How Digital Onboarding Revolutionizes the Employee Acquisition Process

Digital Onboarding August 20, 2020

Mary Kate Morrow

Writer

Introduction

The onboarding process is being revolutionized through real time digital onboarding tools. Whether you run a small restaurant business or financial institutions with many storefronts, a digital onboarding process can increase employee experience and employee retention rates.

What is Digital Onboarding?

Digital onboarding is the process of welcoming new hire employees to your business. This process generally begins as soon as your new hire employee signs their offer letter and can occur before their first day in their new role. The onboarding process is a critical part of making sure that new employees feel ready to perform their roles and contribute to bottom-line profitability.

A common mistake that many business owners make is not properly onboarding new hire employees. Sometimes this happens when business owners are rushing to get a new hire on the floor or when there is a lack of employee onboarding system developed.

More than 20% of businesses lack a formal employee onboarding process and orientation. 69% of employees will more likely stay on staff for three years minimum if they have an employee onboarding experience that is outstanding.

The employee onboarding journey can be very stressful for some new hire employees. Many people feel ill-prepared their first day on the job or overwhelmed with the amount of paperwork and information being given to them.

Business owners and human resource professionals can use digital onboarding to prepare new hire employees before they begin their role. An employee who can enter their new role feeling refreshed, prepared, and low levels of stress will likely have much higher levels of job satisfaction.

Do not cut the onboarding journey short as it is one of the most crucial indicators of employee retention rates. A proper employee onboarding process will lead to higher employee retention rates and help keep top talent employees on your payroll.

In fact, an improper employee onboarding process is one of the top reasons that new employees leave a new role within the first few months of employment. A proper onboarding experience will help your new role feel as though your team is in a united state and welcomes them to your objectives and mission statements.

With great technological advances, more businesses are using digital onboarding processes. When onboarding digital tools are properly utilized the onboarding experience occurs in real time and without the need for face to face training.

The digital onboarding experience is 100% online. Digital onboarding can be used for virtually any profession whether primarily or as a supplement to your onboarding process.

For example, onboarding bank employee new hires may include training on proper identity verification when opening a bank account at the branch. A financial institution or credit union digital onboarding program could include digital customer service simulations, customer data privacy policy documents, and new account customer experience expectations.

The Future of Onboarding

Digital onboarding techniques are being used by industry leaders already. Digital onboarding is especially prevalent in the tech companies sector, including giants like Twitter and Google.

In fact, the majority of tech companies already use digital onboarding techniques. The technological proficiency of new hire employees makes digital onboarding very accessible and comfortable.

Benefits of digital onboarding include-

1. Consistency- Instead of face-to-face trainings that will necessarily differ over time, digital onboarding helps you make sure that your training material stays consistent. All onboarding materials can be kept digitally in a vault that can be accessed, updated, and added to in real time and from any location with internet access.

Not only is the digital onboarding journey incredibly accessible but it also contains checklists and confirmations to make sure that no important steps are missed. When the onboarding process occurs in real time offline it is easy to overlook a step or important document.

2. Efficiency- Instead of using massive amounts of labor to train new hire employees, the digital onboarding journey has been previously established and ready to be accessed by new hire employees as they are acquired.

Human resource professionals will have less sifting through paperwork to do. A digital onboarding journey saves time, money, and resources for your entire company

3. Creativity- Without the restrains of real time face to face training there is a lot more room for creativity with onboarding digital tools. You can create quizzes, icebreakers, or questionnaires that go between training videos or powerpoint slides to keep your new hire engaged.

Digital onboarding programs can provide a lot of customization options to give your new hires a taste of your company culture and help your business stand out to top talent applicants. Improve the overall onboarding experience by adding in special customizations that will set you apart from the competition and keep your new hire engaged.