Do you know that organizations with strong onboarding processes can increase retention by 82%? This makes you question how much you’re paying attention to the process of training new hires and integrating them into the work environment.
That’s where employee onboarding software comes in. With this, you can automatically introduce new employees to the necessary tools and resources they need to excel as a member of your work community. However, no two employee onboarding software are the same.
In this article, you’ll learn about the importance of effective onboarding, the necessary features to look out for in onboarding software, and some top choices for training new employees.
Table of Contents
- Importance of Effective Onboarding
- Key Features to Look for in Employee Onboarding Software
- Top 5 Employee Onboarding Software
- Case Studies in Successful Employee Onboarding Software Implementation
- Critical Factors in Selecting Employee Onboarding Software
- Strategies for Maximizing the Effectiveness of Employee Onboarding Software
Importance of Effective Onboarding
Enhanced Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is all about how much your employees are willing to put into your organization, specifically in effort and commitment. With an effective onboarding process, you can communicate the mission and vision of your company clearly. This is usually accompanied by that shared enthusiasm for the growth of your brand.
With this, employees are more likely to become engaged and give more than a hundred percent each day because they genuinely care about meeting your organizational goals. Through an effective onboarding process, you can demonstrate how much your organization values your employees. In return, they will become more engaged with a genuine drive to see your company succeed.
Accelerated Productivity
It’s no secret that engaged employees are productive employees. Effective employee onboarding is so important because it has a spiral effect on how your employees regard working within the establishment.
By helping them to acclimatize and engage with your products and services, there is a higher chance that they will understand what these entail and the best methods to improve company growth. An employee who doesn’t have to worry so much about how to get integrated into a new environment will spend all that extra time on positive activities.
Retention Improvement
Onboarding is super important because new hires who quickly settle into a company’s work culture and environment are more likely to stick around. Job security is a big deal, and no one will be willing to leave a company that helps them settle in quickly. This improves the level of retention of employees and saves the company significant costs.
Hiring a new person can be as high as thousands of dollars, depending on the position. This doesn’t take into account all the knowledge and experience from old employees that have to be transferred yet again to a new hire. No organization will want to incur such loss due to high turnover. You can eliminate the chances of this by paying extra attention to onboarding processes.
Compliance and Legal Requirements
Another significant importance of effective onboarding is that it ensures legal compliance. This encompasses all the vital information about the legal requirements, procedures, and company policies, including employment laws and safety regulations.
Through a great onboarding program, you can provide clear guidelines that help new hires understand what the company expects in terms of behavior and performance. On the flip side, they are also fully aware of their rights and responsibilities, thereby encouraging a healthy working relationship. Overall, this minimizes risk as the organization operates in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
Customer Satisfaction
An effective employee onboarding program can also impact customer satisfaction. Properly onboarded employees are usually equipped with all the necessary training manuals and resources they need to provide exceptional service to customers.
With customers gaining access to high-quality service from employees, this will significantly improve their overall interaction with your organization, leading to higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Use an effective onboarding program to create a culture of excellent customer service delivery, and this will build a positive image for your brand.
Key Features to Look for in Employee Onboarding Software
Intuitive User Experience
An onboarding software that’s comprehensive and contains every single feature you need for an effective onboarding process sounds like a great idea. However, it serves no purpose if the overall user interface is complicated and challenging to navigate.
Employee onboarding should be a seamless experience where every team member can easily navigate through various processes without drops in performance. Therefore, you should look out for employee onboarding software with an intuitive user experience.
Flexibility and Customization
Rigidity with employee onboarding software comes with numerous issues. Various organizations have diverse departments with their unique processes. Your employee onboarding software should not be limited to certain functions. Instead, it should be flexible and customizable to accommodate your business workflow requirements regardless of the department. You should set features and customize them as you deem fit.
Self-Service Features
Self-service features on your employee onboarding software allow your employees to interact directly with this process, saving you time and effort. Rather than rely on the manual option to input information into the software, new hires can easily fill out all the necessary information and upload them.
They should be able to find information and upload documents quickly without any complicated processes. The best employee onboarding software makes the process of getting to know the company seamless for the employees as they go through the onboarding process without issues.
Also, Check out our blog on The Expert’s Guide To Create A Self-Service Knowledge Base
Integration Capabilities
Another essential feature of employee onboarding software is the ability to integrate easily with other software, including an applicant tracking system. Onboarding is a crucial stage in the recruitment process, and you can use software that allows the seamless integration of these processes. With efficient employee onboarding software, you can quickly move from the recruitment management phase into the onboarding stage without skipping a beat.
Comprehensive Training and Development Tools
Employee onboarding is all about equipping new hires with the knowledge, resources, and tools they need to understand their responsibilities within an organization. Therefore, look out for features that allow for comprehensive training and development. It could be quizzes or FAQ sections, but the common theme here is that there are sufficient tools to ensure your employee is fully ready to handle their tasks efficiently.
Workflow Automation
It’s the 21st century, and no one wants to run around trying to get paperwork signed or filed manually. This becomes so much easier when there’s an employee onboarding software that allows stakeholders from different departments to work together efficiently and monitor different stages throughout. An efficient employee onboarding software bridges the gap between people and processes through workflow automation. Through an automated workflow, you can eliminate repetitive steps, allow stakeholders to handle each stage of the application automatically in the workflow, and ensure every aspect is accurate.
Communication and Collaboration Tools
The right employee onboarding software should help to improve the connection between new hires and experienced employees by incorporating communication and collaboration tools. This software should allow for cross-team collaboration where every step of the learning process includes feedback and team effort.
Culture and Engagement Features
A digital onboarding process shouldn’t feel too obligatory or lonely. You can spice things up by using employee onboarding software with features that help you bring your company work culture to life. Gamification is a great way to do this. You can improve memory retention and employee performance by making the employee onboarding process fun and exciting. This way, they can easily familiarize themselves with their responsibilities and get a memorable experience out of it.
Also, check out our article: Customer onboarding in banking
Top 5 Employee Onboarding Software
1. Document360
This all-in-one documentation platform also incorporates features that make onboarding new employees a breeze. Thanks to the adequate knowledge bases and intuitive interface, you can use this onboarding software as a centralized knowledge repository to help new hires learn all they need to know about your organization. Document360 integrates with a wide variety of tools as it offers multi-channel support for adequate use of internal documentation. Features include roles and permissions, category manager, versioning, and API documentation.
Schedule a demo with one of our experts to take a deeper dive into Document360
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2. Freshteam
Great for various categories of businesses, Freshteam is an employee onboarding software that helps with training new hires on all the necessary information they need to excel within an organization. It includes features such as time-off management, employee directory, onboarding, and applicant tracking. A feature that makes this tool stand out is that it’s super easy to use in onboarding. Every section is labeled correctly to avoid confusion, and information is centralized for proper retrieval. It also features a customizable onboarding checklist alongside task management functionality. However, a downside is that it doesn’t integrate easily with several third-party software.
3. Trainual
Trainual is a specially designed solution for supporting onboarding processes through a playbook of policies, documents, and regulations specific to your company. With this, you can easily document all your processes and share them quickly with new hires within the onboarding software. There are tons of helpful templates to make this as seamless as possible. You can also take advantage of the tracking features to stay updated on the entire process. However, Trainual has limitations with content editing and tagging, which some users will find insufficient.
4. Enboarder
With Enboarder, organizations can help new hires settle into the work culture seamlessly from day one. This software integrates easily with applicant tracking systems to make the workflow more automated and stress-free. Therefore, new hires can have access to high-quality training and support at every step of the onboarding process.
Meanwhile, the hiring process can also be more efficient, thanks to a wide range of features that make recruitment more engaging. HR professionals can view actions at various stages. While Enboarder is excellent for employee engagement and offers great analytics, it also has limited customization options and a dashboard that appears complex.
5. Sapling
Create a seamless onboarding experience with Sapling, a software that easily automates workflows, is visually appealing and easy to use. With this tool, you can enjoy a great interactive experience that eliminates duplicate efforts and helps organizations track employee data seamlessly. They are also really great with customer support through the friendly and helpful chat feature. Use Sapling to teach your new hires about your organizational culture during the onboarding process. It also has a buddy feature that helps to boost engagement. A very beneficial feature when onboarding new team members is the HR information tracking, which has been automated to save a lot of time.
Case Studies in Successful Employee Onboarding Software Implementation
Google is a brand that needs no introduction, as it is ranked on the list of top five valued companies in the world. However, working in a company like this also comes with a ton of expectations. New employees are expected to work seamlessly with team members and prove their capabilities, a feat that can be overwhelming.
Therefore, Google introduced “just-in-time nudges,” a set of reminders that informs new employees on the following line of action and helps to monitor their progress. These gentle reminders exposed them to critical information quickly, and this led to a massive increase in new employee productivity. This gives you an idea of just how effective successful employee onboarding software implementation can be.
Critical Factors in Selecting Employee Onboarding Software
Scalability
When selecting employee onboarding software, consider the future growth and scalability of your organization. Your onboarding software should be able to accommodate changes over time, including an expanding workforce or modifications in regulatory requirements. Scalability is essential as it allows you to customize your software as the needs of your organization continue to evolve.
Cost-Effectiveness
You don’t have to break the bank to get an employee onboarding software that accommodates all your organizational needs. Therefore, be sure you have a budget that won’t stretch your company thin and work with this. Cost-effectiveness is essential when selecting employee onboarding software as this could be the difference between getting affordable software and one that makes your organization run at a loss.
Support and Training
How much support and training do you need during employee onboarding? Different software has diverse levels of support, and you should pay attention to them to ensure you get one that aligns with your organizational goals. You should select an employee onboarding software that offers comprehensive training resources through a knowledge base that helps new employees use the software effectively.
Security and Compliance
Your employee onboarding software will involve the input of sensitive employee information, and this makes data security and compliance a critical factor in selecting employee onboarding software. The last thing you want is software that puts your organization at the risk of divulging sensitive information. Therefore, you should look out for software providers that consider robust security measures a priority. They should also comply with the relevant data protection regulations within your region.
Strategies for Maximizing the Effectiveness of Employee Onboarding Software
Establish Clear Onboarding Goals
Every effective onboarding process starts with a clear plan. What would you like to accomplish with this onboarding process? This should be clearly spelled out, where you identify critical milestones for your new hires within a specific time frame. It would be best if you also had a proper roadmap for your new employee and human resources team to guide every team member toward what should be expected for a smooth experience.
Provide Ongoing Training Opportunities
Another great way to maximize the effectiveness of your employee onboarding software is to introduce targeted training programs for new hires. The learning process never ends, and you can always provide tailored training opportunities to address specific skills and knowledge gaps within your company. This could be soft skills development or job-specific training. Some software allows the integration of e-learning modules to make this process seamless.
Solicit Feedback for Continuous Improvement
Feedback is crucial because it lets you know what you’re doing right and what’s wrong. Maximize the effectiveness of your onboarding software by regularly checking in with your new hires to understand their experiences and ensure the organization meets their diverse needs. This is also a great time to highlight their concerns and address them before they become full-blown problems. Solicit feedback through an open communication process, and you’ll realize how this will improve the onboarding phase significantly. Through periodic evaluations, you can understand how effective your onboarding program is.
Encourage Interaction and Collaboration
Encourage new employees to build amazing relationships with more experienced colleagues by fostering networking events and the use of collaboration tools. Initiate interactive events where experienced employees can freely talk about their roles and challenges working within the organization. Through this, you can foster a sense of community and encourage new hires to reach out for support. Of course, this also has a positive effect on employee retention and job satisfaction.
Facilitate Mentorship Programs
A mentor can make onboarding processes smoother and faster. This mentor will be responsible for guiding the new employee as the go-to person at all times. With this, you can alleviate the fears of the new employee as regards settling into the organization easily. You can also facilitate specific mentorship programs that highlight key topics and dissect them for better understanding. When experienced employees are willing to provide valuable insights and support, this increases the chances of a successful employee onboarding process.
Wrapping up
Each exceptional employee onboarding software designed for training new staff members must offer automation and user-friendly features. It should take the stress out of the process of settling into a new organization and boost employee retention.
Looking to find the perfect onboarding software with the right knowledge base to increase employee productivity and help you onboard new hires seamlessly? Get started with Document360 and check out its unique features.
An intuitive knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!
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