Construction Employment: 7 Onboarding Tips

Your new hire is excited. Onboarding begins Monday. However, 68% of new hires quit within the first six months and your success rate isn’t much better. Is there something you can do differently during construction employment onboarding?

Why New Workers Abandon Construction Employment

It’s not just you, your company, or even the construction industry. The top 3 reasons new employees quit are:

1. They don’t want to do it anymore.
2. They feel the job isn’t what the interviewer represented.
3. They think the boss is a jerk.

Employees that quit shortly after onboarding say three things could have made a difference:

• They didn’t receive “clear guidelines” about their responsibilities.
• They wanted more effective training.
• They felt the workplace culture was unfriendly and unhelpful.

Clearly, onboarding and the first days of construction employment are critical to employee retention. First and foremost, enhance your onboarding process by refocusing and reinforcing employees’ needs for clarity and personal connection.

7 Ways To Improve Onboarding Experience

Poor onboarding is a major reason why employees leave within the first 6 months of employment. High turnover is not only expensive – training time and money are wasted – but it negatively impacts morale. Unhappy employees can create a toxic work environment and constant turnover is disruptive and depressing for loyal, long-term employees.

HR professionals say the onboarding process should take 3 months. Some of the ways to improve your onboarding include:

1. Create an onboarding program for internal transfers. A new role should offer new training and orientation.
2. Create collaborative learning opportunities with mentor/trainee relationships or group onboarding employees.
3. Don’t stop training once they’ve mastered minimum skills. Additional training creates opportunities for them and you.
4. Emphasize and provide continuing education.
5. Engagement doesn’t end after onboarding. Maintaining a sincere connection between the company and employee goals creates loyalty and increases productivity.
6. Incorporate “relational onboarding.” Make a greater effort to welcome, nurture, and support new employees.
7. Use videos; new hires respond more favorably to video learning.

Sharing information is what we do. Construction Monitor offers free tips for reducing employee turnover.

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