New-hire onboarding has an “ick” problem. According to new Adobe Acrobat research, based on 1,006 fully employed U.S. workers who had started a job within the previous two years, employees identified five recurring frustrations across companies and industries:

• Having to provide the same personal information multiple times across different forms (63%)
• Receiving policies in writing that were never verbally explained (56%)
• Onboarding that did not reflect the actual culture or day-to-day reality of the role (41%)
• Losing access to documents or resources after the first week (38%)
• Materials written in overly complex or legalistic language (38%)

Information overload with onboarding

It appears employees are overwhelmed by onboarding materials. Workers reported receiving an average of 13 onboarding documents and spending about 12 hours reviewing materials during their first week. Yet they said only 60% of that content was necessary or important to their role. Forty-four percent of workers said they retained half or less of the information they received during onboarding.

AI-use policies also appear to be a sticking point. Thirty-eight percent of employees said their onboarding included no guidance on the organization’s AI policies. This is the largest information gap of any topic Adobe tracked. Among employees who did receive AI-policy information, more than one-third said they retained less than half of it.

Read the full article here: