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A guide to improving the company onboarding process with a detailed explanation of how to streamline the process.
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Integrating new hires into your organization can often feel like navigating treacherous waters, but just like a well-oiled ship, an efficient onboarding process ensures smooth sailing.
The employee onboarding process is continuous, systematic and goal-oriented, often defining the company’s efforts. It shapes employees' experience, influences their level of engagement, and effectively determines the overall success of a company.
A well-crafted onboarding plan ensures early integration of new hires into the company's culture and allows new employees to get familiar with their roles and responsibilities. More importantly, it creates a welcoming environment for new employees, allowing them to thrive.
Streamlining new hire onboarding is the key to optimizing your efforts in the onboarding process. A streamlined process reduces the workload of HR personnel and cuts hiring costs by implementing a friendly, smooth and automated onboarding process.
In this article, we'll discuss the role of the HR team in onboarding and the best ways to streamline the onboarding process.
Let's jump right in!
An onboarding process is the sequence of activities to introduce new hires to their responsibilities, including familiarizing them with the team and the company's workflow. It also involves welcoming new employees, setting up workstations and completing necessary filing.
An onboarding training aims to equip employees with the necessary tools to succeed. It doesn't end after hiring; it continues until employees fully integrate into the company.
A memorable onboarding process is the best way to sustain a company workflow, and an optimised onboarding process has various benefits. 3 top benefits include:
Efficient employee onboarding translates to higher retention rates and enhanced productivity.
According to a recent study, companies with a robust onboarding process improve their productivity by 70%.
Employees are excited and eager to get started when the company does onboarding properly.
Making time to answer questions from new hires, explaining the company's objectives and discussing their personal goals sets the stage for strong employee engagement.
According to a report by SHRM, it costs approximately 33% of an employee’s salary to employ a replacement.
Setting up a standardized onboarding process reduces turnover, and fewer resources are channeled into hiring. With this, you can save costs and ensure the HR team isn’t overwhelmed.
Onboarding typically consists of four phases that address different aspects of the employee's integration journey. The phases guide organisations, allowing them to use a framework to provide a well-rounded onboarding experience.
The phases include:
This phase of the employee onboarding process begins when an employee accepts the job offer. Effective communication is crucial during this period.
Here, employees complete the necessary paperwork and receive relevant information for their respective roles. It may involve sending an explanatory video or documents to help new employees understand what to expect on the first day at work. New hires can be paired with experienced employees to serve as their mentors.
The essence of pre-boarding is to reduce first-day-at-work anxiety. Effectively carrying out this phase eases tension, allowing employees to start off with their best foot forward.
This phase aims to get new hires fully integrated into the company. It typically occurs on the first day or week of employment.
Orientation allows HR managers to discuss key company policies such as vacation, medical policies and other important topics not addressed during the pre-boarding phase.
New employees learn about the company's culture and values in this phase. HR can introduce them to the organization's workforce, including team members and top management staff.
The HR onboarding process is not complete without this step. It significantly determines the level of success attained by newly hired employees.
This is the step where new hires can access the company's learning management system for training, courses, etc. Essentially, the training programs should be job-specific, continuous and crafted to provide employees with extensive career advancement and personal development.
HR needs to set clear expectations for employees in their respective roles and walk them through the performance evaluation process.
Assembly has a detailed template for productive check-ins. Check it out!
In this final phase of the employee onboarding process, the focus is to help employees build connections and become integrated members of the company's workforce. It also involves providing new employees with collaboration, networking opportunities and tools that improve communication.
The new hire onboarding process is often demanding and time-consuming. The best way to streamline the onboard process is to leverage technology, including infrastructure that makes remote onboarding much more effortless.
Streamlining the process helps avoid burnout and reduce the incidence of missed crucial steps.
Here's a 4-step guide on how to streamline your onboard process:
This checklist should contain tasks, paperwork, and all activities required during onboarding, including orientation sessions and workstation setups.
The next step is to optimize your efforts using a tool that automates the process. An onboarding software offers real-time communication, document management and task management features, including electronic forms and digital signatures to automate paperwork.
This reduces time, paperwork and the need for manual printing since electronic forms.
Assembly is a comprehensive onboarding tool that allows you to communicate smoothly with new hires, assign responsibilities and track progress. Book a demo today.
This entails creating intranet and communication portals for new employees. With that, they can access valuable information and documents related to their roles and the onboarding process.
With more inputs, the onboarding process gets more standardized and optimized. Therefore, it’s essential to continually obtain feedback from new hires and HR managers to identify areas of improvement.
The company can obtain feedback through surveys or routine check-ins.
Yes, onboarding means you're hired.
However, it does not necessarily assure permanent employment. Onboarding represents a transition period between job acceptance and a formal job commencement. Some companies opt for a probationary period, usually lasting three months, while others may be shorter or longer.
It's the duty of HR managers to inform new hires about such policy and also indicate time duration expectations during this period.
The role of HR is to ensure a smooth employee onboarding flow via different activities. Some of the activities include:
The HR team is responsible for preparing, creating and organizing relevant paperwork for new employees to review and sign. Important onboard materials include employee contracts, tax forms and health insurance documents.
Following the completion of the hiring process, the HR team welcomes new hires, ensuring they are aware of their rights, responsibilities, the company's ethics, existing safety guidelines and key legal requirements. Orientation sessions provide an avenue to explain the company's structure, culture and policies to new hires.
The HR addresses questions, confusion and concerns during the onboarding process. The HR team effectively communicates with new hires, clarifying policies, compensation packages, growth trajectory, and employment benefits such as retirement plans and life insurance schemes.
HRs are also responsible for creating structured and purposeful training initiatives to improve the new employees’ relevant skills, knowledge and expertise to succeed in their assigned roles.
HR managers must routinely monitor employees' progress undergoing the onboarding process. This helps ascertain and measure how well new hires integrate into the company's workflow. In addition, regular check-ins with new hires help to identify challenges and obtain valuable feedback.
A successful employee onboarding process perfectly surmises the saying; the first impression lasts longer. It is branding in itself. When carried out smoothly, new employees have a positive experience and become company brand ambassadors, making it easier to attract and retain top-tier applicants.
Ultimately, a streamlined onboarding program improves the overall company's productivity by fostering commitment and engagement amongst newly hired employees.
Assembly is a trusted HR onboarding tool that reduces the workload of HR teams. It guarantees company-wide efficiency and success. Sign up for free today.
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