5 tips for onboarding new employees

Onboarding new employees is the process of integrating new hires into your organisation. This is when you are able to introduce them to your company culture as well as show them how your company works. Onboarding is the process where new employees can first experience everything about your brand and get a taste of what it is going to be like working at your organisation.

Digital onboarding is a way that this process can be streamlined in leveraging technology to make the onboarding process as efficient and standardised as required, whether across a single business unit or multiple sites.

But, when does the process of onboarding new employees really begin? The answer – it can start as early as the interview stage as this is where employers can first make a good impression. Then, from the job offer onwards, is where a company can make or break its initial impressions with a new hire.

Showing competence and organisation throughout the run-up to the employee’s first day can instil trust and confidence, putting them in an optimistic position when their start date comes around.

To keep new hires engaged and garner excitement for their start date, digital onboarding really becomes advantageous as it can begin in advance of the employee’s first day. Streamlining time spent on paperwork and admin in that first week can save companies time and money, not only in administration costs, but in ensuring your new employees see longevity in your company. 

We have gathered five tips to streamline your process for onboarding new employees.

The beauty of digital onboarding is that some of the simple admin can be done in advance of the employee’s start date, such as ID verification and bank details for salary payments, meaning that you can jump straight into the induction process on the employee’s first day with an introduction to the company, then drill down into the role-specific training.

With the right resources and a structured programme in place for onboarding new employees, managers can be confident that all key company information from the employee handbook has been communicated in those first few weeks. This onboarding checklist can involve introducing all products and services that the company offers and sharing particular policies that could directly affect their day-to-day work, such as understanding anti-money laundering checks, or food hygiene qualifications.

With a uniform approach, employers can ensure the accuracy of information that is being shared. For example, the same master documents and policies from the employee handbook should be shared with all new starters, rather than just a verbal discussion. Creating a digital hub to store all onboarding information would be a great place to start.

Modern intranet software can enable you to create dedicated homepages for specific audiences, and you can take advantage of this to create a new starter homepage that they will see for a specified period. This dedicated digital hub can improve the onboarding experience by containing key information without bombarding new starters with an overwhelming amount of content or news in their first few weeks.

A dedicated new starter homepage can be designed to contain all employee handbook information, policies, training videos, or links to them, and by setting them as ‘mandatory reads’, managers and HR teams can keep track of their progress throughout the digital onboarding process. 

These homepages can also provide quick links to information on company benefits and how to register for them. You may also wish to introduce the company culture and extend an invitation to join social or sports activities outside of work, to help your new hires meet others across the business. New starter homepages can be customised to your requirements, so you can put as little or as much information on them as you see fit.

We’ve all got click-happy, zooming through an online learning module once or twice, trying to get it off our to-do lists without actually taking it in. The solution? Make it engaging and succinct.

Whether you are creating e-learning modules in-house or using a third-party provider, there is always room for improvement. When we think about streamlining the new employee process, e-learning, when done right, can condense a lot of information into interactive content that is better absorbed by the user, and in theory, will be better kept in their memory afterward. 

Consider which of your policies or process training can be repurposed into e-learning, such as equality and diversity training or health and safety, and experiment using interactive quizzes or knowledge tests at the end. 

Using e-learning as part of the digital onboarding process means that employees can refer back to any policies or modules at any point if they need to refresh their memory or check a process. This can save time for managers or HR teams, enabling the employee to first search for the answer themselves. 

Yes, have a standard onboarding experience to introduce the company and staff-wide training, but there must be an element of role-specific training too.

You wouldn’t give a management module to a new trainee, just as you wouldn’t give accounting software training to shop floor staff. Tailoring the onboarding experience to the specific department and role will ensure that only the most relevant information is shared with the new starter, enabling them to get to grips with their new role more efficiently. 

Keep the training relevant and if there are tools that only your team uses, ensure they are included within the digital onboarding process. It can also help, where relevant, to introduce new starters to recent work or success stories and current projects, so that they can get a real feel for what they will be working on in their first few weeks, months and beyond. This will provide much needed guidance and ensure a seamless transition into the company. 

By proactively gaining permissions or creating accounts for your new starter, whether that’s till access or laptop and third-party software access, you enable them to jump in, navigate and understand the digital tools they will be using in their day-to-day work. Arranging this in advance of the new employee’s first day means that there is less time wasted waiting on permissions once they have completed their training.

Giving your new starters a chance to familiarise themselves with the tools and resources in their own time or while training before diving into their new role can ensure they feel confident once they are customer-facing or working on other projects.

Be patient and give your new employees time to get to grips with everything. If you think they need to revisit an element of their training, if it has been done digitally, they should be able to easily jump back to find the relevant information. Equally, if something requires a one-to-one explanation or further tuition by a manager, this can easily be arranged.

A bonus of having a digital onboarding process is that, when it comes to further training and development, your employees will be familiar with the process of e-learning and can easily log on and work through modules in their own time, to help them progress. This approach can be embedded in your company culture to promote ongoing opportunities for development.

Provide digital onboarding to your employees and improve engagement across your whole organisation with an intuitive, modern intranet.

We have helped big brands such as Burger King, ScS and NatWest Group to improve employee communication. Our award-winning modern intranet also extends to our mobile app which all employees love.