One of the HR’s key responsibilities lies in onboarding – integrating new hires into the workplace and ensuring they understand their key responsibilities and any relevant work processes, and that they connect with their colleagues and mesh with the work culture of the organisation.
This process is crucial in providing new employees with everything they need to do their job correctly, and to help them adapt to a new environment. This process may seem straightforward, but it’s possible for many details to fall through the cracks.
These oversights can develop and cause hindrances in the employees’ work experience in the future, or drag out the onboarding process and delay the employees’ integration (as well as raising more issues for HR to focus on). HR can use onboarding software to create an effective strategy that both suits your organisational culture and gives all the right answers to the new hire.
The onboarding process
Onboarding can be broken down into four different phases:
- Pre-boarding: After confirming a new hire’s recruitment, pre-boarding can occur. It consists of sending a welcome email to the new employee along with important materials, such as an employee handbook and a first-day checklist or description, and setting up the employee’s email and other work accounts.
- Orientation: Once the new hire comes into work, they can start the orientation phase – getting to know their team and supervisor. They’ll become familiar with the location of people and resources in an office, and get to know important policies and procedures.
- Training and development: As the new hire becomes accustomed to their role, they need guidance to connect and build upon their current skills and experience. This can be done in a number of ways, and training won’t look the same for every employee. A senior employee can have a number of hours assigned to guiding and assisting the new hire, or training videos and simulations can be provided, along with handover documents and written guides.
- Feedback: Even after the employee’s first few months, HR should conduct regular check-ins and ask for feedback from the employee. Do they feel underprepared in any areas? Do they feel sufficiently welcomed and supported into the team? What part of the onboarding process was most or least helpful?
Software as the key to effective onboarding
Common onboarding challenges include messy paperwork, disorganised materials, delays in the process, and insufficient ongoing support from HR. The answer: software that organises and executes all those factors for you.
Employment Hero is a great example. This cloud-based platform takes into account the entire lifecycle of an employee. It integrates all the important information you need to pass to your new hire along with learning courses. It tracks the employees’ performance as they progress, and tracks where employees are in their onboarding.
