2.161 Why Good Onboarding Can Solve More Problems Than People Expect

In this episode, we explore why onboarding is one of the most underestimated parts of running a business. Many employers still treat it as a first day activity focused on paperwork, logins, and introductions, but good onboarding does much more than that. 

When done well, it helps new employees settle in faster, understand what is expected of them, and become productive sooner. It can also prevent a range of issues that often show up later as performance concerns, poor communication, lack of accountability, manager frustration, or early turnover. 

In today’s episode, you will learn about: 

• Why onboarding is not the same as induction, and why that distinction matters 
• How poor onboarding can lead to confusion, inconsistency, and extra pressure on managers and teams 
• Why small businesses feel the impact of weak onboarding more quickly than larger organisations 
• How a thoughtful employee onboarding process can improve confidence, connection, and performance 
• The role managers play in creating a successful onboarding experience 
• Practical ways to improve employee onboarding without needing complex systems or expensive software 
• Why better onboarding can support retention and help you get value from a new hire faster 

If your current onboarding is mostly first day admin followed by a few check ins here and there, this episode will give you a more useful and practical way to think about it. 

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Transcript

Episode 161 

 
Welcome to episode 161. And today I'd like to talk about onboarding new employees, because it can be one of the most underestimated parts of running a business. A lot of people think about onboarding as just a first day of work activity. 
where you get the paperwork done, make sure they can log in, introduce them around, maybe run through a few basics, and that it's really just up to the employee to get on with it. But in my experience, that's where a lot of businesses miss the opportunity. Because good onboarding does not just help someone to settle in. 
It solves a whole range of problems that show up later and get labelled as something else. Things like underperformance, lack of accountability, poor communication, culture fit concerns, slow ramp up, frustration from managers, and sometimes early turnover. Because when a manager says, oh, you know, I'm just not too sure about this new person. It may not be that it's a wrong hire. Sometimes that new employee just hasn't been properly set up to succeed. And this is why onboarding matters so much. It's not just a people process, it is a business process. 
And it's how you reduce the gap between hiring someone and getting value out of that hire. And in small and medium sized businesses, that gap can matter A lot. When you're running a smaller team, every person has a big impact. You don't have layers of extra capacity sitting around. If someone starts badly, Everyone feels it. The manager loses time, team members get interrupted. Customers can sometimes feel that inconsistency. Mistakes take longer to fix. And if the person leaves early, you're right back into the hiring cycle again, which is expensive in time and energy. So this is why onboarding deserves a lot of attention. Now, before I go any further, it's worth saying onboarding is not the same as induction. Induction is a part of onboarding, but it's only one part. And you know, it's the part that is practical and it's about compliance. So it's all of the paperwork policies, systems, payroll setup, introduction, safety information. 
And, you know, it's all really important. And especially from an Australian context, yes, Safe Work Australia says that new workers should receive induction and workplace safety training. And Fair Work also provides a simple induction checklist for employers. But onboarding is much broader than that. 
Onboarding is the process of helping someone to become effective. It's how they learn what's expected, how your business works, what good looks like, how decisions get made, who they can go to, and what really matters in their role. It's also how they make sense of your business in those early weeks. 
And they're watching more than maybe what you realise. They're noticing, does the business feel organised or chaotic? Is my manager available or are they always busy? They're working out, you know, does the culture feel welcoming and clear and supportive? Or is everyone just too flat out to even notice that I'm here and that I need help? 
And so they're asking themselves, did I make the right decision to come here? And that question matters because the early experience shapes confidence and commitment far more than anything else, perhaps in their whole employment lifecycle. And there's some useful information in an Australian context here 
The latest ABS job mobility release shows that the annual job mobility rate was 7.7% with 1.1 million people changing employer or business in that period. So why does it matter? You know, it's a reminder that people do move. 
Even if the labour market feels different from a few years ago, employees still change jobs even in economic downturns. Younger workers in particular tend to be more mobile. So those first few days, weeks and months really do matter. And Jobs and Skills Australia has also reported ongoing employer 
retention issues. It has a spotlight on employees experience with retention issues and it notes that over the last few years, more workers changed jobs than in the years before the pandemic and that retention continues to be a real challenge for employers. 
And then there's also an ELMO HR industry benchmark report. Now, it is vendor research rather than government data. So we say it's directional rather than definitive. And it does exclude businesses with fewer than 20 employees. But it's still interesting because it found the average time to productivity in Australia had 
increased to 44 days up from 34 days just a year ago. So that gives us a useful reminder that people aren't productive from day one. Even if you've made a great hire, it takes time for them to really get up to speed. And onboarding has the biggest influence on how quickly and smoothly 
That will happen. 
So when I'm saying onboarding, what I'm really talking about is how do you shorten that ramp up time, reduce confusion, and increase the chances that the person becomes a confident, useful member of your team as quickly as possible? 
So let's talk about the kinds of problems that poor onboarding can create. And the 1st is lack of clarity. And a new person may have had a great recruitment process and accepted the job enthusiastically. They genuinely want to do really well. But once they start, they're just not really clear on what success looks like. 
They might know the job title, they might know some tasks to do, but they're not sure what the priorities are. You know, they have those kind of broad terms about why I'm here, but how does the business want it done? You know, they're not sure what good performance looks like in the first month. What should take priority? What can wait? Where do I go if something's unclear? And that uncertainty really slows people down. It creates frustration for managers because from the manager's viewpoint, it can look like the person isn't taking ownership or showing initiative. But often it's just that no one has made sure that that person understands what the role expectations are. 
The second problem is the extra pressure on the rest of the team. When onboarding is rushed or inconsistent, everyone else has to fill the gaps. So team members answer the same questions over and over. They fix mistakes that could have been prevented. They spend time explaining processes that no one has documented. They help the new person work out where files are, who approves what, how does this customer issue get handled? 
Yeah, what's the normal way of doing something? And yeah, it can feel distracting and annoying, but it's also expensive. It takes time away from productive work and frustrates all the people that you're actually relying on. And the third problem is inconsistency. And this is especially common in growing businesses. 
You know, one manager might be really good at bringing new people on. Another is extremely busy and assumes that, you know, they'll just figure it out. So one new employee gets really clear guidance, regular check-ins, a great welcome. Another barely gets any follow up and spends the first month guessing. So over time, that creates different standards, different levels of confidence. 
and different employee experiences depending on who manages you. So it's not great for performance and it's not great for culture. And the 4th problem is that businesses start training onboarding failures as hiring failures. And sometimes, of course, someone is just a wrong fit. But not every rough start means that you've hired badly. 
Sometimes the person may have just done really well if they'd been given more structure, clearer expectations or better support, especially in those first 90 days. So this is why onboarding can solve more problems than perhaps people expect, because when it's done well, it helps with performance, consistency, communication, confidence. 
and retention all at once. 
So what does good onboarding look like in a practical sense? And it should be really simple. You don't need a big HR team, you don't need expensive software. What you do need is a process that is clear, repeatable and human. So for me, good onboarding should do four things. The first is it is creating clarity. So the person 
understands the role, the priorities, the standards, and what success looks like early on. It means they know what matters most in their first month and where to focus their energy. Second, it should create confidence. And that doesn't mean making everything easy. It means making sure the person has enough information, context, and support. 
that they're not just spending all their energy and their time trying to work out what's going on. 
Third is to create connection. So people settle in faster when they feel welcome and included and part of something. So this usually just comes down to, you know, people made time for me. Was my manager present? Do I know that I feel comfortable in asking questions? Has the business helped me to really feel like a part of the team? 
And 4th is creating consistency. So this is the part that makes the biggest difference in businesses. A repeatable onboarding process means that you aren't reinventing the wheel every time someone starts. So each new person gets the same core experience, even if the details vary by role. And the part that I would emphasise here is manager. 
ownership. So sometimes I see managers that just treat onboarding like an admin task. Paperwork's delegated, systems are set up. But the conversations about what matters, what does success look like, how does the team work, what does good performance mean in your business, have to stay with the manager. A new person must hear that. 
from their manager, not from HR or from the friendliest person in the team. You know, they need to know where to focus first, how they will be supported, how feedback will work, and what the manager will be looking for as they settle in. And this is why onboarding is often a leadership task, not an admin process. 
So if you're listening to this and thinking, you know, my onboarding is probably a bit patchy, don't start by asking what software you need or what fancy programme you need to build. Just start with a much simpler question. If someone joined your business next Monday, would they have a clear sense of what success looks like? 
who can help them, how your business works, and what the next 90 days are meant to look like and what they should achieve. If the answer is no, then that's your opportunity. And you don't need to overcomplicate it. Have a clear plan for those first 90 days. Regular manager checking, it's proper induction, documented basics. A bit of thought about how the person will feel welcome to support it can take you a long way. 
And technology can absolutely help with this, but only as a support. Tools can make onboarding more consistent and easy to deliver, but they don't replace the manager role. They don't replace clarity or human connection. So it's worth thinking about good onboarding as doing more than just the admin. It's about helping a new hire to feel useful, confident, and connected faster. So this way, we're reducing confusion, saving managers time, taking pressure off the team, but we're also still supporting safety and compliance. So this all gives us a much better chance of keeping a good hire. 
And for a smaller business, that is a big return for something that can actually be quite simple. If your onboarding is currently mostly first day admin followed by a couple of check-ins here and there, there's probably a lot to gain by tightening it up. And you don't need to build something huge. You just need to be more intentional, consistent, and manager led. So if this has made you think about, okay, well, you know, what's my next step? Then look at what happens before day one, what happens at the first week and what support the person gets in the first 90 days. And of course, if you need help creating onboarding that feels human, practical and realistic, 
That's exactly the kind of work that we do at Amplify HR. And you can get in touch with us at amplifyhr.com.au or book a time using the link in the show description. If you have received value from this episode, I would love it if you could leave a rating or a review over Apple Podcasts or Spotify so someone else can also find the episodes to help with their business.