How to make employee onboarding easy, error-free, and smooth as ever
First things first, what’s onboarding? It is a well-spread misconception that onboarding is all about paper formalities and walking the recruit around the office premises. Traditionally yes, but not anymore. Onboarding now includes more than just signing an offer letter. Depending on the onboarding quality, the process may last for a week, 90 days, or even a year.
Onboarding is a comprehensive process where the employees feel and learn the company culture, structure, mission, vision, and values. The quality of the onboarding greatly impacts the progress and growth opportunities, both for the employee and the employer. How? Let’s see!
Why Companies need to focus on the positive employee onboarding experience
The employee onboarding process shouldn’t be treated as a formality but as an experience, and rather an important one at that. There are various significant reasons why companies need to focus on quality onboarding.
You may not want to miss this if you’re a part of recruiting team or the hiring community in general.
1. Improve retention rate, save cost
Hiring is, without a doubt, a tedious and expensive process. Companies need a high employee retention rate to conserve valuable resources like time and money. And guess what assures a high retention rate?
Surveys show that employees who undergo a structured onboarding experience are 78% more likely to stay with the company for more than three years. So a good onboarding experience is important for improving retention rate and decreasing turnaround time.
2. Motivates employees and enhances productivity
The first impression is the last. That goes for a new employee as well.
Employees who feel welcomed and motivated are more likely to contribute more than their limits. And it’s usually observed that an employee thoroughly onboarded, like having a proper introduction with colleagues, meeting with seniors, lunch with team members, delivers more than the expectations.
Proper onboarding gives a sign that there are a lot of growth opportunities within the organization, and that increases a recruit’s productivity tenfold.
3. Be your employee’s favorite, and build a better brand image
It’s like a bonus. When employees love their new work environment and feel welcomed, they would like to share their experience with other potential hires. It indirectly inspires a branding image that attracts top talent hence assuring compatible hires and stronger teams in the future.
There exist a lot of inaccuracies and inefficiencies in the manual onboarding process. The overview seems fine, but when looked at carefully, it can be easily pointed out.
Here are such instances where a typical approach could leave a gap in creating a positive onboarding experience.
1. Confusing orientation with onboarding
The manual approach treats onboarding and orientation like they are the same, but that’s not it.
Orientation is a part of onboarding and shouldn’t be an entirety of the process. Orientation includes admin-related tasks such as paperwork, documentation, etc; and maybe a physical or virtual tour of the office.
Orientation does not assure that employees understand, engage, or are well-informed of the company’s expectations.
2. Resource-intensive with scope for human-errors
When done manually, be it paperwork or other formalities, they are handled by humans on both ends, i.e., employer and employee.
The result?
Time-consuming process without any proper checklist that ensures smooth and error-free documentation. Furthermore, the new employee is already overwhelmed and clueless about the tasks and other requirements. Not a very good way to welcome an employee, is it?
3. No place for feedback, hence less scope for improvement
As it goes, onboarding is done, the hire reports to the office on the start date, and the new employee starts working right away. But how can an organization make sure that the employee was onboarded properly?
As there is no place for employees to present their feedback on the onboarding process, hence even if the organization wants to improve, there’s no ground for that. Feedback is the most valuable data to improve any process, which is lacking in the traditional approach.
How has the introduction of automation transformed the whole process
Manual onboarding can be significantly transformed into a positive, error-free, and highly efficient process just by using the right tools for the right purpose. As the technology evolved, it revolutionized almost every field, making every task quick and convenient, Human Resources isn’t an exception.
Technology has taken over the whole cycle of onboarding by introducing automation, which ultimately made the process a lot more convenient, faster, and accurate with an unprecedented retention rate.
Automation from shortlisting to the first day of an employee
Let’s start from scratch. The hiring process initiates with finding the right person for the role. And that itself is a hectic chain of time-consuming, resource-intensive tasks. Assessing several resumes, shortlisting candidates manually, interviewing them individually, and whatnot until the selection of the right candidate to begin the onboarding process.
But we’re talking about true automation. That means a smart tool that can assess, shortlist, arrange interviews and recommend the most suitable candidate for the role. So before jumping towards the onboarding, you’ve already saved uncountable hours, efforts, and financial resources by automating, hence improving your hiring strategy and retention rate at the very initial stage.
Then the Onboarding Cycle moves toward making the new employee a part of the team. Yet again a complicated and sensitive task that decides the retention and turnaround rate, so you wouldn’t want to leave any scope for errors here. And that is possible if you opt for, as mentioned earlier, the right tool for the right purpose. But here comes the real question, HOW?
Well, let’s hop on to the answers!
How the hiring process can be made highly convenient using modern tools & software
The key is to choose the right tools.
Surely there are many options out there, but you have to be smart and thoroughly informed to make the right decision. So, let us help in navigating the most suitable choices as per your organization’s expectations, requirements, and scale.
1. Assessing the potential candidates
It starts with choosing the “right one” for the role. You must make the right choice while shortlisting the candidate to balance the retention rate and the spent resources. That’s why you need state-of-the-art technology for assessment and hiring.
One of the best go-to solutions for such requirements would be Zapilio. The software is highly accurate with an AI-powered engine and offers many other features to streamline the hiring process.
2. Onboarding made easier
You made a choice and shortlisted the best candidate. But now it’s your turn to make them feel welcome to your team and introduce them to the company’s goals, visions, missions, and culture. It’s time to onboard them the right way, to make them aware of all the growth opportunities and how the organization can build a strong, mutually beneficial relationship.
And for that, you can never be wrong going with automated onboarding tools. There are several flexible HR onboarding applications to integrate with the tools your organization already uses to Improve employee engagement & employee experience.
Summary
Onboarding should not just be treated as a process but rather as an experience. A positive onboarding experience ensures high retention rates, and the employee is more likely to push themselves for the company if they’re welcomed and trained the right way.
It’s hard to meet those expectations with traditional onboarding. That’s why organizations should move on to a more efficient approach, i.e., automated onboarding.
Organizations can leverage such tools that use state-of-the-art technologies, AI-powered engines, and easy-to-use interfaces to transform and significantly streamline the hiring and onboarding process. Organizations can get much more than expected by using the right tools for the right purposes.
