5 Enterprise Trends in New Hire Onboarding

This is a summary of the “5 Trends in Onboarding” that I shared during the HCI Panel Discussion “New Hire Blind Spots: Exposing the Most Overlooked Barriers to Onboarding Success” with co-presenters Stephanie Bertmer of Hulu and Amy Swanson.

Trend #1: Streamlining onboarding for effectiveness and efficiency

Organizations are driving improved efficiency of onboarding while at the same time improving effectiveness.

68% of organizations identify getting employees productive more quickly as a top objective for initiating onboarding – Aberdeen Group.

Successful onboarding approaches include:

• Providing more blended learning solutions that bring together Web-based training, job aids, experiences and face-to-face instructor-led, team-based activities
• Decomposing work into what is needed to provide immediate value to the business, customers, team and employee.
• Partitioning the onboarding into smaller, ongoing bites of learning, including micro learning.
• Prioritizing what’s most important and what is needed first for a new hire to deliver value quickly
• Pointers to ongoing learning—teaching new hires how to find knowledge, build skills, locate tools and connect with others

Trend #2: Adapting onboarding to improve retention

Enterprises are asking, “How can we adapt new hire training to improve retention?” Increasing competition for high-quality employees and the total cost of losing employees is motivating more enterprises to address employee retention during the new hire onboarding process.

As an example, we recently worked with a client to analyze data from several of the large job sites. We conducted a sentiment analysis and pattern-matching to determine why individuals in certain roles left and why they stayed, what they liked and didn’t like about the job, and even how they felt about the training provided by the client. This information helped the client to identify opportunities to improve some of their practices. At the same time, it provided insight into how the client could combat negatives and leverage positives during onboarding to help with retention.

Trend #3: Instilling culture in new hires

We have also been seeing a trend to help instill certain cultures—focus on the customer, culture of quality, millennial culture (friendly and less formal), agile culture—early through the onboarding process. The key is that culture isn’t something you fix. It’s process, values, practices and traditions. (See Culture is Not the Culprit in HBR.)

To help instill culture during onboarding, storytelling can be particularly powerful. Enterprises are using the following storytelling approaches during onboarding:

• Storytelling vignettes
• Videos of employees that exemplify the culture speaking to practices and values
• Scenario-based learning that demonstrates process, values, practices and traditions
• Leadership presentations (live or recorded)

Little things, such as templates, style and elements of the learning experience also help transfer culture. As an example, we worked with a long-established large enterprise to help them embrace a “millennial culture.” This meant changing language and tone, communication style, imagery, content, the flow of client interactions of the onboarding materials and process to ensure that the new culture came across during onboarding.

Trend #4: Improving connectedness

We see a much stronger trend towards creating connectedness and engagement as part of the onboarding process.  

67% of those interviewed for the CGS 2016 Enterprise Learning Annual report said that coaching—essential to onboarding and connectedness—would be their highest investment for this year.  

Approaches to improve connectedness during onboarding include:

• Interacting with the team and managers as part of onboarding
• Providing coaches and guides that offer advice, a sounding board, political and social support, and job instruction
• Role-plays that provide interactive practice and realistic examples of on the job interactions
• Online discussion groups (communities) that continue beyond onboarding

Trend #5: Leveraging new technologies

Exciting use of new technology is another trend we see in onboarding. According to an SHRM paper by Dr. Talya Bauer,

about 68 percent of organizations with top-notch proactive onboarding have systems that are partially or fully online.

• Social learning platforms, such as CGS’s Savanna365, are making it easier to combine access to digital learning material, links to systems and tools, and interaction (coaching, discussion groups, games and more)
• The Experience API is making it easier to track learning experiences, such as on-the-job activities, that are not Web-based training or Instructor-led training
• Mobile is taking onboarding out of the classroom and to the job site
• Instant video sharing is making it possible for new hires to create videos showing how they respond to on-the-job situations (pitching a product, for example) and to send the video to a coach for review.
• Visual reporting is allowing managers to drill-down and better understand the skills and performance of their new hires.

AND, Virtual Reality is finally becoming more realistic with the rise of Google cardboard which leverages a learner’s mobile phone with a $3 piece of cardboard.  CGS demonstrated a VR solution at the Learning Solutions conference just a couple of weeks ago that provided a way of exploring a datacenter that most people were not permitted to physically enter. 

What trends do you see in today’s onboarding solutions?

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Elizabeth Woodward serves as the Senior Manager of Learning Programs and Learning Strategist for CGS where she partners with some of the world's largest enterprises to design, implement and measure effectiveness of exciting new enablement programs that make a difference for teams and the business.