Finding the best people for your organisationorganization is only the first step to building a great team. Equally as important is properly onboarding new employees to ensure they are productive and happy members of your team from day one. You only get one chance to make a great first impression, which is why a positive onboarding experience is so important. Recognising this, Suncorp Group embarked on a journey to optimiseoptimize the onboarding experience for the thousands of new team members who join Suncorp each year.
Suncorp is a leading provider of general insurance, banking, life insurance, superannuation and investment services in Australia and New Zealand, with close to 13,500 employees and nine million customers. As an organisationorganization, it welcomes over 6,600 people each year who have a diverse range of backgrounds, skills and experience.
Suncorp wanted to create an onboarding experience that would make new starters feel valued, included and excited about their new role.
Onboarding plays a vital role in employer branding
The onboarding experience sets the tone for a new starter’s journey with an organisationorganization, and can be one of the most critical factors in ensuring retention. A good onboarding process not only ensures compliance, it sets new starters up for success by giving them a sense of the workplace culture, bringing them up-to-speed on how to use essential tools, and ensuring they meet key people. Research has found that 90% of employees decide whether they will stay with a company in their first six months, so getting onboarding right has a significant impact on turnover. After seeing a higher-than-average proportion of new hires leaving the company after the first few months, Suncorp knew it was time to make a change. Improving the onboarding experience was a significant opportunity for the business to retain talent and deliver on its employer brand promise.
Collaboration is key to a consistent onboarding experience
To overhaul its onboarding processes, Suncorp used LEAN and agile methods that brought together key stakeholders from each area of the business. Over the course of a three-day workshop, stakeholders collaborated to map the onboarding process in-depth – it didn’t take them long to highlight 80 areas for improvement.
With key focus areas mapped out, the team got to work. Over 12 weeks, they delivered improvements that addressed 25 of the 80 identified issues. Working in two week sprints, the team focused on specific deliverables that included implementing system changes and a program of change management, training and education.
Onboarding benefits the entire business
To make sure candidates have a consistent onboarding experience, Suncorp chose to move the entire process online. Leveraging existing technology, they were able to create a New Starter Portal that brought offer documents, forms, learning activities and onboarding information online. These were all easily integrated into Suncorp’s existing recruitment process. This put candidates at the centre of the onboarding process and made them feel in-control and valued from the outset. While candidates had previously waited an average of 15.5 days from receiving their offer to be job ready, the process was now completed in just 2.3 days. With essential paperwork and in some cases onboarding learning complete, new starters were ready to work before day one.
While technology was an essential part of the improved onboarding process, it was only an enabler for change. The project team recognisedrecognized that managing change and getting buy-in from stakeholders was critical to uplifting the onboarding experience. Over 2,500 hiring managers across Suncorp benefited from an education program that included targeted communication and training activities. Easy to follow reference guides and webinars acted as supporting material to explain how the new process would work. This helped get buy-in from hiring managers and ensured the new onboarding process was widely adopted. One hiring manager was so eager to implement the new process that they asked the project team to include 27 recruits from their service area in the pilot program so they could be ready for work within two days. This pilot was a huge success and a great proof point for the initiative.
Savings are just the tip of the iceberg
Placing new hires at the centre of the onboarding process has saved Suncorp time, resources and money. Eliminating the paper-based New Starter Packs saved $153,000 a year, while labour costs and reduced processing errors have delivered an additional $68,000 in financial benefits. The cost of processing a new employee offer has also decreased by 40%. These savings are just the tip of the iceberg: ensuring new starters are engaged and supported has knock-on effects for the business that include better collaboration, increased productivity, reduced turnover and exceptional customer service.
Suncorp’s onboarding process has exceeded expectations and is now an integral part of its employer brand and culture. It delivers a positive experience to new team members and was quickly adopted by hiring managers and the recruitment team. The new onboarding process has touched many people throughout the organisationorganization and has set the bar for future talent management initiatives to come.
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