The Odyssey of On-boarding

Your mission may not be hiring…but it sure depends on it.

It’s becoming trite to say, ‘the problem is never tech, it’s always the people.’ If we know this, how do we solve it? More training programs? More articles? More certifications & tests to take??

Or

What if we look at newer solutions that transform the way we operate? Solutions that make it easier and faster to make an impact. Solutions that remove the “work” so we can focus on what is really important.

Consider how a person’s work journey begins:

Act 1: A need begets a horrific requisition or approval process at the hiring organization

Already frustrated with an overworked staff, the hiring manager is then put through the test to find the right approvals just to post a job and let the world know they are ready to on-board

Act 2: A recruiter drowns in resumes

If approved, and properly posted, an influx of hopeful applicants sends in their full life’s work in written form - only to be disappointed by delay from a poor soul that has to painfully read each date/location/description

Act 3: Once tested and proven, the Qualified Candidate prevails…

Only to get hired to copious amounts of forms, uncertainty, and confusion: Where is the laptop? What is my login? Who needs to sign? The tragedy continues…

The moral of that story? Burnout is setting in before we even begin.

Attracting talent, hiring, on-boarding, training, tracking (eventually, off-boarding), the whole shebang is timely, costly and laborious. It crosses departments and gets stuck in silos. It’s time to end the saga and create a new narrative for a better employee experience:

• Simplify & Standardize the hiring approval process

There’s no need for hazy, uncertain processes or approvals when the desire to hire is imminent. Find tooling that equips end users to easily create workflows that serve as documentation to share with other stakeholders and employees. Bonus points if that documentation doubles as a push-button automation to ensure the busiest hiring manager can initiate the approval process with a click of a button.

• Speed recruiting efforts

There may be plenty of fish in the recruiting pool right now, but vetting resumes, contacting each one and also filtering through emails is a tedious business. Especially for agencies with the need to scale quickly during surge, recovery or response efforts, no amount of human effort will be able to verify, validate and clear resources fast enough. With today’s technology, there are ways to sift through inbound emails & resumes and even incorporate AI to ensure that recruiters and hiring managers are focusing their time on candidates that are pre-screened with qualifications that pertain to the job opening.

• Streamline new employees' on-ramp

To truly expedite on-boarding, look for other areas that can help new employees to ramp up quickly. One suggestion is to create automated workflows across the various departments an employee will need to interface with (ie, new accounts in HR systems automatically create new accounts in IT which kicks off a procurement request for new equipment.) Another approach might be to equip new employees with a digital assistant that is loaded with automated daily tasks to remove the brunt of tedious, internal processes. The goal should be to allow new employees to focus on training and exercises that are more impactful to their roles and not internal, back-office minutia.?

It will take time to re-write the manual, but the best part is that it’s not too late to begin. The best place to start? By understanding the trials and tribulations facing your current teams when hiring and incrementally work to improve them. With a little bit of focus, leadership and prioritization, the impact just might be epic.