Onboarding: just how important is it?

Purpose Employee retention has become a greater challenge for organizations as today’s employees are more likely to voluntarily change organizations than previous generations. Therefore, this paper aims to examine organizational experiences and how new employees are integrated into their work environments – a process known as onboarding. Specifically, this research explores the relationship between the onboarding processes that new employees experience and their levels of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job embeddedness. Design/methodology/approach The authors administered a Web-based survey and tested three hypotheses. The survey was distributed to 170 new employees, with 54 participants responding. The onboarding construct consisted of self-developed questions based on Bauer’s Four Cs (compliance, clarification, culture and connection) model. The constructs for job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job embeddedness were obtained from the literature. Findings The authors found that a new employee’s onboarding experience plays a significant role in shaping three variables negatively correlated with turnover: job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job embeddedness. More specifically, job satisfaction appears to be more correlated with the concrete, well-defined aspects of the onboarding experience. Furthermore, the highest level of Bauer’s onboarding model, connection, showed significant correlation with nearly all components of organizational commitment and job embeddedness. Originality/value Organizational leaders may use these findings to develop a better understanding of the retention implications of the first few months of a new employee’s time in the organization and then implement strategies that boost onboarding effectiveness to help mitigate losses due to voluntary turnover.