Thinking back to my school days I was most excited about the first day and the last day of school. Truthfully, everything in the middle has kind of become mush in my head. 

The same could be said about an employee’s experience. 

While, there can be quite a few key moments in an employee’s experience, two stand out more than others:

• Onboarding 
• Offboarding 

Why?

Well, onboarding is the foundation of the employee experience. 

And offboarding is the bow on the employee experience, oftentimes wrapping up most loose ends. 

Spoiler alert: both have a major impact on the culture of an organization!

Why onboarding is important:

From the second an offer gets signed up until the 90-day mark, the clock is ticking.  ⏰

What a new hire experiences in the first 90 days is crucial for their success and engagement and has an impact on company culture. 

 Don’t believe me?

A strong onboarding experience can:

• improve new hire retention by 82%
• improve new hire productivity by 70% 
• result in an 18x commitment to the organization 
• result in 91% more connectedness at work

But, TBH in the hybrid world, we’ve been struggling with onboarding effectively. 

When we were in-person it was easier to hand a computer to a new hire and sit next to them while you explained the various ins and outs of all the systems. 

Meetings over the water cooler felt natural. 

Now, more than ever, there has to be more intentionality with onboarding. 

Fun fact: The average onboarding can take anywhere from 6 – 8 hours. It’s almost like you’d need a full-time hire fully dedicated to onboarding!

Not to mention, a sizable part of onboarding involves systems and IT work that the average person in HR doesn’t know! 

HR teams need a solution that can help them effectively onboard folks without worrying about security risks, like Electric!

Electric takes the work of onboarding employees off your plate. Simply submit a request and get back to what you do best. No technical knowledge is required!

Cough, for people like me, cough

A seamless process of onboarding is crucial to ensure a world-class employee experience. Your employees will be able to focus and absorb information about your culture rather than be distracted by computer issues. 

No one wants to spend their first few days locked out of various systems! I’ve been there.

Onboarding effectively is the key to establishing and maintaining a strong company culture. 

In those early days, your employee is soaking up your culture. They should learn:

• What the mission and values are 
• How the company communicates
• What are company norms
• What are the expectations for their role and team
• How to build relationships across the org 

Remember: onboarding is the foundation of the employee experience! You can’t build a house on a rocky foundation. 

A strong foundation is key for your culture and your employees. 

 Why offboarding is important:

Saying goodbye this time, the same ole story. – Hawthorne Heights

Your offboarding process should not be the same ole story! 

Cough, because most employers get it wrong, cough 

Leaving an organization involves a lot of emotions. You could be sad, happy, or even angry. Maybe all 3 at the same time! I know I’ve been there. 

The one thing you don’t want your employees to be? Confused. 

Offboarding processes can be seen as not important because the employee is already leaving, therefore the impact on the culture doesn’t really matter.  

But it does.  

Offboarding an employee correctly is crucial because:

A positive departure does more good than harm. When employees leave they don’t just stop talking about the company! A positive offboarding where you celebrate the employee’s achievements and contributions to the company will leave a lasting impression on the employee. That impression can drive referrals to the company or even the employee causing the employee to want to return! Boomerang, anyone?

Knowledge transfer has to occur. I feel like every org has that ONE employee. You know, the one who seems to know everything, and in the event they ever left the company SO MUCH knowledge would be lost. Every employee has a wealth of knowledge that needs to be preserved. Offboarding must feature a knowledge transfer to ensure you’ve captured all the institutional knowledge and responsibilities! 

The company must be protected. Protected from what exactly? Well, employees that could do the wrong thing if they had access to the right systems. Every company I’ve worked at has had that moment where months after an employee has offboarded we realize we didn’t deactivate them in a system. It happens more often than you think! When you have 80 systems, who is going to remember to deactivate them all? Sometimes HR doesn’t even know specific systems everyone is using!

When HR teams are offboarding someone they want to know with the utmost confidence that there isn’t a security risk to the company.

That’s where Electric comes in. In the click of one button HR teams can offboard an employee and HR teams have one single point of visibility into all the devices, networks and applications. No more sitting up at night and wondering, did we remove that employee from that system or months later finding an active log-in. ACK. 

One last note: Offboarding has a major impact on your culture. I bet you’re not shocked.

Employees do notice when other employees disappear into the night with little or no acknowledgement and they are left wondering, am I next?

That can be toxic for the culture AND employee engagement. 

So the next time you offboard someone remember:

• Leverage a tool to help with security 
• Make sure you have a comms plan to announce departures
• Take the time to acknowledge the employee’s contributions

A system to support a world class experience: 

Did you know the average HR team has 9 different systems? So I don’t share system recommendations easily, trust me!

But for onboarding and offboarding to truly be successful you cannot be managing things in spreadsheets and e-mails. You need help! 

It’s why I partnered with Electric for this deep dive. Electric can be your one-stop shop for onboarding and offboarding because their platform can:

• Save you 8+ hours on onboarding/offboarding
• Standardize device security with best-in-class management software
• Provide a single point of viability into devices, networks and apps
• Make IT management easy for us non-technical users
• Standardize the IT processes at your org

Basically, Electric can do the things you shouldn’t waste your time on! 

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive! I’m looking forward to sharing more tools with y’all in the future.

As always, if you have any thoughts please let me know!