The Onboarding Journey: From Attracting to Belonging A Thematic Literature Review Examining the Onboarding Process

Sammanfattning

Onboarding is a critical and strategically important process that significantly affects an organization's ability to attract, retain and engage new top talents in today’s competitive and rapidly evolving labor market. Despite a vast amount of research emphasizing the importance and benefits from having a structured onboarding process, many organizations continue to rely on outdated strategies and fail to invest in implementing effective onboarding strategies. This thesis aims to identify the core mechanism and patterns that constitute a successful onboarding process according to current research. Through a thematic analysis of contemporary onboarding research this study addresses three questions: Which phases and components constitute a successful onboarding process throughout the first year? What are the key enablers and tools for a successful onboarding process? What roles do key stakeholders play in ensuring a successful onboarding process? Methodologically, the study is based on a literature and thematic analysis of secondary sources, given an already extensive empirical collection of research about onboarding. Theoretically, the thesis draws on organizational socialization theory, social capital and social networks theory and Bauer’s six C's framework to analyse and interpret the findings. The results show that recruitment, preboarding, orientation and onboarding programs and the first 3-6 months are crucial phases for reaching a successful onboarding. Key enablers and tools include the thoughtful utilization of technology, the implementation of formal, local and personalized onboarding practices and the alignment of both phases and stakeholder involvement. Stakeholders, and especially HR professionals, managers, a buddy and mentors were found to have great impact on employees and should therefore be actively engaged in the process to utilize a successful onboarding process.