Onboarding: Best Practices and Technological Innovation
Every company needs to have a structured Onboarding program. It helps not only to retain your best talent, but also to keep motivation and productivity high in the initial phase of employment. A program also helps facilitate the work of the HR team. Technological innovation today responds promptly to these needs with different tools, and the Oracle HCM Cloud is among the best. Let’s evaluate what Onboarding is and take a look at some of the best practices and technologies available to Human Resource departments and companies.
What is Onboarding
Onboarding is the final phase of the Recruiting process. Its aim is to bring new employees into the company and introduce them to the ethos, processes, and operational structure of a company. This period usually runs from when the employee accepts the job offer, up to the first 90 days of hiring. During this phase, the employee must acquire knowledge and learn the behaviors and processes to become an integral part of the company, both at an organizational level and in terms of culture and corporate climate.
Onboarding is a crucial moment in the employees life cycle and, if properly structured, it protects the company and its investment of the talent search. A study by the Aberdeen Group (2016) states that when a new employee experiences a positive Onboarding process, he is 69% more likely to stay in the company for at least three years. As illustrated by Michael Watkins’ “Onboarding Curve” above, The First 90 Days are crucial to reach the breakeven point, going from a “value consumer” to “creating value” for the company. However, most companies only start seeing a return on investment in about 6.2 months. With strategies and targeted HCM technology, you can speed up this process and make employees more productive in a shorter period of time with less effort.
How to structure an effective Onboarding Program
To be effective, an Onboarding Process must take into account some best practices to be implemented at each stage. Let’s look at them together.
Customization and Automation, don’t leave anything to chance
Act strategically! The time that elapses between the acceptance of a job and the first day of work is a very important period and a company needs to act immediately so as not to risk losing the new employee. In fact, during the pre-boarding phase, companies risk losing their new hires to other companies if they don’t have concrete processes in place. The last thing you want is the new employee to have doubts about whether he chose well or not.
Therefore, the HR Manager have to prepare structured program focused on the new employees and their involvement:
- Send a personalized welcome message.
- Provide all the important information about the company; the tools and details for the first day of work (PC delivery, photo badge, etc.).
- Share information about everyday life in the company: breaks, happy hours, dress code, and insurance benefits.
- Clarify the responsibilities of his job and create an agenda for the first week.
- Send a questionnaire to find out more about the new employee (personal tastes, interests, etc.).
- Automate the bureaucratic processes related to hiring (payment methods, insurance policy, etc.).
Diving into the Company reality and the importance of a Coach
The first day for any employee should be dedicated to making them feel comfortable in their new environment and giving them the tools to understand how the company operates. This would include the following; documenting and explaining the job description, presenting the employee to their team, giving a guided tour of the company, and giving a welcome kit.
During this process, it is essential to assign the new employee an internal Coach so questions can be answered, doubts are resolved, and the employee more easily acclimates to the new environment.
Time to start eLearning
After the first week, it’s important to introduce eLearning courses that new employees need to access and embrace while working for the company. (This topic will be further discussed in the next post). In this phase it is also important for the HR department to track the knowledge and skills acquired through company evaluation forms and surveys.
How effective is the Onboarding Program?
To check if the Onboarding program has been effective and to maintain a high level of employee involvement, it is important to schedule feedback requests after a week or two from the start of the collaboration and up to at least 3 months from hiring. Finding out if the employee felt welcomed and integrated into the company and taking into account his comments is essential to avoid mistakes for future hires.
In addition, this is an excellent time to introduce performance monitoring and goal achievement tools.
Technological innovation for the Onboarding Process
The HR Manager has a fundamental role in promoting innovation in a company.
This starts with Human Capital Management (HCM) technologies that begin with the digital transformation process through the involvement of its employees. Among the most complete solutions is Oracle Cloud HCM. These innovative tools provide the latest generation to its users and help guide resources towards achieving professional goals, increasing company involvement and helping all the users to be productive and efficient.
For all phases of Onboarding and best practices seen before, Oracle provides a complete HR solution that includes the Enterprise Onboarding Checklist and an Onboarding platform (desktop and mobile version) for:
- Delivering personalized messages.
- Allowing the employees to connect with colleagues, mentors and other new hires in the company.
- Provide interactive content such as videos, questionnaires, forms, external links.
- Ensure access to documentation relating to paychecks, holidays, permits, and benefits.
- Share automated learning initiatives and guided exercises (Learning Cloud).
- Manage work activities thanks to workflow tools and task assignment.
The steps of the Onboarding program are flexible and can be scheduled before or after the hiring date. The HR team and respective managers can monitor the progress of the process, intervene to support the employee and send reminders. The advantages of a structured and automated Onboarding program is remarkable, thanks to the solutions of HCM Oracle Cloud. Overall, a company can benefit with talent redemption, increased productivity, maximize efficiencies that are dedicated to the Recruiting process, and reduce training costs.
Are you ready to drive innovation in your company? Contact us for an Oracle HCM Demo created specifically for your needs.
