A structured onboarding program can lead to higher productivity levels, faster knowledge acquisition rates, and higher retention rates. It is also the one program every single person in your company goes through.
This article will define onboarding, explain why it matters, cover the five goals and the four phases of a strong program, walk through how to build one, and show where immersive training fits.
Key Points
- Employee onboarding is the process of introducing a new hire to their role, organization, and team, and it runs far longer than the first week.
- Gallup reports that only about one in ten employees strongly agree their organization does a good job of onboarding new employees.
- Roundtable structures onboarding in four phases, orientation, role training, transition, and ongoing development, with five goals mapped across them.
- Onboarding is mostly culture and role-specific content, which is the category of training that cannot be bought off the shelf.
What Is Employee Onboarding?
Onboarding is the process of introducing a new employee to their role, organization, and team. Doing it well is essential because it creates the first impression a new hire has of an organization and affirms their decision to join. It can be delivered in person or online and can incorporate immersive technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
Given the many goals of onboarding, a program often includes these topics:
- Workplace tours and company history
- Values and culture
- Employee benefits and workplace policies
- Position-specific tasks and processes
- Department-specific goals and projects
- Safety protocols and compliance
- Technology and systems
- Sales techniques and soft skills
Your onboarding program’s exact makeup depends on your organization and the new hire’s role. For example, onboarding for warehouse associates might have a greater emphasis on safety training, while sales may focus more on soft skills training.
Why Onboarding Decides Whether A New Hire Stays
Gallup reports that only one in ten employees, including managers and leaders, strongly agree their organization does a good job of onboarding, a figure it has published since 2019. Gallup frames the work as five questions a new hire needs answered during their first year:
- What do we believe in around here?
- What are my strengths?
- What is my role?
- Who are my partners?
- What does my future here look like?
Not one of those five is answered by a form, a policy handbook, or a benefits portal. Gallup also found employees who strongly agree they understand how things are done at their organization are 4.7 times more likely to strongly agree their onboarding was exceptional. These are correlations, not causes, but they point the same way.
The cost of getting it wrong is measurable. SHRM’s 2025 recruiting benchmarking puts the median cost per hire at $1,200 for non-executive roles and $10,625 for executive roles, and every one of those dollars is spent twice when a new hire leaves early.
The 5 Goals Of A Comprehensive Onboarding Program
Regardless of your organization’s onboarding goals, our expert team at Roundtable has outlined five key onboarding goals to inform your program design and ensure your desired outcomes are met.
1. Impression
The first goal of any onboarding effort should be to create a positive first impression and affirm the new hire’s decision to join. Organizations do this by preparing paperwork, office equipment, and other essential materials for day one, providing a tour, map, and organizational chart, and welcoming the new hire with swag.
2. Introduction
The employee is introduced to key elements of the business, including business units, products, customer bases, and locations. A new hire needs to understand the ins and outs of their organization to feel comfortable, get up to speed faster, and excel in their role.
3. Integration
Integration occurs during the role training phase, when employees discover how they fit in and how their work contributes to the organization’s bottom line. Successful integration means the employee understands their role, how they contribute to their team, and how their team adds value.
4. Immersion
Immersion also occurs during role training. It builds an employee’s knowledge of three factors of an organization’s culture, being its functions, its processes, and its skills.
5. Independence
Independence is the meta-goal of onboarding, meaning the new hire can work independently and reach full productivity. It occurs during the transition and ongoing development phases, when organizations validate that the new hire has the skills to perform their job successfully.
The 4 Phases Of Onboarding
At Roundtable Learning, we recommend developing onboarding in four phases, each with their own set of unique goals and activities. Before phase one there is also Day 0, the period between accepting an offer and the first day. Our guide to preparing for Day 0 covers what belongs in that window.
Phase 1: Orientation
This initial phase introduces the new hire to the organization, senior leadership, and fellow team members. Orientation typically includes a senior leadership welcome, a handbook and compliance overview, lessons on company culture, history, and values, and diversity and inclusion efforts.
Phase 2: Role Training
Role training covers a new hire’s day to day job duties and often involves reviewing performance expectations, technical and process training, job shadowing, and safety training. This is the phase where the gap between knowing a procedure and being able to perform it either closes or does not.
Phase 3: Transition
The third stage occurs 60 to 120 days in, when the new hire moves to their permanent role and their primary source of support becomes their direct supervisor. Managers and front-line leaders need the skills to support new hires through effective communication, strategies for growth, and authenticity.
Phase 4: Ongoing Development
The final stage involves creating a plan for continued career and personal growth. It usually involves competency assessment, career mapping, individual development plans, and personal and professional goal setting.
The five goals and the four phases are not competing models. Each goal is achieved inside a specific phase:
|
Goal |
Phase |
What success looks like |
|
Impression |
Orientation |
The new hire feels their decision to join was correct |
|
Introduction |
Orientation |
The new hire understands the shape of the business |
|
Integration |
Role training |
The new hire knows how their work contributes |
|
Immersion |
Role training |
The new hire understands functions, processes, and skills |
|
Independence |
Transition and ongoing development |
The new hire performs core functions without supervision |
How To Build An Onboarding Program
Developing an onboarding program can be a challenge. In addition to covering the bases relevant to your organization and each role within it, you also have to stay grounded in instructional design. Six steps apply whether you build it in house or with a learning solutions partner.
1. Define Your Program Goals
First, define your program goals, which may mean conducting a needs analysis. For role-specific training you will need a subject matter expert, who could be the hiring manager or anyone who knows what a new hire needs in the first weeks.
2. Choose Your Modalities
Options include instructor-led training, eLearning, virtual instructor-led training, virtual reality training, and augmented reality training. The benefit of having so many viable options is that you do not have to choose just one. A blended learning program uses a mix according to your training needs.
3. Audit The Current Program
Referencing your needs analysis, identify the elements of your current program that work and retain them in the new one.
4. Develop Your New Content And Materials
Keep your needs analysis top of mind, and make sure you are addressing the performance gaps your subject matter expert identified.
5. Run A Pilot
Run a pilot with a few new hires and allow enough time for them to complete onboarding and take what they learned to the job. Give your subject matter experts enough time to assess how ready those hires were to perform core functions.
6. Fine Tune And Launch
Evaluate the data from your pilot, adjust, and launch. Expect to evaluate the program regularly, because employee trends fade and advances in technology alter how people do their jobs.
Where Immersive Training Fits In Onboarding
Immersive technology belongs inside the four phases, not alongside them. It earns its place where reading about something is a poor substitute for doing it. Our overview of extended reality applications across training covers the wider picture.
In orientation, AR can send new hires on a scavenger hunt throughout the workplace, using a tablet to scan posters or signs. Through AR image recognition, users interact with custom-built content that tells a story about the company’s history, culture, and values.
In role training, AR trains new hires on complex machinery without occupying real equipment. A newly hired automotive technician can scan a real tire, isolate specific parts, read informational text, and watch demonstrations of the tire changing process, from a safe environment that avoids safety risks or costly damages.
VR suits the parts of role training that carry real consequences, such as practicing warehouse safety protocols without putting people or equipment in danger. In the transition phase, managers can practice coaching and feedback in an immersive VR experience, working through difficult conversations and seeing the direct result their decisions have on employees.
Off-the-shelf training can cover parts of your program, particularly where governing bodies issue standard safety or compliance requirements. However, making a positive first impression means sharing your own company culture and history.
No catalog course can supply that, which is one reason onboarding is often the first program an organization decides to build rather than buy.
Summary
Onboarding is not an event in week one, it is a long arc that ends when a new hire can do the job without being watched.
If you are revamping an existing onboarding program or building one from scratch, talk to our team about which parts of it are worth building around your own culture and equipment.
Sources
- Gallup. 5 Questions Every Onboarding Program Must Answer, March 2019.
- Gallup. Why the Onboarding Experience Is Key for Retention, May 2018.
- Society for Human Resource Management. 2025 Recruiting Benchmarking Report, median cost per hire.
