October, 2025
In the fifth webinar of our Summer Series we discuss strategies to enhance onboarding processes in senior care without increasing administrative burdens. It highlights the importance of structured onboarding, which can significantly improve retention rates, especially among different generational groups. The need for personalization, speed, and emotional support during onboarding is emphasized, as well as the role of effective communication and engagement in retaining new hires. Utilizing modern tools like News can streamline the onboarding experience, making it more efficient and engaging. Ultimately, the video advocates for a proactive approach to onboarding that fosters connection and belonging from day one.
Transcript:
Hey. Thanks for joining me today, everybody. Welcome to improving onboarding without adding work, hosted by News.
Today, we’re talking about one of the biggest pain points in senior care, early turnover. In this presentation, we’re gonna explore what you can do to dramatically improve onboarding outcomes without adding more admin work using connection, using clarity, and culture as your secret weapons. Let’s dig in.
Research from the Society for Human Resource Management confirms that twenty percent or one in
five new hires leave within forty five days of starting and
that’s just an overall workforce statistic. In long term and post acute care this number can be even higher. A disorganized or impersonal onboarding process sends a message that chaos is normal, and that message sticks. Early impressions set the tone for retention, and that first shift experience drives future engagement.
It’s that initial impression that your new hire has when they start that forms their opinion of how things are gonna go with your organization. Studies also show that organizations with a structured onboarding achieve eighty two percent higher retention and seventy percent higher productivity among new hires. So what does this mean for us?
This multi generational workforce can be pretty challenging to manage with all the different needs and wants for each one of those demographic segments. If you’re still running the same staffing systems from twenty years ago, you’re not gonna survive. You won’t be able to keep up, let alone hire the new staff entering the market. But looking at the younger generation of the workforce, when they leave, we’ve all heard these comments in exit interviews.
I didn’t know what to ask. I didn’t know who to ask. I had to figure it out for myself. I didn’t feel welcome or noticed.
I didn’t feel supported or heard. And these aren’t really complaints, they are, but they’re signals. These are the leading indicators of the issues that we need to address as management to not just improve the lives of our staff but also improves the lives of our residents and make our culture stronger. According to Gallup, employees who strongly agree that they felt welcomed and supported in their first week were three and a half times more likely to feel engaged six months later.
In senior care, where emotional labor is so high, connection and clarity are key retention drivers. When those are missing, turnover’s inevitable.
If I don’t feel like I belong to something, if I don’t feel like I’m emotionally supported and invested in a community that is also emotionally invested in me, I don’t feel the need to stick around.
I’m not gonna bring my whole self to work. I’m not gonna dedicate as much of my time and effort into doing what it is that I do because it’s just gonna be forgotten. Now I wanna talk about the ripple effect of poor onboarding because, as we said, it’s in the first forty five days that staff will leave, but it’s actually within the first shift, even pre shift, pre first day that they start to formulate their opinion of what this work life is gonna be like.
The Harvard Business Review in twenty twenty two found that replacing a single frontline employee can cost between sixteen and twenty percent of their annual salary, not including productivity loss, not including the overages that you have to pay for temp staff and backfill. In long term care, that number can reach ten, twelve, sixteen thousand dollars for a CNA or a PSW and when you include training and backfill it gets even higher than that. More importantly an RN, registered nurse, an RPN, that can run us up to sixty thousand dollars per person from a replacement cost.
But beyond cost, it’s morale that takes a hit.
So repeated backfilling adds thousands in cost. Yes. But morale drops when teams lose new hires, When the teams that you have feel that momentary relief that we have more help, that we have more support, that I’m not gonna have to work longer shifts or take on doubles again because I have somebody else to take up that slack. When that person leaves, great. Now I’m back on double duty again.
And then the experienced staff, the ones that you’ve assigned as mentors and trainees or trainers, they start to ask, well, why am I bothering to help these new hires if I know they’re just gonna quit anyway? If this becomes a habit or a pattern, the frustration’s gonna build across the ships leadership across everyone. So let’s look at what the workforce looks like. What are we dealing with here? According to our friends at Leaderstat, and if you don’t know Leaderstat is a leading work force solutions group down in the States, Leaderstat has broken out what the multi generational workforce looks like right now.
It’s broken into five distinct groups. Traditionalists we’ll say the older people, those that were born between nineteen thirty and nineteen forty five, they represent about two percent of the residual workforce and they’re very limited in their their time that they give us. They’re very part time, but they’re still there and there’s still an important role in the operation of our homes. Baby boomers, those born between forty six and sixty four, they represent about fifteen percent of the workforce right now. And they’re the ones that are delaying retirement because of financial reasons. They’re not quite ready to retire yet or they’re slowly reducing the amount of time that they give us because they want to keep active, but they’re just running at that last few years or few months before they can fully retire and take full advantage of whatever pensions they have.
Gen x, my generation, sixty five to eighty. We represent sorry, born in nineteen sixty five to nineteen eighty. I’m neither sixty five nor eighty. We represent about thirty three percent of the workforce right now. We’re the current backbone of leadership in operations. We’re the fifty year olds that are running things right now.
Millennials, the ones in between, they’re, born in nineteen eighty one to nineteen ninety six, They’re in their thirties right now. They’re the ones they’re the largest cohort in the workforce right now.
They’re our middle management. They’re our senior RNs. They’re our, they’re our middle management.
And then Gen z, this always shocks me to see this, born ninety seven to two thousand and twelve. This is this is my kids.
By twenty thirty, they represent fifteen percent of the workforce, but by twenty thirty, they’ll make up thirty percent of the US workforce. In five years, my kids my kids’ generation will represent thirty percent of the workforce.
Now what we need to think about, although these age discrepancies are there, that’s fine, what we need to think about is how are these people trained to work?
What does their work ethic look like? What is it they expect from employers and from each other when they get into a job? Because it’s very different. By twenty thirty, millennials and Gen Z, the youngest population, will make up nearly seventy five percent of the global workforce. In five years, millennials and Gen z will be seventy five percent of the global workforce.
That’s insane. Baby boomers are retiring at a rate of ten thousand people a day. This creates an obvious and urgent need for succession planning.
Gen z will surpass boomers in the workforce by the end of twenty twenty five. And what we just shown you, Gen z is only fifteen percent of the workforce right now. Baby boomers are fifteen percent of the workforce.
But in just five by the end of this year, in a couple of months, Gen z will surpass boomers in the workforce.
Finally, Gen x, my generation, holds the majority of senior leadership roles and serves as the bridge between emerging and traditional work values.
The generations that came before me are somewhat averse to technology, but they’ve become used to it because it’s it’s it’s necessary. They know how to do banking on their phone. Know how to do a lot of things on their phone. Not everything, they do how to do a lot. My generation, we’re kind of fluid with it. I grew up understanding that hard work means something.
I also understand that efficiency makes things better and how technology can help with efficiencies. I can tech my way through most things.
My kids can tech circles around me. But each of these groups expect something different, and they work different.
So the onboarding process today, what we’re here to talk about. The problems that we face are, by and large, just antiquated things. There’s a obvious lack of personalization in communications.
What this means is if I fill out an Indeed application or if I apply for a job on monster dot com, I’m gonna get some standardized, boring, formulaic email response. Thank you. We’ll get back to you. There’s nothing to it, but there could be. We could personalize it a little bit more. It could be a more one on one interaction.
Organizations that ignore their online reputation. This is a big red flag. Onboarding is it needs to include an element of your culture. You have to include and have to consider the story of your values and your mission and what your culture stands for, how your people interact, what does peer to peer communication look like, what does the vibe inside your organization look like to those outside. Is it something that they wanna come and work at or is it something they’re like, oh, I’ve heard not a lot of great things about this place.
You better be searching places like Reddit and Blue Sky and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. Look for areas that you may or may not be showing up because our kids are looking there, because the new new workforce, the new generation of the workforce is looking there. And if they see nasty things, they’re not gonna wanna work with you.
If you’ve got long application timelines, if it takes weeks between when I apply to when I get my interview to when I can start my job, As a young person, I’m not waiting around. I’ll I’ll move on. I’ll get into something else.
They expect speed, efficiencies, any more digital, efficient experience. Outdated hiring processes, same thing. If your interview process is slow, if your responses are slow and formulaic, if you’re expecting people to do a lot of the really boring pedantic paper based process stuff, filling out this form, doing this blood check, doing this background check. Any of that stuff that takes me away from a digital interface and makes me come into your office, sit in the room, sign some paperwork, watch a boring video presentation, you’ve lost me.
Not me, but the younger generation. And then boring job postings.
Put a little bit of life in it. Put put something more into your job postings that makes it sound more interesting, that makes it sound more like a Hallmark card or more like a sitcom. Find a way to make those job postings a little more interesting because otherwise, you’re just one of a thousand that are coming up. But the one of a thousand that comes up that sounds different, that that makes me smile, that makes me feel something, that’s the organization that’s gonna stand out and get my attention.
The reason why I bring all this stuff up is we need to understand what the expectation is or what the expectation has become.
Understanding the population makeup with the incoming workforce, we need to do things differently, and we need to start doing them now, especially considering the Gen z is gonna outpace the boomers by twenty by the end of this year, in a in a couple of months.
So that group, millennials and gen z, those about to take over everything, they expect convenience, they expect transparency, and they expect speed.
They hate paperwork. They hate having to look for things. They hate binders, and they hate waiting more than anything else. You we know this.
Our kids can’t wait around for anything. They have they are most the most impatient people ever. But it’s because they’ve they’ve been they’ve been taught to expect that. The instant gratification of a like on my phone is instant.
I need to get this now. And if it takes too long, I’m done with it. They expect a digital first experience because of what they become used to.
If something can be done by my phone, why isn’t it? If I can bank from my phone, order food from my phone, a ride, apply for insurance, book travel, book a house, apply for a mortgage, if I can do all of this stuff on a phone, Why can’t I apply for this job on my phone?
Why can’t I be informed of next steps from my phone? Why is this a hassle? Why do I have to go into your office to pick something up? Why can’t you just send it to me?
All these things we need to consider and take into consideration as far as how we operate now. We need to do things differently.
With all this in mind, what does effective onboarding look like moving forward?
Well, according to a Cleveland Clinic onboarding study in twenty twenty three, retention increased by twenty four percent after implementing a digital first onboarding process with peer welcome messages and quick access learning. Welcome messages and first day introductions are massively important. A digital access to policies, to shift guides, to team info, to call out sheets, to the who, what, where, when my job entails, hugely important. And then early recognition from leaders and peers. That’s a big one. Early recognition from leaders and peers.
Effective onboarding doesn’t mean more paperwork. It means more connection. You need to make sure that every new hire knows who to go to, where to find what they need, and that their presence matters.
More than anything else, they need to feel like they belong to something now and that they’re supported and celebrated. So how can we start making changes to our onboarding process without adding a ton of work?
And again, everything we’ve talked about, we’re not we’re not adding more things for you to do other than the social listening from the reputation, but it’s just a minds a mindset shift.
We need to consider how we do things now and how we should be doing things to better meet the needs and wants and desires of the incoming workforce.
So the first thing that we can do is start by making the job posting sound more engaging and interesting than just a simple list of duties and responsibilities. Like add some character or a more personalized story about your organization, its mission, the values that you hold dear. It makes the application process as streamlined as possible. Don’t make people print something.
Don’t make them come into your office to get something. Find a way to capture, process, and track that online. There are tools that do this online. Better yet, make it available from a phone.
Don’t make me do it from a laptop or desktop. I wanna be able to do it from the bus or from the Starbucks or wherever else I am.
When the interview comes around, make it engaging. Ensure the people doing the interviews have been trained on doing interviews.
Do they know how to sell your organization?
Do they know how to sell to the generation they’re interviewing?
There’s different strokes for different folks.
If I’ve got a Gen z person that I’m interviewing, I’m gonna talk up the instant access, the digital interactions that we have, the technology that we have, the fun that we have. If I’m interviewing a boomer or a Gen X, I’m gonna talk more about career advancement opportunities, the training that we’re spending money on, and benefits and work life balance. You also need to look at how long does it take someone to get onboarded.
If it takes more than five days now from interview to start because of your systems, that has to change.
It has to change because remember, the new generation coming in, they expect speed. Speed for them is a priority.
Speed and digitization is a priority. And then when your new staff start, what does orientation look like? It can’t just be them coming into a room and signing paperwork for a couple of hours and then watching some boring video for an hour and then signing more paperwork and then getting paid for four hours.
It needs to be more interactive and engaging and focused on the type of energy that they expect from the environment, but also the type of energy you expect them to bring.
Every department should have a part in orientation. It can’t just be one person that leads it. You should have representatives from each of your departments come in to introduce themselves and their functions so your new people start feeling comfortable with them and recognizing them in the hallway and know who to look for. You need to make this a full day, not just a couple of hours.
And then what about training and mentoring? Do you have a structured mentoring program?
If not, who’s training new staff? And could you be incentivizing them to do the best job possible instead of it just feeling like, oh great, now I’ve got this new person shadowing me for the next few days and listening to everything that I say. I hope they do a good job but I’m betting they’re gonna leave. Instead, if I train this person to the best of my ability and they stick around for forty five days, I’m gonna get a two hundred and fifty dollar bonus, a hundred dollar bonus, a fifty dollar bonus. Whatever it is, If you can find a way to incentivize that training and mentoring so that the staff don’t just learn how to do the job, they learn how to do the best job, but they also learn that they’re part of a connected supportive community, even better. The likelihood of retention goes through the roof.
You could then track engagements. You could track interactions. You could track that through survey results. That could also be part of the incentive package.
If this person does x, y, and z in set amount of time frame, I will bonus you. And again, it doesn’t have to be a huge bonus, but there’s opportunities to turn this into something that has that what’s in it for me element for the trainer or the mentor.
So how do we know where to start with this? This is a lot of things. Like, what what is the one thing you’re gonna need to start with tomorrow?
It kinda depends on what you have in place, but let’s walk through some stuff. You can’t improve what you don’t measure, so let’s measure and refine some things. If Gen z, the new group of people coming in, the young group, they start to show a high turnover, look at a couple of things. Look at shortening your onboarding process. Look at increasing real time recognition. Look at assigning peers as mentors.
And again, getting into the incentivization program of that mentoring or training program. Make it important for them. Make it valuable for them to do that.
If Gen X starts to lag in engagement, they’re not bringing enough energy into work anymore. They’re just sort of checking in, checking out.
Offer leadership training programs or reinforcement of work life balance tools.
If boomers aren’t applying for leadership roles, you need to get a an executive VP in or a VP of something, you’re looking for somebody with a specific amount of experience, try promoting job stability because they’re looking to round out the final earning years they have. How much could they make in what kind of environment with what kind of guarantee before they’re done?
What kind of benefits matter to them? What kind of bonus structure matters to them? You need to start considering these different multi generation groups, not just the role you’re filling, but the person you want that to be filled by, and what are their needs and wants.
How does news factor into all this? Sorry. This is the shameless plug page. Niuz can help you onboard without clipboards.
Imagine this. Instead of sending ten separate emails, you post one welcome to the team update in Niuz.
New hires see everything from policies and team contacts to training guides right from their phone. And when you recognize them in the app, the whole team sees it. It’s instant culture building.
You can give role based access to information in news. New hires in their probation period only have access to see a certain number of things.
Once they pass that stage, everything else opens up for them. They can access policies, guides, standard operating procedures, all from one place.
You can welcome new hires with videos and shout outs and pictures. You can do introductions. You can introduce people across the team. You can have a little, document that describes who does what inside the organization and make sure that every new hire knows exactly where and how to find that without really having to think about it.
And then announcing a new staff for the team automatically. Hey everybody, welcome aboard. This is Angela. She’s fantastic.
She likes walks in the rain and puppy dogs.
So according to Gallup, when employees strongly agree that their managers involved in onboarding, engagement scores improve by fifty four percent.
So better onboarding equals faster and better engagement that equals happier staff and ultimately happier residents.
Better onboarding includes making staff feel appreciated earlier from day one.
Better onboarding means managers spend less time repeating themselves.
And better onboarding means that teams integrate faster across roles, across shifts, across departments because they get to know each other faster.
Retention doesn’t start with payroll. It starts before the first shift.
It starts with belonging. Your new hires decide whether they’ll stay within the first ten days.
Don’t lose staff because of a bad day one. Get day one orientation nailed down. Make it an interactive and engaging and fun. Make them feel like they’re joining exactly what they expected to join. A strong, committed culture that’s based off of transparency, communication, support, and caring. Start before day one by giving them access to information, by giving them recognition and a warm welcome.
Create connection, not confusion, and use news to build loyalty from the start. That’s how you turn new hires into long term members.
Improving onboarding doesn’t mean having to create new tasks. It’s about transforming how you communicate and how you do things today. Again, this wasn’t meant to solve all the problems, but it is meant to give you an idea and hopefully some tips and direction on what to start looking at now so that you can start making those changes because by the end of this year, Gen z is gonna outpace baby boomers in the workforce, and it’s only gonna increase in speed going forward. We need to start considering the needs and expectations of these new people as they’re coming in. And if we don’t start to make these changes now, we’re going to suffer for it later.
Let’s make onboarding your secret weapon.
We would love to show you how Niuz can help you. In fact, we have one of our customers who swears by news because they’ve been gradually and progressively improving their onboarding process since signing up with us, And it’s dramatically changed not just how they operate from an HR perspective, but it’s dramatically impacted their retention rates and the feeling of culture and community that they’ve been able to build. We’d love to show you more about that and explain more about that. If you wanna find out more, just use our website, request a demo, we’d love to walk you through it. You can reach out to me, Cameron, or you can email my colleague Julia at julia at Niuz dot com.
Once again, thank you so much for your time today. Have a wonderful afternoon and go Jays.