Saturday, February 8, 2025

Recruitment & Onboarding Challenges 2022

The Great Resignation that hit post the pandemic has resulted in multiple challenges, from business continuity with similar Customer Experience, Quality Assurance, Turn Around Time on the business front and a direct offshoot bringing a massive recruiting challenge across industries. Mid-year from 2021 has been the year of the great reshuffle that led to employees.

What’s making this so tough?

  • Employee Engagement: It’s the discretionary effort that employees put in when they are engaged in an organisation. This singular bit has been at an all-time low. The virtual world of not meeting and building bonds and individuals evaluating the purpose of their lives has led to a serious fall on this parameter.
  • Skill Gap Situation: With a lot of industries undergoing transformation, there is a skill gap on what is needed and what’s there with employees. Each employer wishes for talent with the knowledge and skills and similarly the employees, however, the pool that is the purple Squirrel is really limited.
  • Talent Supply Equation: There is a set of passive job seekers who are evaluating options as they come by, however, would wait for the right opportunity before they move. Alongside, there are candidates who are offered shopping (interviewing at more places to bargain on the best offer). This has led to a massive increase in offer rejections by candidates which has a ripple effect on the business as the process needs to re-start after closure.
  • Talent Retention: A positive change while it affects recruiting is that organisations are focussing on a lot more retention of their talent. Thus, there are offer drops due to retention efforts by the current employer
  • Employer Brand: It is critical to create the right pull and not push for the role and the organisation. While there should be employee advocacy of the organisation and its practices, the proof of concept for candidates is the whole experience during the interviewing process. It is tough to create a great candidate experience virtually. With normalcy being the norm, there should be at least one in-person meeting to ensure that the candidate gets a glimpse of the organisation, the physical setup, and how they are treated.

Ultimately, if you are a great employer, it shows.

Some solutions to mitigate or reduce the impact of the problem lies in reducing hiring TAT which can be improved by:

  • Process: Revamp the process, look at roadblocks and NVA’s and skip the queue on those, lengthy interview processes, and have candidates drop off.
  • Communication: Internal communication between business, HR, and candidates need to be very robust and, on the ball, consistently.
  • Expectation Setting: Set expectations with the hiring team on roles that are tough to fill, there will always be those niche skills that are high in demand or hot and trending.
  • Data and Mapping: Using the recruitment data well for trends and mapping would ensure that the effort the teams are putting in getting candidates onboard is being collated together and effectively used for future analytics.

The challenge does not end with recruiting an employee, the right onboarding ensures that the new joiner gets assimilated into the organisation quickly, and is set up for success.

While Onboarding may seem like an uncomplicated process of paperwork once the employee joins, it’s critical to success process of employee engagement and future performance

Asking key questions before one formulates their onboarding process, would help design, and follow through with the onboarding with conviction:

Engagement, of candidates through the onboarding process, ensures a great candidate experience, a positive candidate experience can be a critical factor when deciding which offer to take in today’s time of multiple options. A standardised process of communication from the point of offer to joining can make sure that there is continuous and prompt communication, if you have an ATS, use templates and design the process to have consistency and reduce manual misses.

Key Touchpoints

  • Pre-boarding: Ensure that your new employees have the necessary pre-boarding material before they start the onboarding material. An employee handbook or benefits book is a
  • Day 1: Take the time to ensure that you help the person feel welcome. Buddy assignments are a great way to help the new joiner assimilate and understand the organisation faster and better
  • Key Information and assignments: small chunks and reiteration of information are important. That’s the way we learn, use the same formula. A microsite or intranet is a good space to revisit any information
  • Establishing G&O’s:  Giving an overview of the organisation Vision and Values aligns all new joiners on the larger purpose. At an individual level, assigning the Goals and Objectives to new joiners within a month of joining gives clarity and the contribution expected. Alongside, assigning key learning courses at the time of onboarding helps with the right tools and knowledge to play the role well.

Continuous Feedback on the recruiting and onboarding process like the employee net promoter score keeps one up to speed on modifications needed. Lastly, but most critically, staying Consistent is the KEY.

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Garima Pant
Garima Pant
Garima Pant, Group HR Director, Mullenlowe Lintas Group. With a career spanning over 16 years across multiple industries, geographies and roles, Garima has steered the workplace and people agenda for globally dynamic organisations like Sony Pictures Networks, Star India, Genpact and Glenmark in roles ranging from Talent Management, Talent Acquisition, Employer Branding, Total Rewards, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion