On Board or Over Board?

What is being a part of a company's human resources besides a Linkedin title and the company's name on a paycheck?

In reality, we are facing the answer to this question isn’t as clear as we HR professionals would like it to be.

To become a part of the company, the new employee has to undergo a socialization process, In which they will learn and absorb the company values, vision and mission, and all the other organizational culture elements team members absorb by arriving at the workplace, taking part in the daily activities and performing their responsibilities.

A successful socialization process is a feeling of belonging and alignment to company values experienced by the employee. A vast body of research shows how a prevalent feeling of belonging in the company staff is crucial to business success with increases in job performance and decreases in turnover risk.?

Leading companies in today’s landscape invest substantial resources in creating a simple, effective, and fun socialization process to achieve a feeling of belonging that will make the employee proud to be a part of the organization and recommend their company to others.

Until the very recent past, companies had well-planned and battle-tested Onboarding processes for their new employees. By the end of the process, the employee could be considered part of the organization.?

Unfortunately, the rules of the game have changed. The latest numbers show that employee turnover is close to an all-time high, and many companies struggle to keep their talent pool. This leads to a decrease in business performance and, in the long run, to potential reductions and outright collapse.

All-time high resignation rate

As HR specialists, we adapt to this new world of remote work. A world in which new employees are going through an obsolete Onboarding process that doesn't serve the purpose it was created for anymore.

We took one step to try and fit the old process into the new reality and the limitations it brought. A great example was moving from in-person meetings, classes, and workshops integral to the Onboarding process to Online conferences. The old material was delivered through apps like Zoom, MS Teams, etc. At first, this seemed like a reasonable solution, but for all of us who have children learning this way, it quickly became clear that this isn’t going to work for our kids in the long run. For a company, a new employee isn’t much different. The In-person approach in which employees need to be physically present and shielded from distraction in offices, classrooms, and cafeterias does not sustainably translate to the remote workspace.

“Zoom Fatigue”

To get our new employees, the future of our organizations, to successfully undergo the socialization process, we have to overhaul the entire process and create one suitable for the remote landscape and sustainable for the long run.

Several market-leading companies took an innovative approach to virtualize their Onboarding process and created a 3D web-based Onboarding platform where new employees learn and experience company values and vision in a completely new way.?

These platforms offer an interesting and fun way to learn about the company through an immersive and playful design that emphasizes the company's brand and vision.

3D Immersive On-Boarding Platform?

The employees go through interesting, bite-sized content offered in an interactive format. They participate in themed networking sessions led by veteran employees. They participate in trivia games, treasure hunts, and hackathons.

Some have created dedicated escape room team quests that boost teamwork and test the knowledge and understating of new employees.

All these activities are happening in one web-based secure location that simplifies the process both to the employees and the organizer.

Everything employees take part in in the platforms is recorded and analyzed, giving the HR leaders in-depth insights of the Onboarding process progress and efficacy through a real-time dashboard.??

Using such platforms has produced great results for the companies that implemented them. Surveys show that new employees are significantly more On-Board with this new, fun, and value-driven process.

Being an HR specialist and a core member in the creation and success of some of these platforms in Vii Events , I can testify that learning, training, and HR specialists who use these platforms become my chief advocates of this innovative approach.?

They especially like the high degree of simplicity, control, and of course, a relatively low cost of production and maintenance - especially compared to Old On-Boarding processes.

Though The amount of data collected so far cannot definitively say that we need to stop using the orthodox On-Boarding processes completely, we can definitely say that supplementing them with the new immersive process will provide a higher degree of versatility, greater agility, and much higher employee engagement and interest.

To explore the benefits and results in your organization can achieve by creating an Immersive 3D On-Boarding Platform feel free to contact us at? [email protected]

Zhenia Kulyavtsev , VP Customer Success, Vii Events

???

?