How Bad Onboarding Hurts Your Projects

I once left a job on my third day, and I know quite a few people who ended up leaving new jobs in the first month. 

In many cases, this happens due to a lackluster onboarding process.

Today, I wanted to go over an illustrative example of why throwing a new hire head-first into a challenging environment just might be a bad idea, as well as some other common mistakes and consequences of improper employee onboarding.

How bad onboarding made me quit a job after just 3 days

Most people will agree that the worst kind of onboarding experience usually involves being thrown into the thick of the action with little to no proper orientation. And that’s exactly what happened to me.

This situation was made even worse by the lack of a mentor, as I had no one to turn to if I had any questions. My only real option was to fend for myself and figure it out, as my only human touchpoint was the team lead who had their hands full with their regular responsibilities.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, there were two more factors that made the situation even more confusing:

• The team was fully remote, and communication was fragmented between spreadsheets, emails, and a direct-messaging app.
• I didn’t even have all the permissions to access files some of the instruction documents were directing me to.

So, my first day came down to reading through PDFs with no human contact and trying to figure out how to access restricted files that should’ve been made readily available from the get-go. 

What followed on my second day was a rushed crash course summing up “all I need to know” in a 30-minute presentation. After this, I was expected to jump straight into the workflow — with a high-priority task that had several dependencies, no less.

I then had a thought no new employee should have on their first day: “If it’s this bad now, how much worse will it get later?”

The final straw came on the third day, in the form of the company’s in-house project management software, which I can only describe as a glorified spreadsheet with none of the usual flexibility. I was required to install several pieces of software that my personal PC could barely run, as there was no other way for me to work remotely.

All of this came together and was too much for my inexperienced younger self in a junior role — so I decided to quit that same day.

What are some common onboarding mistakes?

With the cautionary tale out of the way, let’s look at what exactly the problems were in the above scenario.

#1: Overlooking pre-boarding

First impressions are important, and pre-boarding plays a big part in ensuring your company leaves a good first impression on a new hire.

Ideally, a hire’s first day shouldn’t be stressful or overwhelming, which is why it’s important to take care of all the necessities beforehand. This includes:

• Preparing all the important documentation,
• Setting up all the hardware and software tools they’ll need on day one, and
• Scheduling introductory meetings to acknowledge their arrival.

#2: Expecting 100% productivity from the start

Starting a new job is usually disorienting, even if you have significant experience in your line of work. As such, a new hire should always be given some time to get used to their new environment before being expected to work at full capacity.

A new hire’s first day will have a major impact on how they see your company. And they’ll likely share this impression with their professional network.

#3: Overloading newcomers with information

You’ve probably been in a situation where you show up to your first day, only to be met with an encyclopedia of information, and left on your own to figure out what’s relevant and what isn’t.

This ties right back into “day one shouldn’t be overwhelming,” so you should never dump a ton of information on new hires from the outset. Focus on what’s important for them at the start, and how you can best deliver relevant information along the way.

#4: Not assigning a mentor

New employees can benefit greatly from having a mentor in the workplace, and this can be the manager or one of their team members.

No matter how comprehensive your documentation and onboarding meetings are, new hires won’t be able to absorb all the new information instantly. So, having a human touchpoint they can turn to is practical and good for morale.

This goes double for people starting out in entry-level and junior positions, as they’ll need more help acclimatizing than their more experienced peers.

#5: Not collecting feedback

HR teams should always try to collect feedback on the onboarding process towards the end, as it serves the obvious purpose of helping identify potential problems and ways to improve onboarding as a whole.

Moreover, it also sends an important message to the new employee: “Your feedback matters.” This can go a long way to boost morale and paint a more positive image of the company as a whole.

What happens when employees quit early on?

With all that said, what happens when employees leave like in the situation I described above? 

Put simply, losing a new team member means more work for the current team until you find a replacement. After all, the reason you hired the new employee in the first place is because:

• The team is understaffed and needs more resources to meet their goals, or
• You need to increase the team’s productivity.

Chances are they’d already been working at a breakneck pace while you were looking for the new hire.

This can quickly tank morale and cause other team members to leave, which just feeds into this vicious cycle of neverending high workloads and negatively affects the employee experience.

On the other hand, if you want your company to grow, losing new hires is costly on every level. Recruitment costs money, and all the time spent looking for replacements is time that the previous hire could’ve been contributing to your growth.

Improve your onboarding and employee experience with Plaky

I’ve touched upon the importance of getting employees acquainted with the tools they’ll be using, but it’s equally important that you choose the right tools in the first place.

The app is easy to use at its core, so no extensive training is required. Moreover, it comes with useful self-help resources, an intuitive user interface, secure file-sharing features, and simple access permissions — all things that could’ve made mine and many other people’s onboarding experiences far less overwhelming. 

Moreover, Plaky also offers a number of useful templates you can use to set projects up quickly — including an employee onboarding template, too.

Do you think Plaky might be the right choice for your team? There’s no harm in signing up for a free account and testing it out. Try out the full feature set for 14 days with no commitment, and see which plan is the right one for you.