6 Innovative Methods for Onboarding New Employees
You have spent a lot of time and money finding and recruiting the best candidates for your company and definitely don’t want to stand the risk of losing them. A study by Deloitte shows that companies witness 22% of turnover within the first 45 days and around 4% of new hires quit after an unsatisfactory first day. Further, studies show that new recruits are more likely to stay with a company for over 3 years if onboarding is done right. So, if you are onboarding new employees, you might want to ensure the onboarding process is quite seamless and engaging.
Employee Onboarding is a process that familiarizes new recruits to the company’s policies, business processes and job functions such that they acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to become effective members of the organization. It also provides employees a 360-degree perspective of the organization – its culture, values, and the way it functions. The process also allows employees to understand if they are a good fit, and if they would be able to grow and thrive in the environment it provides.
The rise of the Internet, a globally dispersed workforce, mass hiring and increased cost of recruitment are redefining the organizational approach to employee onboarding. All these factors combined have pushed companies to pursue a more innovative and interactive approach to onboarding. Organizations can leverage a cost-effective learning management system (LMS) or other such innovative onboarding tools to onboard their employees. While onboarding new employees, you must ensure that the onboarding program is interactive, personalized and simple.
How to Onboard New Employees in an Innovative and Interactive Manner:
1. Blended Route to Onboarding
As the name suggests, the process combines traditional onboarding elements with online onboarding, that is, personal interaction and technology. For instance, the HR team uses features of an onboarding tool to send personalized messages and other online communication to take the new recruits through the first day. In fact, they can also be prepared for their new role even before joining with online instructor-led sessions.
Also Read: Best Employee Onboarding Solutions for the Digital-First Workforce
2. Engage with Employees Once They Sign the Dotted Line
A robust program for onboarding new employees should ideally kickstart the process right from the moment an employee accepts an offer. One way to go about this is to leverage the functionalities of your onboarding tool to send welcome emails and invite them to browse through the new hire portal that provides them engaging information about the company, its various business functions, and growth trajectory. You can also prepare them for the various formalities to be completed and the documents to submit on joining. In fact, you can provide them the option to upload scanned copies of their documents. Also, let them know what they can expect on their first day.
An FAQ section, along with details about their point of contact, would further help streamline the process. To illustrate this with an example, LinkedIn provides its new hires with a ‘New Hire Onboarding Roadmap’ to help them to seamlessly transition into the company and settle in their new role.
3. Use Simulations
It goes without saying that new hires generally feel nervous and intimidated about their first day and are worried how they would navigate themselves in an unfamiliar environment. Use your onboarding tool to provide them a simulated experience of the first day through live interaction. Real-time simulations help alleviate anxiety by providing a virtual tour of the workplace which in turn helps to build familiarity with the new environment. As a case point, Ernst & Young, while onboarding new employees, provides them a virtual tour of the workplace, information about the company and also takes them through the employee onboarding process while also addressing their frequently asked questions. The result is that the employees are more confident on the day they join. You can also build simulations around various situations that employees would encounter at the workplace, for example, scenarios on how to handle leave requests, team dynamics, feedback call and client negotiation.
How-to Guide:
The Smart HR Professional’s Guide to Employee Onboarding
4. Create Engagement with Videos
Take your storytelling to the next level with videos. Interactive videos are a great way of making onboarding a memorable experience. You can have a video beginning with a message from the CEO and then progressing to the company’s history and culture, its major milestones and employee feedback. This is a great way to instil a sense of pride, appreciation and passion for the organization. Besides, it also gives new hires adequate time to come prepared with their questions during the induction process. To illustrate this with an example, Trivago uses interactive videos to initiate their employee onboarding process. Studies show that employee onboarding programs that included interactive videos witnessed 15% increase in employees who would stay with the company after completing their first year.
Also Read: 5 Best Practices in Employee Onboarding
5. Build New Employee Community
You can also use your onboarding tool to create an online new hire community where employees can share their ideas, ask questions, seek suggestions and gain insights into the company’s corporate values, strategy, tools, and the resources necessary to succeed at work. The idea is to help them bond, know the people within the organization, build relationships, and be well equipped for the journey ahead.
6. Apply a Gamification Strategy
A gamification strategy is a great way to capture and retain learner’s attention. It challenges the learners, engages them in the task, while entertaining and teaching them at the same time. Studies testify that organizations with gamified employee onboarding solutions have experienced 48% boost in engagement and 36% improvement in turnover rate. Gamified onboarding solutions can include interactive games followed by a quiz, which gives the employees immediate feedback on how well they have understood the module.
Related Read: How Gamification Can Improve the Onboarding Process
In Conclusion
Companies across the globe are exploring innovative ways to connect with their new hires and turn them into confident, engaged and motivated employees. By adopting innovative employee onboarding methods and using interactive onboarding tools you can provide them an environment of trust, support and care right from the time they accept the offer. A structured and interactive employee onboarding program translates into faster productivity, improved retention, higher compliance and security, and finally, improved ROI.
Related Read: Reasons Why Enterprises Should Invest in an Employee Onboarding Platform
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