Talent acquisition and employee retention have never been more critical. Employers are competing for a small pool of specialist workers, and remote work has made these contests even harder.
With the technological landscape shifting constantly, employers need to find staff with modern skills. However, finding and hiring the best workers is a massive problem for companies worldwide. According to recent research by HubSpot and Boon, one in four CEOs says that talent acquisition is the biggest reason holding their company back.
When companies find the right staff, they must do everything possible to ensure their new hires feel welcome and comfortable in their new job. As remote work has grown, helping employees bed in has become more challenging.
Digital employee onboarding is a solution to many of these issues. Automating your onboarding can save your business resources while providing your employees with everything they need to settle and become productive members of your team.
What is digital employee onboarding?
Digital employee onboarding refers to the process of integrating new hires into your organization using digital tools.
When a new hire joins your company, there are many things they need to do. For starters, they might need to submit various legal documents and paperwork. Aside from that, they also need to set up logins and accounts and connect the equipment they’ll use for the job.
Additionally, they’ll need to get up to speed on the company culture, plans, and the software stack they’ll use for their job.
In short, there are a lot of small tasks and information for them to take in.
In the past, the onboarding onus fell on HR. However, digital employee onboarding offers a way to integrate new hires quickly and cost-effectively.
Instead of scheduling onboarding meetings and handing new hires an employee handbook and other information, digital onboarding tools can make the experience interactive. Whatsmore, the employee can onboard at their own speed, ensuring they fully take in the information.
Let’s take a look at the advantages of digital employee onboarding.
Benefits of digital employee onboarding
Digital employee onboarding has many benefits for businesses and employees. Here are the biggest advantages.
Reduce turnover
High staff turnover is a symptom of a broken culture. You can't stop every employee from leaving: people need a change, new opportunities arise, and employees get burnt out. However, you can control a large amount of employee attrition.
A survey by BambooHR shows that around 30% of new hires leave within the first six months. Of that number, more than 2 in every three are gone within three months. Consider all the wasted time and money you put into finding and interviewing new staff, only for them to leave before contributing much by way of productivity.
The employee journey works just like the customer journey. What happens in the early days can predict the entire relationship with your business. Poor onboarding is one of the many and varied reasons why people leave.
According to LinkedIn, the average business turns over more than 10% of its employees yearly. Tech and professional services are the worst culprits at around 13%, with Retail, Accommodation, and Entertainment hovering around 11%.
Digital employee onboarding reduces those figures by ensuring that all new hires have the information and support they need to thrive in their jobs.
Increase engagement
A good employee onboarding experience sets up your employees to understand your culture and processes. If you start your employee onboarding experience the right way, you can help them bed in and make meaningful contributions.
Some of the notable highlights of the study suggest that employees who had a good onboarding experience were:
30x more likely to report high job satisfaction
18x more likely to be highly committed to their employer
33% more likely to feel engaged
30% more likely to say that they feel integrated into their workplace
The statistics speak for themselves.
Reduce time to productivity
It takes time for new hires to get up to speed. Questionmark, the employee intelligence platform, released a report that suggests it takes between three to eight months for new hires to reach maximum productivity.
The first thing these statistics underline is the importance of employee retention to avoid a loss of productivity. However, the second thing they do is lay bare how effective employee onboarding can help your business.
Reducing the time it takes for each employee to hit maximum productivity levels can affect the bottom line. Retaining all your employees is almost impossible. However, getting your new hires up to speed quickly will significantly reduce the penalties involved with losing new staff.
Employee retention in a post-COVID world
The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the way employees see work. The Great Resignation saw a lot of people change jobs. There are a few factors to consider here.
Firstly, many employees want flexible or remote work. For example, remote work is now attracting more applicants. Secondly, inflation and the rising cost of living mean that staff are eyeing new positions to increase their wages.
Digital employee onboarding is an effective measure to help counter these problems. Creating loyalty and job satisfaction can increase retention. Additionally, if your organization gets a good reputation among employees, it can make hiring much easier. Finally, if your employees are remote, digital onboarding is a perfect way to help them adjust.
How to improve your digital employee onboarding
A decade or more ago, we witnessed a revolution in how businesses delivered value to their customers. Organizations that prioritized customers reaped the benefits, with more sales, customer retention, and loyalty.
Now, a similar process is happening, but the focus is on employees. Customer onboarding shows users how they can get the most from your products. Employee onboarding does something similar, but for the tools they’ll use on the job.
#1. Make first impression count
When a new hire joins, there is a lot of new information for them to absorb. Meeting new people and learning about company processes and tools can be quite overwhelming.
Making sure that new staff feel welcomed and supported is crucial. Don't leave it to chance. You can use no-code digital onboarding tools, like Usetiful, to build elegant interfaces over your software stack and ensure that your workers quickly master their tools and feel ready to contribute.
#2. Use employee onboarding checklists
Some organizations have dozens of onboarding touchpoints. It's a lot for employees and HR teams to track. Too many employees can get lost between the cracks.
Employee onboarding checklists are an excellent way to track each touchpoint. Gamifying the onboarding process can lead to better outcomes and more clarity about what needs to be done. Ultimately, it ensures a better employee experience because your new hires understand the process.
#3. Personalize your onboarding
Some elements of employee onboarding will apply to all your staff. However, each role and department has its own particularities. A good employee onboarding journey needs a degree of personalization.
With Usetiful, you can tailor your onboarding for different roles, seniority, or departments. This situation reduces any unnecessary information overload and ensures your new hires are only concerned with what’s relevant to their integration.
How to choose a tool for your digital employee onboarding
It is fast and simple to setup
You want to increase your employee retention without throwing more work at your developers, or sending your employees to more product training sessions. We designed Usetiful as a no-code onboarding tool that everyone could use, no matter their level of technical expertise.
By installing a plugin, you can run Usetiful product tours, tooltips and checklists, by overlaying an experience layer on top of any other 3rd party SaaS or Cloud product that your company is using. Now you can onboard and train your employees to use digital tools, such as Salesforce, JIRA or Workday. No coding is needed!
It allows you to customize branding
It gives you the freedom of integration
Summary
A great employee onboarding experience can reduce turnover, increase engagement, and reduce time to productivity. With many businesses struggling to find great staff, you must ensure that your new hires feel integrated and engaged.
Digital onboarding tools are the perfect solution for guaranteeing your staff feels comfortable with their work tools and ready to make a big contribution. Employee retention is an issue that affects many businesses. So don’t lose out on top talent because you’ve failed to give them the resources they need to hit the ground running.