the role. This suggests that when there is more cognitive dissonance between an employee’s expectations and their experience they are more uncertain regarding their role requirements and performance and are ultimately less inclined to remain in their position. Therefore, it could be argued that the Clarification stage can be adapted to aid in promoting more successful outcomes for new employees, organisations and employers by ensuring that the job descriptions and interviews are as closely aligned with the true role expectations as possible to reduce cognitive dissonance and uncertainty, and improve retention rates.

Culture, the next level after the bridging Confidence stage, is not a mandatory requirement of most onboarding processes, but research indicates that including this stage can improve outcomes for new employees. One such research study is provided by Babic and Hüynen, who found a significant positive relationship between effective onboarding programmes where new employees are taught norms, customs, and behavioural expectations with both normative and affective organisational commitment mediated by organisational identification. This finding follows the principles of the Social Identity Theory by suggesting that when new employees are educated on organisational culture it promotes their identification with and attachment to the organisation as a group insider, thus enhancing their commitment to the organisation through either a sense of belonging or obligation. Therefore, introducing cultural learning into the onboarding process by teaching new employees the organisations’ unofficial norms, values, and practices could improve their transition into the workplace by promoting organisational identification as they adopt the perceived values and norms to become a part of the group, subsequently leading to greater organisational commitment.

The next level of the onboarding framework, Connection, is also not a mandatory part of onboarding but has been found to correlate significantly with a new employee’s organisational commitment and job embeddedness, suggesting that onboarding programmes that facilitate the formation of networks and interpersonal relationships have a more beneficial effect on outcomes for the new employees. This is supported by White et al., whose report into buddying at onboarding found evidence indicating that having a buddy at work increased the new employee’s productivity, their perceived organisational support from their new team and manager, and reduced stress related to their role. Likewise, Goel found that distributed agile teams that used peer mentoring in their onboarding programme produced improved outcomes for new employees such as a quicker overall onboarding, reduction in working mistakes, and improved retention by increasing workplace trust and adaptation. Both of these studies highlight how adapting onboarding programmes to create connections between coworkers by a buddying or peer mentor system can benefit a new employee’s workplace transition and outcomes by improving trust and adaptation and thus reducing turnover rates and enhancing productivity.

Checkback is the final non-mandatory C in Bauer’s onboarding framework and research provides evidence to support its claim that gathering feedback from new employees can benefit the onboarding process and improve outcomes for new employees. One such research study is provided by Singh et al. who studied current problems in the general onboarding process and concluded that onboarding is not a fixed process and needs to be consistently adjusted to fit ever-changing social norms or it risks becoming outdated and thus ineffective. They suggested that the onboarding process should be considered as a continuous loop whereby feedback from past employee experiences can be used to maintain an up to date onboarding process that accurately reflects both the current prospective workforce and the organisation’s current culture and social make-up. By doing this, it is predicted that organisations will be able to use employee feedback to specifically tailor their previous onboarding stages of Compliance, Clarification, Culture, and Connection to their current workplace and workforce, thus improving the effectiveness of the onboarding process for the successful integration of new employees. One practical example of how this can be achieved is via multidimensional platforms including online surveys and employee listening platforms which can then be analysed for recurrent themes to identify key areas requiring attention .

In sum, the research literature highlights the importance of an effective onboarding process in facilitating successful outcomes for new employees in the workplace. In particular, the evidence points organisations towards the use of Bauer’s six C structured framework as a guide for developing the most effective onboarding programmes. The evidence suggests that the mandatory stages of Compliance and Clarification can be adjusted for maximum effectiveness by introducing pre-boarding online tasks to break up the cognitive load and creating more transparency regarding role requirements in advertising to reduce cognitive dissonance. Other research recommends adding the non-mandatory stages of Culture, Connection, and Checkback into the onboarding process via education and immersion on company culture, buddy and peer mentor systems, and survey feedbacks to facilitate organisational identification, a sense of belonging, and maintain up to date programmes. All of these onboarding adjustments have been linked to psychological workplace benefits such as improved satisfaction, reduced uncertainty, enhanced organisational commitment, and better retention rates, therefore suggesting that creating a more effective onboarding process based on Bauer’s (2010; 2015; n.d.) six C framework is important for improving successful outcomes for new employees as they transition into the workplace.

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Elinor O’Brien

Postgraduate student on MSc Global Mental Health at King’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Intern from Cerca Abroad

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References:

1. Babic, A., & Hüynen, R. (2026). Onboarding Programs’ Effectiveness and Organizational Commitment: The Mediating Role of Organizational Identification. Organizational Cultures: An International Journal, 2327-932X. https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-8013/CGP/A177
2. Bauer, T. N. (2010). Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success. (SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series). SHRM Foundation. https://penedulearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Onboarding-New-Employees_Maxi mizing-Success.pdf
3. Bauer, T. N. (2015). Onboarding: Enhancing New Employee Clarity and Confidence (Part 2 of the 3 part Success Factors Onboarding White Paper Series). SuccessFactors. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.1834.8887
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