Tech-Enabled Smart Onboarding: Driving Business Impact for HR Leaders

How much do you invest in onboarding vis-à-vis recruitment?  And how much do lost employees and re-staffing cost you during the year? Structured onboarding programs impact business outcomes, but Smart Onboarding – technologically enabled onboarding programs can take them to the next level.

What is onboarding?

Onboarding is the process through which new hires learn the ins and outs of the organization, their team and their role. Employee onboardingOpens a new window  also determines the future success of the new hire at the organization. Multiple studies and surveys have shown that onboarding has a direct impact on business outcomes. This is distinct from the much shorter and early-stage process of Orientation.

**The first 90 days- the typical period in which lasting impressions are formed on both sides – are powerful in helping the new recruit decide whether to stay or not**. Even if they stay, those crucial first few days, weeks and months set the tone for the general motivation, commitment, engagement and performance levels for the foreseeable future.

Improved employee experience delivers business outcomes

The principle for onboarding is quite similar to that of acquiring a new customer- it is much more cost-effective to retain customers/ employees than it is to acquire new ones. Looked at via the prism of Employee Experience (EX) –  which is as crucial for organizational success as Customer Experience (CX) today – effective onboarding that sets the tone for great EX is crucial for retention. (see Stats Box)

Business outcomes of a structured onboarding program include:

 

Onboarding is great. Smart onboarding is even better.

In today’s digital environment, the right tools and technology can make everything smarter, more efficient and more secure. Onboarding is no different and technology can improve productivity, efficiency, and compliance of onboarding processes Opens a new window exponentially. 

Here are 5 onboarding best practices:

1. Make the paperwork as pain-free as possible: nobody like paperwork. Unfortunately, joining a new role requires plenty of form signing and enrolling. A good onboarding tool can automate that; ensuring the right forms are filled on time, reminders and alerts are sent in case of delays and errors are flagged and rectified in real-time.

   Outcomes: minimizes operational work for HR teams, ensures compliance, security, and consistency, mitigates the risk of human error.
    

2. Ensure a consistent workflow in a self-serve environment where employees can complete the formalities at their pace, in their own space, over their preferred device.

   Outcomes: Not only is it more secure, transparent and accurate, it allows the formalities to be completed before the actual joining date, ultimately increasing the productivity of the early days after joining which can be spent on more strategic work.
    

3. Minimize the ‘gap period’ risk: experts refer to the period between making an offer and the joining date as a vulnerable ‘gap’ period. Many recruits shop around for counter offers during this time and are liable to be lost, derailing plans for the hirer. **Technology allows HR to use the gap period to engage and excite new hires via onboarding tools**.

   Here are a few ideas that technology can enable:

• Logging into a ‘new hire zone’ or controlled access to the intranet where they can virtually meet their mentors or other new hires
• View video welcome messages from company leadership
• View job descriptions of people in similar roles as them
• Access to skill refresher courses

  Outcome: Digital engagement during the gap period minimizes the gap-period risk, reducing the cost of hiring

1. Personalizing the process through the employee lifecycle: machine learning can help identify areas the new hire would be most interested in and personalize the entire Employee Experience, including onboarding. Here are some personalization ideas that tech can enable in onboarding:

• Choose the experience: allowing hires to choose a personalized onboarding experienceOpens a new window that best suits their personality- from ‘gamified versions’ to straightforward task-based processes – can significantly help improve their engagement with the outcomes of the process.
• Personalize the services: automatically offer resettlement support to those who have relocated, suggest skill refresher courses to those with long tenures in the previous role etc.
• Based on personal details, the system would pick the right forms, offers and instructions based on personal data including marital status, age and role/ title/ level etc.

  Outcomes: employees feel more valued and familiar with the company since the experience is tailormade for them. This improves retention and engagement.

1. Leverage data and analytics to create a seamless EX throughout the lifecycle: onboarding tools can help track, measure and analyze the data and outcomes to continuously improve the process and the ROI.

   Here are some ways to do so:

• Connect the dots between behavior patterns – for example, if the system notices warning signs of disinterest or disengagement (missing alerts and deadlines, poor usage of the access rights or features etc.), it can flag it to the HR administrator, who may need to make human intervention to ensure retention
• Track data to improve the hiring process based on the patterns and insights that emerge from onboarding data: are there patterns in how those who left within 6 months interacted with the system? and so on.
• Tracking the ROI in terms of improved retention; time and effort saved due to pre-boarding, improved compliance and faster time to productivity of new hires – all the metrics can be captured on an onboarding system to ensure there is an ROI-substantiated business case for the investment. 

  ​​​Outcomes: a consistent, seamless employee experience leads to higher productivity, less anxiety, and higher commitment. The structured orchestrated workflows also ensure the right experience is delivered at the right stage in the career.

Also Read: 

10 Employee Onboarding Checklist Items You Can’t Afford to MissOpens a new window

Onboarding is, in a sense, much more than just getting the buy-in of the new hire – it is an opportunity to sustainably and strategically align the new hire and the organization to each other, so both can grow together.

But a lot of what happens in those first 90 days is intangible: driven by how the employee feels as an outcome of interaction with others, how valued or engaged they are made to feel by peers and managers etc. Technology can support that effort while still quantifying and measuring the outcomes. That said, the role of human intervention and supervision is crucial even with the best of technology and can never be underestimated.