Onboarding is a very important phase in the employee lifecycle and it has a great effect on the new hire’s satisfaction and commitment to stay. The newbie’s time taken to transition into the new role which also includes the organizational component, their satisfaction and their intent to remain with the employer will depend on the effectiveness of the onboarding. However, onboarding is still viewed by the majority of organizations as a bolt-on rather than a transformational tool for engagement and consequent retention of employees. Transformational learning helps in getting the new employees onboard such that they do not feel just welcome, but also motivated, educated, and aligned with the vision and culture of the organization.
Thus, in this blog, we will proceed to those strategies that turn the onboarding policy on its head and do so by paying attention to the practical actions that the companies could implement to make the new carpet more bright and interesting. In particular, we will outline the expectations around technology and ongoing engagement to the future state of onboarding.
Understanding the Importance of Onboarding
Effective onboarding of new employees is not merely a courtesy. Rather, it is an integral component of the employee lifecycle that can have repercussions in terms of productivity, commitment, and retention. New employees who undergo structured onboarding tend to become more involved and productive than employees without such a program. Similarly, a seamless process to bring in the new employee cultivates trust in the relationship between the new employee and the organization, such that they are encouraged to grow in their careers.
The appropriate approach brings about the following benefits to the new workers during the onboarding phase:
- Appreciation of the organization and the position that they are in.
- Becoming comfortable with what they can and will do in the organization.
- Getting to bond with their immediate team and the whole organization.
On the contrary, however, poor onboarding often results in misunderstanding, annoyance, or apathy. Absence of support to new hires may lead to second-guessing of the employment decision which spells low employee wellbeing and high attrition rates. This is why improving onboarding is such a critical concern for companies nowadays.
Designing a Seamless Onboarding Journey
New hires should be properly oriented with an underlying aim of satisfaction from the first day at work and that their roles have been made easier. The onboarding process can be segmented into three main areas: the pre-onboarding stage, the first-day onboarding, and the ongoing onboarding stage. All of them are very important for the general experience of the employee.
Pre-Onboarding: Setting the Stage
A new hire’s first day is not the beginning of their onboarding experience. This phase, referred to as pre-onboarding, is where interaction with the recruit and building up the anticipation of them starting the new job takes place. Employers can utilize this period to give the recruits an insight into where they will be working and ensure that they are ready from the day they confirm acceptance of the offer.
Successful pre-onboarding encompasses the following strategies;
Welcome Communications: Personalized welcome emails and messages to the new employee can be useful in creating a great impression. Distributing welcome, company, and new hire materials may help alleviate some of this confusion on the new employee’s part.
Clear Instructions: To ease any anxiety or nervousness that new hires may have, it may help to provide them with very concise information on how their first day will go. This could include logistics especially where to park, how to dress, or what their day is likely to be like.
First-Day Onboarding: Creating a Positive Start
The first day is a very key step in the whole onboarding process. New hires should be empowered and supported, and. Companies should make sure that every step aimed at meeting new employees is done properly. One cannot underestimate the importance of bringing in a structure on the first day of an employee to their whole tenure.
They include the following elements:
A Warm Welcome: New hires need to be warmly welcomed, whether onsite or online. There should be a responsible person who will take care of the new employees for the day, tell them what is to be done, and allow them to ask any questions they may have.
Introduction to Company Culture: The first day is always the best day to immerse yourself in the organization’s core values, mission, and culture. Helping new employees place their position within the larger body increases their chances of alignment with the organization’s vision.
Role-Specific Orientation: Taking internal structures and the scope of the revolving change into account, the employee should be clear on the parameters of the position and its role-specific duties. Giving them a general idea of what they will do, what is expected of them, and what is going on be the initial work may help them be ready to work immediately.
Ongoing Onboarding: Building Engagement and Growth
Ongoing onboarding activities should be initiated at least within the second or third day or week of employment or their preparedness in that regard. Employers should aspire to provide ongoing onboarding support. This stage can last for several months as well, depending on the job level and the nature of the organization.
Key strategies for ongoing onboarding include:
Check-Ins and Feedback: Contact with the workers’ immediate supervisors or mentors must be maintained through frequent managerial or occupational check-ups. This makes sure that employees can ask questions and solicit feedback or air their grievances.
Continuous Learning: Continuous Learning: The onboarding process should not only be focused on identifying the underlying issues but rather also look at nurturing development. New hire orientation alone is insufficient, hence it should incorporate training programs whether formal training or on-the-job training as a way of improving the skill of the new employee and carrying out his responsibilities better.
Celebrating Milestones: Special goals during a new employee training campaign like getting through some basic training and delivering specific tasks should be noted and encouraged since they help motivate the new employee by acknowledging her efforts.
Personalizing the Onboarding Experience
Onboarding can be memorable, but only if the new employees are made to feel like it’s about them; and that’s why personalization matters. There is a possibility that the one-size-fits-all strategy is not the best way to make sure that every employee gets their specific requirements. It can be observed that it’s more effective to modify onboarding to fit the person instead of a one-size-fits-all method, as the employees will feel more cared for.
Tailoring Onboarding to Roles and Departments
Onboarding will differ from one role or department to another. Take for instance, a newly recruited software engineer will have to learn the relevant coding tools and the development environments within the organization while a newly hired marketing professional may only start with the general concepts of branding and campaigning. If an employee is fearful of the new processes, the management should help them by updating them about what to expect based on their particular job position.
Making Use of Employee Profiles
By using employee profiles as reference sources during the onboarding process, companies can meet each new hire based on what they bring to the company, as in their unique abilities, interests, and career aspirations. Accumulation of information about the employees’ experience, skills, and career preferences enables the organization to adjust the training and growth opportunities for the employees.
There are instances when even highly skilled employees need direction in a new work culture, addressing a need for orientation and induction.
Leveraging Technology for Effective Onboarding
Technology, as a change agent, is enhancing the onboarding process. This transformation of processes with the use of the internet is known as digital onboarding, using platforms like Auzmor Learn, takes care of the expected hassles, enhances communication, and makes the new employees’ experiences more fun.
Automating Administrative Tasks
One of the most time-consuming and rather boring activities that come with the process of onboarding is the collection and filling of forms: paperwork. Automation of certain processes like document collection, enrolling employees into the company advantage programs, and compliance training to the employees can mitigate the pressure on the HR department and make sure that new employees can concentrate on more meaningful aspects of onboarding.
Automated systems can also send reminders and notifications to new hires about deadlines or what documents need to be presented so that nothing is lost in the process.
Creating Interactive Learning Experiences
The online orientation can, for example, also create training materials such as videos, quizzes, and even simulations in addition to links and guides provided on the agency website. These tools allow employees to learn at their own pace and revisit materials as needed. For example, Auzmor Learn has features that permit an employee to select his/her preferred type of learning; there is making sure each employee gets effective training.
Building Teamwork with the Use of Technology
Digital collaboration tools have become important in the new employee orientation. Tools that make virtual meetings, messaging, or video conferences possible can bridge new employees with their coworkers despite the physical distance separating them during virtual working. In addition, these tools enable interaction with managers and mentors, and this ensures that the new employees get support during the transition.
Measuring the Onboarding Success
To enhance the onboarding process, it is also necessary to measure its success. It is by obtaining the satisfaction of the employees’ feedback and evaluating certain implications that an organization can come up with solutions to issues.
Employee Surveys
The easiest and most accurate approach is conducting employee surveys where respondents are the new employees and these surveys are meant to find out how successful onboarding has been. It may happen that at certain times within the initial months of employment, the surveys are conducted after the first week, the first month, and right at the end of the onboarding period. These surveys highlight the attitude of the employees towards the new hiring process: the problems they had to overcome and what help they received in their process of adaptation.
Key Metrics for Success
There are other ways of measuring the effectiveness of the newly implemented process other than through employee surveys, time to productivity, retention rates, and employee engagement. New employees may be targeting the full productivity level at a longer period than it was meant which could be a cause for extra help or training to be provided. Similarly, the new hires could take a lot of time in the organization before exiting due to high turnover rates which may imply the need to rework the perceived onboarding process.
The Future of Onboarding: Adapting to a Changing Workforce
The workforce is changing, and you may need to change the onboarding strategies as well. The handing out of hardcopy manuals and in-person orientation programs appear to be inadequate in the age of telecommuting, technological advancement, and changing employee needs. In the new world of work, several trends are influencing the future of onboarding: Businesses need to reshape their work to remain relevant.
The trend towards employees working from home or hybrid-work models has changed the narrative regarding recruiting and training new employees. The physical presence of managers in previous onboarding processes included office tours, face-to-face interactions, and meeting other team members. But with more and more employees working from home, companies now have to come up with onboarding structures that are suitable even when the employees are working from different locations.
For those with work arrangements involving remote work, it is important to create points of interaction virtually, that anchor them to the team and the organization. Social intranets, collaborative virtual events, and video calls can interact and engage new remote employees the same way physical presence in a company does.
You should focus on selecting digital onboarding platforms that are flexible, expandable, and include communication systems. These platforms let remote users receive, fulfill, and interact with social platforms anytime, anyplace.
Conclusion
It may very well be that most strategic onboarding efforts will not concentrate on the first week of construction, but rather on how policies, practices, and systems are put in place to support new employees on a long-term basis. A focus that incorporates meaning to the new gig and the use of structured, personalized, and technology-led processes will help address these challenges. No matter whether you are working on building an onboarding system from scratch or improving an existing one, the recommendations provided above will address the problem of making the process of introduction into the company as effective as possible.
These first few weeks and even months should be a very pleasant experience for the new employee as it is almost always one of the determinants of how well they are engaged and retained by the organization. The key thing is the tools to execute the appropriate strategies, where Auzmor’s offering guarantees that you start on the right track.
Auzmor seeks to position internal onboarding practices within organizations in a way that enhances the employee experience while leading to greater productivity outcomes within the organization.
