Why are British businesses so bad at onboarding staff?

Over the past few weeks, I have had a number of conversations about onboarding, in particular in relation to employee benefits.While the practice of onboarding staff has been around for a long time, it is something most British employers appear to ignore. So not surprisingly, it took a trip to World At Work conference in Philadelphia, US about 10 years ago for me to hear anyone talk about it in earnest.But this might be changing here in the UK.More than one communication consultant has told me they are working with clients to promote said client’s employee benefits on its company website so that potential and just-appointed recruits can scope out the offerings before joining their new employer.Benefits managers too, are starting to say ‘I need to sort out our external employee benefits communications’.Given that an employee is never again going to be scrutinising the reward package as closely as when they are weighing up a job offer, targetting the pre-employment/onboarding time seems to be a quick win in the world of benefits communications.Some employers may be scared their competition will nick all their ideas if they are made so public. The solution I have seen is to offer potential recruits a logon to view benefits on a restricted area of the website.If, as survey after survey reports, benefits are primarily there to recruit and retain, then looking at beefing up benefits communciation during onboarding is a no brainer.