Digital Onboarding trends that every HR professional should know

Onboarding has become a critical factor in enhancing an organization’s employee lifecycle. In general, a structured and simplified onboarding process helps the employee succeed and rapidly induces organizational culture. With the pandemic, digital tools are maturing in the workplace. Hence organizations are looking for digital onboarding tools that can transform the employee experience.

Quick pointers for Digital Onboarding

• A tailored onboarding and enhanced collaboration with existing collaboration improve retention rates.
• An effective onboarding program minimizes time to performance in more than 60% of the new hires.
• 25% of employees quit within the first year, it takes around six months for a business to break even on the cost of the new hire.
• Onboarding plays a vital role in employee engagement and improves it by 20%.

Digital Onboarding – The lifecycle

Do you think the job of HR is done once the candidate accepts the offer? It has become quite common that the candidate may not turn up on the joining date. How do you save yourselves from these unexpected surprises? Digital onboarding and communication with peers will enhance the hire-to-retire experience.

Employers with strong brands already know that the onboarding process initiates now that the candidate submits the application form itself. Every experience, interaction and touch point counts and will leave a lasting impression.

How Digital tools can Transform Onboarding?

In the traditional process, new hires would interact face-to-face with their managers to learn about the culture and training for the new roles. Several induction programs and training sessions were scheduled for during the first few days of joining for the employees. As young professionals have become tech-savvy these days and time is an important arsenal for an organization’s performance.

The new digital process involves paperwork, interactions and communication channels with the existing workforce, educational sessions, and career development plans for the new hires.

In the pool of information that is shared with the new hires, the actual message might get lost to seek the attention of new hires. Moreover, the traditional processes consume a lot of time and effort from the employee as well as the HR business function. Mcdonalds’ leverages a digital learning platform for their new employee training needs, and they witnessed more than 90% satisfaction scores from new hires.

Why do you need digital employee onboarding?

Many organizations attribute digital employee onboarding as a simplified process compared to the traditional process. But it has many advantages beyond that.

1. Digital onboarding is a cost-effective and efficient process for information sharing, document validation, and new hire orientation.
2. Accessibility – The digital tools for onboarding are available 24/7 so that new joiners can access them at their convenience.
3. Information accuracy – With digital onboarding, you can ensure that accurate information is shared with all the new joiners. Despite the team size and organizational projects, generic information would be the same for every one of them.
4. Motivation – If you can induce AI-enabled onboarding solutions, the training and interactions between individuals can be more realistic and motivate them to interact more.
5. Managers and HRs can design the onboarding program as per their needs and use the right tools that they need for a seamless transition.

The Impact of Digital Onboarding Solutions

1.    Bottom line

Organizations with successful onboarding programs have 86% employee retention rates. In general, this is 30 basis points above the organizations that do not have the same. Retention rates impact hiring costs and in turn the bottom line.

2.    Revenue Impact

As per BCG impact assessment, organizations may witness 2.5x revenue growth with effective onboarding solutions. This may be the sweet spot for the C-suite.

3.    Time to performance

In traditional programs, in-person training costs a lot of effort from managers, team members, and all the stakeholders. With digital onboarding, you can save these efforts. Also, the new hires will require lesser time to start in their new roles.

4.    Knowledge Management

The biggest challenge for HR during onboarding is attaining knowledge about the individuals, processes, and performance. Digital onboarding solutions simplify this process and provide information at each touchpoint.

Effective Solutions for Digital Onboarding

• Automated document processing and helpdesk portals to minimize manual effort and collect all the relevant information about the new hires.
• Chatbots for knowledge management, and assistance with any organizational queries. As they can support you 24/7, they can be the best solution as a virtual buddy.
• AI-enabled communication and goals platform for seamless collaboration among the team members and enabling a suitable learning path for the new employee.
• Employee support portals to provide information about the benefits, payroll assistance, and any organization’s standards and information.
• Central repository for all the documentation, notification, and alerts for critical processes to avoid any delays.

Unfortunately, all the employees may not prefer the same experience for everyone. Regardless of the roles, business functions, and job responsibilities, organizations may need to focus on customization. An AI-enabled solution like Onboardn can help you transition for a better onboarding experience.

The most common misconception is that onboarding is about information sharing. But there is way beyond that.

Also, read more: Enterprise Digital Workers