“What are you doing here?”

Those are NOT the words you want to hear when you show up for your first day on a new job.

But that’s what happened to a leader at one of my clients when he started a few years ago. He was hired by the owner who was out of the office on his first day and forgotten to communicate about the new hire to anyone else.

It’s an extreme example but not that far removed from most employee onboarding experiences. According to a Gallup survey, only 12% of employees think their company did a great job onboarding.

You may ask, “why does that matter?” Here’s why: employees with a negative onboarding experience are twice as likely to quit. But companies with a strong onboarding process increase new hire retention by 82%.

In our competitive hiring market, those statistics should terrify and excite you. A great onboarding program is entirely within your control, but very few businesses actually get around to creating one. It always seems to live in the realm of important, but not urgent.

If you know yours needs to improve, don’t put it off any longer. My client was fortunate that the employee he forgot about stayed and eventually became an important leader in his business. Don’t allow a future leader to leave your business because your onboarding made a bad first impression.

I talk about the importance of onboarding to your culture and customer experience in this short: