Before diving into the benefits and steps of using automated onboarding for your company’s well-being, let’s first know what is onboarding automation.
It is a process of using automation technology to make onboarding-related workflows more efficient. Its implementation involves the usage of a platform that can monitor a predefined business event, and once it occurs, it can kickstart actions that can affect all of your apps, data, and teams.
The full range of tasks needed to welcome and onboard a new employee can be handled via onboarding automation. These tasks may include:
- Providing employees with all the software and tools they might require during their tenure at your company.
- Planning different orientation programs.
- Gathering and distributing all the onboarding paperwork that needs to be reviewed and signed.
- Assigning them to a mentor or office ‘buddy.’
- Providing them with a welcome package with personalized gifts and the company’s name engraved on them.
- Mailing out a survey to get opinions on the onboarding procedure.
Benefits of automated onboarding:
- Enables your company to avoid security risks: Human error can cause a variety of security problems, such as giving staff members access to files containing a colleague’s personal information. As many error-prone activities may be optimized by onboarding automation, the likelihood of the occurrence of these types of errors is considerably decreased.
- Saves time for both a hiring manager and an HR employee: Hiring managers and HR staff may skip time-consuming, manual activities like switching between apps to provide new workers with the necessary apps and equipment, thus freeing them up to concentrate more on activities that need serious attention.
- Makes employees productive right from the start: Since all the equipment and tools will already be provided to them, they can now start being productive right from the start without any deviation.
- Reduces employee turnover: According to a paper by Human Capital Institute, approximately 69% of workers are more likely to stay with the company for at least three years if they receive a pleasant onboarding experience.
- Encourages you to focus on more important tasks: More than 58% of a company’s onboarding experiences, according to the Human Capital Institute, toil around paperwork and procedures. In such cases, to make your company stand out, try utilizing the onboarding process to eliminate these unpleasant chores or at least make them simpler to perform.
- Motivates new employees to support your business: A report suggests that after onboarding, every 1 in 5 employees would not suggest their company to family or friends. Automated onboarding not only keeps recruits from becoming critics but also raises the likelihood that they will actively refer their current company to others.
- Offers sufficient reasons for your employee to be excited about their work: New hires are more likely to feel appreciated and in control of their position since they have all they need to succeed right away. Employees who felt their onboarding was successful are more likely to report having a high level of job satisfaction.
Providing recruits with welcome packs containing engraved company names will thus give them one more reason to be excited about working for your organization and a favorable first impression of your corporate culture.
- Provides socializing options for your recruits: Colleagues who can converse informally with one another tend to be more productive and satisfied workers, which is good for your business.
Steps to include automation in onboarding:
- Automatic updates and fill-ups of onboarding documents: By automating regular paperwork processes, HR managers may streamline this aspect of their duties from onboarding to offboarding and everything in between. This covers the exchanging of paperwork for authorizations, employment contracts, and the requisite signatures on paperwork. You can incorporate a cloud storage program that enables you to keep contracts that have been signed safely.
- Automatic account generation: Your new hires must have immediate access to their accounts as this enables them to begin right away. Automating the process will assist you in syncing accounts and provide your salesforce, IT managers quickly, and social media managers access to their corresponding accounts.
- Automated tracking: Employee onboarding is a continuous process and demands frequent tracking. Consistent check-ins are necessary to ensure that new hires are onboarded effectively. By automating this process, you unlock features like automated reminders to check in on new hires, monitor their progress individually, and ensure ongoing compliance, which in turn will reduce your workload.
- Automate sending welcome packages: Use automated forms to gather more employee data, including confirmation of their business card information, favorite styles and food selections, clothing sizes, and much more. By using such automated forms, you may gather all the information in advance and be ready to present welcome packages to your recruits on their first day at work.
- Adding recruits to the onboarding workflow automatically: Automating the addition of recruits to the onboarding will save you time and provide your new hire with all the information they need at once, whether you want them to get involved in an ongoing project or brief them on a new one. They will be able to contribute to the objectives of your team and feel a part of it strongly in this way.
- Automated feedback system: Giving insightful feedback is necessary if you desire the overall growth of both the company and your employees.
- Training in autopilot mode: A continual process of staff growth includes training and learning. But physically guiding each of them via the same tools wastes time and is ineffective. Therefore, this procedure can be automated by recording your training session once and sending it to each new hire as needed can assist them in learning at their rate and level up.
- Automate connections amongst employees: Onboarding companions should be appointed automatically to help new hires feel at home on their first day. By arranging coffee dates, walk-and-talks, and encouraging several other ways to connect for newbies, you can spread a welcoming environment within.
Final thoughts:
Automated onboarding possesses a bunch of advantages. Incorporating candidates using automated onboarding saves not only time and money but also makes the process less tiring and more exciting.
