How to create an effective employee onboarding program?

Onboarding employees is about more than HR paperwork and showing new hires to their desks. In fact, research shows that onboarding is one of the most important parts of an employee’s experience. When done right, it not only sets new employees up for success but also promises many benefits for the organization. By the end of this guide, you’ll know what it takes to make a successful employee onboarding program.

Onboarding and training. These terms are often used when it comes to hiring a new employee, but what do they mean? Can they be used interchangeably? And if not, what are the differences between onboarding and training?

What is onboarding?

Starting a new job at a new company can be nerve-racking for anyone. From meeting new teammates to adapting to a unique company culture, it’s not easy navigating an unfamiliar environment while feeling the pressure to fit in. This is where an onboarding program can help.

An effective onboarding program can include all kinds of activities to help integrate a new employee. Some examples include giving an office tour or holding an introductory meeting to get them acquainted with new teammates. With an authoring tool like Easygenerator, you could also create an online course to share an overview of a company’s history, culture, and values.

What is training?

While onboarding focuses on helping new employees adjust to their environment, training focuses on the technicalities of their role. This can include training them on company technology, integrating them into internal systems, or teaching them important procedures. The goal is to equip them with the technical skills they need to complete their tasks confidently.

In short, onboarding and training aren’t the same things. But together, they create a meaningful process to help a new employee smoothly transition into their new role and workplace.

Why is onboarding important for new employees?

A well-planned onboarding program can make all the difference between a new employee feeling welcomed and feeling insecure or invisible. But the importance of onboarding goes beyond simply making sure a new hire has a good first day of work. In order to achieve that, it’s important to know what to include in a?new hire welcome kit.

Onboarding is an opportunity to communicate the company’s expectations and share what it has to offer. In return, its success can lead to higher levels of employee engagement and lower turnover rates — among many other benefits.

Here are the top organizational benefits of an employee onboarding program:

Less micromanaging; more trust and productivity

When you equip new hires with the tools and information they need to succeed from day one, you not only shorten their learning curves but also empower them to take ownership of their roles early on. This reduces any need to micromanage along the way and creates room for trust between employees, increasing the chances of productivity.

Empowers communication across the corporate ladder

There are many benefits to encouraging communication between junior employees and their higher-ups during the onboarding process. For one, it allows new hires to envision their possible career paths within the organization, signaling room for growth. At the same time, it also presents more senior employees as approachable people, paving the way for a culture of mentorship and learning.

Creates a sense of belonging and commitment

Making sure a new employee understands the company’s goals and how their role fits in can foster a sense of purpose early on. The sooner a new employee understands how they can contribute to the organization’s success, the sooner they’ll feel comfortable, equipped, and motivated to participate.

Better job satisfaction and employee retention

Research from Gallup reveals that having more engaged employees can improve the company’s performance on numerous levels, including better customer ratings, higher profits, and fewer employee absences. And as a result, it also increases the likelihood that a new hire decides to stay at their job, which can be a huge cost-saver for companies.

Ensures all new employees understand company policies

There can be a lot of new information to keep up with when it comes to learning about company policies and procedures for the first time. An effective employee onboarding program not only shares this information with new hires but also explains how company policies affect their specific department and their role. This benefits both new hires and the organization, as both can be on the same page about expectations from day one. Creating digestible and engaging e-learning content can help convey this information effectively. Find out?how e-learning can help your onboarding process.

Ultimately, the importance of onboarding in the workplace goes far beyond the individual employee’s reaction. When done right, it can bring many benefits for the organization in return.

New hires who experience a positive introduction to the organization and their position tend to stay longer. So, onboarding programs must be as effective and intuitive as possible.

Onboarding best practices

For many new hires, onboarding training starts out enthusiastically with the very best intentions, but this momentum slows down after a few weeks. This is because new employees are usually caught up in the daily grind of work after a while and may not have the same level of interest as before.?

To ensure your organization doesn’t get caught by this pitfall, here are a few best practices to help your new hires to flourish.

Plan your onboarding

1. Do your homework

The first place to start would be to understand how onboarding is done at the moment. Understand the areas of the program employees liked or disliked and why.?

E-learning authoring tools, such as Easygenerator, incorporate?net promoter scoring (NPS)?into courses, allowing learners to rate and provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of your course.

2. Ask the stakeholders

Speak to employees who went through the onboarding training recently on what they had expected from such a program. Ascertain their fears and insecurities about starting out in a new company. Speak to HR or the L&D Manager to understand the objectives of the program from a business perspective.

Some onboarding best practices would be to structure an onboarding program that:

• Gives new employees a sense of comfort and a promising first impression of the organization
• Lays out the organization’s culture, values, and brand
• Details the expectations of an employee, e.g., regulations and compliance
• Describes the fundamental things an employee would need to know, such as the dress code, processes for leave application, and where the cafeteria is
• Teaches them where they stand in the organization’s structure
• Shows them how valuable their role is to the organization’s well-being and excites them about it

Design your onboarding

1. Personalize content, minimize repetitions and stagger the program

A good onboarding program for new employees teaches an employee what they need to know, and only what they need to know for their individual role. It doesn’t drown them in the information that is mostly unnecessary.?

Also consider if some information can be found on your organization’s intranet or website, e.g. the company’s HR policies or organization charts. This then doesn’t need to be repeated in the training.

Onboarding best practices would allow new hires the freedom to leave and enter the course at times it suits them best.

2. Employee-generated onboarding

One of the best, and most likely untapped, resources are your existing employees. Not only are these the people who already know all about your organization, but they’re the ones best placed to tell the story of why it’s such an amazing place to work. Inspiring your employees to share their knowledge, and empowering them to create their own content not only personalizes the onboarding process but also lets your existing employees feel valued.

Deliver your onboarding

1. Start even before day one

Using?e-learning tools, such as online pre-assessments, employee onboarding training modules, and tutorial videos, you can actually start educating potential employees before they even officially join the company. This saves precious time once an employee is hired, giving you a firm grasp of where they stand in terms of skills and knowledge on day one.

2. Provide easy signposting

All new hires will come with queries and small issues they need assistance with – this is only natural when starting in a new place. With this in mind, it’s key to signpost them to the right resources to ensure these queries can be answered quickly and easily.

Providing an online ‘library’ of key learning nuggets and resources will empower your new hires to quickly find the information required for their day-to-day jobs. When providing digital content, ensure not to overwhelm the employee with everything under the sun, but rather offer targeted content with key headlines, bullet points, and short pieces of information instead of a lengthy policy document. You can use a variety of formats to create short, focused, and crisp content with the likes of videos, quick guides, and infographics – these nugget formats have the maximum impact.?

3. Get the most out of the first week

The first week is crucial for getting the new hire off on the right foot, but it’s important not to overload them. Make the most out of it by using an e-learning path. This is a series of training modules that the new hire can work through at his or her own pace in a low-pressure, interactive learning environment. The modules should cover all the basic topics (IT, policies, company culture) that new hires can master on their own.?

4. Onboarding, on-demand

The content of your employee onboarding training program will only be as good as the delivery methods you use. Think about how your new hires access information in their everyday lives and try to reflect this in the delivery of your onboarding. This can include making sure the content is available on-demand and accessible through a range of devices.

The easier and more accessible the content, the more engaged your new hires will feel. Furthermore, using this type of shorter and more?accessible e-learning?will allow new hires to quickly utilize the knowledge in their roles.

5. Share stories

While some information might already be on the organization’s website or intranet, current employees have a wealth of knowledge not necessarily available on your intranet.

Online employee onboarding can also enable subject matter experts around the business to share their knowledge. This gives the new hire a more helpful in-depth insight into the organization, rather than a one-size-fits-all generic overview. Use stories or videos to demonstrate best practices or valuable lessons from such employees.

Onboarding new employees with Katalis.App

As mentioned above, Katalis.App can easily help you build courses more effective and scalable using LMS Platform.

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