Getting new recruits off to a great start is the ultimate goal of onboarding. Moreover, the more organizations focus on expanding their business goals and output quality, the deeper the need for comprehensive HR recruitment software.
Employee onboarding refers to the process from a new starter accepting their role to starting their job in the position and settling into the organization. In the past, it has been considered a primary administrative process revolving around compliance-related paperwork, filling out a personal contact, superannuation and banking details, and IT logins.
However, now, HR managers understand the power of an excellent onboarding process to onboard new employees in their roles, the workplace culture, and the community. This process goes beyond the first day at work. In fact, the average duration for the entire onboarding process could be anywhere around a month.
When onboarding a group of employees, it is crucial to streamline the process and minimize all time-consuming manual processes. However, can any organization ensure the quality of their onboarding experience doesn’t suffer?
That’s what we are here to talk about. Let’s look at how you can ensure that your
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Keep the Process Simple
It is good to onboard all new hires on the same day, preferably by the start day. That way, you can begin the new employees’ onboarding journey as a group. In addition, it creates a sense of community among new starters and fosters close connections between colleagues.
It’s also a great way to streamline the processes for the HR team. This makes it as easy as it could to set up welcome sessions, like a ‘meet the executives’ morning tea or office tours. However, don’t forget the fact that personal touch is important too. Ensure that the experience goes both ways by asking new employees about who they are as an individual, both inside and even outside the workplace. One example here is during the welcome meeting or shoutout for internal communications channels. It is all about ensuring every new employee feels welcome and appreciated.
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Save Time with Onboarding Software
For organizations hiring in a large mass, HR recruitment software is the key to streamlining the process, both for HR and as well as the new recruit. You have to ensure that your software is user-friendly and compatible with mobile phones and laptops. It should have features such as electronic acceptance and digital signatures.
Using software reduces the time spent onboarding each employee and creates a formal process, something that was identified as a critical challenge in ELMO’s 2021 HR Industry Benchmark Report. The research found that 51% of organizations had fully implemented onboarding technology, a significant jump from 35% in 2019.
This growth shows that more employers are investing in improving their onboarding experience. In addition, they have started accepting the fact that first impressions can decide whether new employees stick around.
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Communication is Your Key
It is only natural for new joiners to feel nervous. However, one thing employers can do is provide clear communication about what their first week will entail. Being organized in the preboarding stage is an excellent first sign for your new employees.
Preboarding includes:
- Requesting new recruits for their documentation
- Setting up IT and logins credentials
- Organizing equipment for day one in the office or shipping it to their home for work-from-home employees
- Creating first day/week schedule, including welcome tours or zoom, or other platform meetings
- Setting up their eLearning login credentials and any required compliance training
A helpful idea for mass onboarding is to provide documents with FAQs for new recruits to streamline the number of queries that come up on HR’s desk. Moreover, ensure they have access to IT support and the know-how to ask for assistance. Any IT problems are inevitable with a large group of new recruits, especially those onboarding virtually, so an easy-to-access link to contact IT is essential.
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Adopt Hybrid
The desire for flexibility is at its peak now, and it is here to stay. The employees who have to work from home during the pandemic lockdowns expect to be able to operate in a flexible manner in their new roles, and the HR recruitment software process should be no exception.
Post lockdown, organizations expect the new recruits to fall into two groups – those who want to onboard remotely from home and the ones who want to come into the office. Creating a hybrid onboarding schedule simply means the experience and the agenda are the same, whether they are in the office or at home.
Similarly, welcome meetings and inductions can become a hybrid by connecting those at work from home via communication channels, such as Zoom. A welcome lunch or fun activity could also cater to both categories of work profiles by ordering lunch or a coffee to the remote employees’ homes or even giving them a surprise gift card. This kind of gesture sends a strong signal out to new hires that are a part of your team, irrespective of the location that they are working from.
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Give Your New Hire a Voice
Even if you are onboarding a large number of employees at one time, don’t forget to give your new recruits a chance to offer feedback. It can be as simple as a few closed-ended questions at the end of the first week.
Asking for feedback from new joinees is the best way to evaluate the onboarding experience. After all, no one can get into the mindset of a new hire as they can. Tools, such as ELMO Survey, can help HR gather and analyze employee sentiment from short pulse surveys or more in-depth employee surveys.
On the Ending Note
Most startups don’t focus on onboarding as much as they should. However, the key to a successful business process lies in how the organization practices its onboarding since employees are the strongest pillars of a business.
For a long time, organizations have been practicing manual onboarding that runs on continuous loops of emails, endless excel sheets, job posting on portals, etc. However, it is time to upgrade the technology to something more sophisticated. Integrate HR recruitment software and streamline your recruitment process today!
