Building the Foundations of Employee Success

Onboarding determines the trajectory of every employee’s journey within a company — a formative period that determines everything from job confidence to employee satisfaction. We wanted to take a deeper look at the process and uncover better ways to empower employees by making the process more seamless and intuitive.

A recent survey we conducted in partnership with OnePoll discovered that it takes a year and seven months for the majority of employees to feel like they’re thriving in a new role. The poll surveyed 2,000 knowledge workers throughout the United States on what they thought it meant to thrive in a new position:

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Gaps in the process

Meanwhile, the biggest onboarding gap proved to be information – specifically finding, navigating, and distilling company knowledge. Despite how important information-finding is, 69% of respondents said they struggled to find necessary information when starting their current job. Furthermore, 76% of respondents shared that they’d feel more empowered and productive in their role if they were able to easily access the information needed.

Additional key findings include:

• Most employees typically use 11 different platforms in their day-to-day work, from email to project management tools.
• Respondents look for a specific piece of information 35 times throughout the week.
• People spend an average of 13 minutes looking for information before giving up and seeking help from others. Over time, employees lose nearly a full work day  hunting for documents, decks, etc., preventing them from performing at their full potential.
• 40% of workers would leave a job if they didn’t feel they were thriving.

“Employees that’ve been with the company for less than a year, onboard improperly, and never fully engage with the business often account for the bulk of workplace attrition,” said Arvind Jain, CEO of Glean. “In the era of hybrid and remote operations, new employees get lost quickly if they’re not empowered to do their best work. This means providing them with readily available access to information, people, and critical business knowledge.”

As the economy pivots from a Great Resignation to a Great Retainment, knowledge management will play an increasingly essential role. Businesses looking to retain top talent will have to knock down information silos and set employees up for success from day one.

Success is searchable

Here at Glean, we’re directly solving these onboarding issues by providing a tool that searches across all your company’s apps to help you find exactly what you need to know. Glean delivers a powerful, unified search experience that indexes dozens of applications – understanding context, language, behavior, and employee relationships – to find personalized answers to questions.

By serving as the “homepage” of a company, Glean enables employees, especially those in new roles, to tap into a powerful search engine to find what they need to make their onboarding processes smooth and productive. Waiting a year and seven months to start thriving shouldn’t be the norm anymore – by centralizing information and making it searchable, companies can increase employee retention and satisfaction while improving long-term success, creating a more engaged and educated workforce.

Interested in additional insights from the report? Download the full infographic here, and discover what it takes for employees to go from surviving to thriving.