You say hi. They say WOW!
The contract is signed and expectations are running high. In just two months, you will meet again. Stop right there! Rewind and redo. When it comes to recruiting, nothing is more damaging than allowing radio silence between the handshake and the first day at work. Here, we take a closer look on how you can engage and keep the talent that takes your business to new heights. All thanks to personal and efficient onboarding that kicks in before the ink has even dried.
– How, When and Why
Employee Onboarding & Preboarding
Digital transformation is vital for your future business and competitiveness. Halfway efforts and adjustments are no longer enough. Just look at the many businesses that failed to see the need of e-commerce to complement their existing offering and how they still struggle to repair the damage. To survive, a digital 360 perspective on your organization is a must – even if you choose not to digitalize everything. And since no company can make it without the right employees, it all starts with a modernized and streamlined recruitment process. Here, onboarding is a critical success factor.
Physical or digital onboarding?
Both, of course!
Onboarding and preboarding are sort of two sides of the same coin, but with a subtle difference. Preboarding refers exclusively to the part of the recruitment process that takes place before the first day at work. It provides additional benefits as the new employee will be very much up to speed right from the start. We are strong advocates of preboarding, as the process will have greater effect the earlier you get going. In fact, it is a necessity for avoiding costly setbacks in the business. But more on that later. Let’s start by uniting two strong forces that are equally important to make your onboarding efficient and memorable.
Having said that, a successful onboarding doesn’t have to be completely digital, even if it can be. On the contrary, the introduction of new employees in the workplace can benefit greatly from traditional meetings and physical interaction as well. The digital transformation is not intended to replace, but rather complement and strengthen your existing offering by creating completely new opportunities. In learning, this magical mix of the physical and the digital is commonly referred to as ”blended learning”. Onboarding – and the digital transformation in general – is about picking the best of both worlds and thereby creating an even stronger experience.
There are ways to streamline and control your onboarding in detail with simple but powerful digital elements that either complement or completely replace the physical.
Imagine a tool where you can automate all the tedious and time-consuming bits to instead focus wholeheartedly on what really matters – to engage your next star and begin your joint journey forward.
Among other things, a digitalized onboarding will help you:
Increase work focus
You have a lot to do, we know. So why allow annoying distractions? A digitalized onboarding paves way for a seamless process that reduces headaches and the need for putting out fires. Let the program ensure that the right information reaches the right person at the right time. And in the right way.
Put administration on autopilot
There is a tenacious notion that ”the truly important” things should be handled manually. If you ask us, it’s quite the opposite. Automations make you less dependent on a checklist. And the more documents, agreements and tasks you can digitalize and automate, the better. Especially when it comes to onboarding, where administration should take up as little space as possible. You could think of your digital tool as a software version of Miss Moneypenny, the perfect secretary.
Create flexibility and free up time
If the participant cannot come to the onboarding, why not let the onboarding come to the participant? Make it easy to start and pause the process, anytime, anywhere. The fact that the participant has that freedom only boosts further interest and you can free up time to build your social relationship.
Continuously discuss, inform, add and engage
Endless meetings with all talk and no action will create zero thrills. When intriguing stuff happens in our smart phones, on the other hand … Why spend time on finding a vacant conference room or risk missing one another in the office corridors, when you can just as easily have a fun speed-meeting in the onboarding chat? Use the digital possibilities to create direct and accurate communication – and make sure it feels new and exciting!
Here’s why employee onboarding is so important
A new job should feel anything but heavy. Onboarding is one way – perhaps the most efficient one of all – to inform, engage and inspire new employees so that they immediately feel like they’re in the right place with the right people. Sometimes that may be the sole purpose. Other times, onboarding is about internal recruitment and more advanced learning over a longer period. Regardless of where you set the bar, it is important that you have the right tools to tailor the content exactly the way you want it.
The benefits of onboarding are many. Reports from the international research network Global Recruiting show that a successful onboarding process raises the results of new employees by an average of 11 percent. In addition, they reach full productivity 34 percent faster than others on average. Statistics from FinancesOnline, in turn, show that 77 percent of employees who have undergone a thought-through onboarding achieve their goals and that 54 percent of companies with onboarding programs see increased employee engagement.
Of course, HR Managers, employers and boards applaud such figures. But there is also a greater and more long-term value to onboarding than the direct results.
In today’s labor market, many companies find it difficult to attract the top talent. People change workplace to a much greater extent than before and the best in each field – especially in tech – always have plenty of opportunities to choose from. In addition, research shows that 33 percent of all new employees decide already in the first week whether they intend to stay in the company or not in the long term. An alarmingly large number quit within the first 45 days.
Constantly having to search for and recruit new people easily becomes overwhelming and consumes both time and money (billions annually, to be more precise). A well-tailored preboarding or onboarding gives you an opportunity to leave a good first impression and get a flying start. As you know, that chance will never come again.
As the competition for top talent is fierce, there are of course no guarantees of success, but the survey from FinancesOnline shows that at least 25 percent of the companies that work actively with onboarding do increase the proportion of employees who choose to stay with them.
Easy, efficient and engaging – the employee onboarding checklist
So, what does the perfect onboarding look like? There isn’t an answer to that question, but many. In fact, as many as there are companies in the world. The whole point is to create an introduction that in a unique way reflects your business, vision and work culture. Onboarding is your chance to connect with your new employee and show how exciting, challenging, developing and fun their work-life soon will become.
”But do people really want to start working prior to their first day?”
Preboarding – the art of seizing yesterday and why it’s necessary
A preboarding can be the only introduction for a new employee or the beginning of a longer onboarding process that continues once the job has started. However, many believe that preboarding is the crucial key to success in new recruitment. As many as 83 percent of all high-performing companies, in fact.
This is hardly surprising, as the time between the signing of the contract and the first day at work tends to become a bit of a vacuum. When time passes during complete radio silence, there is always a risk that the new employee will change his or her mind or even have time to find another job instead.
Allowing for this happen is an unnecessary mistake, to say the least. Especially when a solid preboarding can be tailored quickly and easily without expenses going through the roof.
The more wow factors you pack your preboarding with, the easier it will be to create engagement that is converted to productivity and measurable results. And if you don’t have the time to go all in, you can still get far with quite small measures like giving the new employee access to documentation, training videos, checklists and group chats with the senior colleagues and other new recruits. Or making sure that all administration and documentation is dealt with already in the preboarding so that it doesn’t steal focus from the first important time at work.
benefits of preboarding
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You take advantage of the energy from the contract writing
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You get the administration out of the way
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You get to know your new employee better
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The new employee gets to know you and the team better
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You pave way for faster results and long-term commitment
Before you head start – have a look at our checklist for preboarding.
Automation – the rocket fuel of onboarding
When it comes to onboarding, there are several benefits to automation, both regarding the program itself and for your business as a whole. Automated solutions free up a lot of time, reduce the communication error rate, increase engagement and make it easier when you need to adjust the content or put out fires. For the new employee, it creates clarity, flexibility, workflow and increased freedom in solving the task at hand.
Greeting messages, meeting bookings, result reviews and feedback – by automating the process, it becomes so much easier to create a personal, factual and productive onboarding. The kind of effortless introduction and experience every new employee wants from an employer.
With automation, you can easily set your triggers for when information and reminders should be sent out. All to encourage and involve the new employee and make sure that the onboarding goes according to plan.
Automation leads to:
Less administration
Less workload
Faster communication
Faster completion
Faster results
Using automation, your onboarding gets a good flow and becomes less strenuous. Anyone who has just started exploring the possibilities of digital learning is quickly struck by how little manual hand-laying is necessary, provided that the tool has all the most important functions. And after all, why make something as complex as learning more difficult than it really needs to be?
Time is money – how long does it take to create an onboarding?
Studies from the United States have shown that each new employee costs about $ 4,000 in recruitment costs alone. And the number of millennials who changed jobs in the past year represents a loss of over $ 30 billion. The pressure on HR departments is evidently greater than ever before. The increased mobility in the labor market requires that onboarding is both streamlined and made more accessible and engaging. If your company doesn’t even have an HR department that can relieve you, this will of course be an even bigger challenge to face.
Unfortunately …
… there is no magic shortcut to avoid planning, structuring and defining your onboarding process. These aspects are all critical for it to be as successful as possible. An unclear or sloppy onboarding will not make a good impression on anyone, so the preparation and strategy are at least as important as the actual content.
Before you start working in your digital tool to create an unforgettable experience – a.k.a the fun part – you need to decide what you want to achieve with your onboarding and which parts you want to digitalize and not. If your business has worked with traditional onboarding before, there are certainly plenty of good elements to adapt digitally to achieve the desired results even faster. Other things probably work just fine as they are. It is always about creating the perfect balance in the interplay between the human and the digital.
… onboarding is a very cost-effective way to introduce and train new employees once you get started. Especially since the process can largely be digitalized and put on autopilot. Calculated over time, a successful onboarding can be your best investment ever, as satisfied and committed employees who want to stay in your company are truly invaluable.
With a powerful digital tool, you can easily start exploring new possibilities and work with the resources you want to highlight in your onboarding program. Video editing, calendar integration, webinars and analytics are just a handful of the elements you can use.
Creating and launching a razor-sharp onboarding is not done overnight. All in all, you are going to need a few weeks.
But on the positive …
One last thing
Onboarding is an important element in the digital transformation journey. But still only part of the greater whole. The learning journey is about securing resources for the future and constantly seeking new paths. In using a dynamic learning platform where teams from all sides of the business can interact and exchange knowledge, you create a springboard to grow exponentially.
Do you want to learn more about us, our tool and how our customers use Learnifier to create efficient onboarding?
Book a demo with us today
This is a relevant and common question regarding preboarding. Could the process have an undesirable effect by making the new employee feel compelled to start ”working for free” before the employment has in fact begun?
On the contrary, we dare say! And we have the numbers to back it up. One of the most common reasons why a probationary employee gets cold feet and quits is that the learning process is deficient and that expectations are not communicated clearly enough.
A recent Gallup poll shows that only 50 percent of participants actually know what is expected of them in their employment. And among millennials – who make up the largest group of new talents in the job market – 72 percent of those who receive help and support from managers experience an increased commitment.
Preboarding is a golden opportunity to dislodge the paperwork and invite the talent to a flying start, with content tailored to each role and person. There is simply no better icebreaker.