Employee onboarding is the process of aligning the newcomer employee with the company’s workflows.
🛠️ When one enters the company, they should apply their skills in a right way, given that all companies has different workflows and requirements. So, the company need educational materials to ensure that each employee will perform their job right and have the space to grow.
💬 In addition, a proper communication between team members is crucial, so a newcomer should be introduced to all of them. It’ll help a new employee understand their place in the company and orient what and why they should do.
🖥️ Management systems can be used to automatize and optimize the process. Let’s explore them!
What is employee onboarding?
Onboarding is the process of adopting employees to your work, and it’s very important. Even if a newcomer is qualified and motivated, they will not create any value for you unless they’re integrated into your work processes without tension. That’s why we need educational materials present in the company:
- to introduce all work peculiarities to newcomers;
- ensure their constant improvement;
- maintain their satisfaction.
As with many workplace organization processes, onboarding can be optimized and automatized.
Various management systems enable the company’s management to create an employee database with all relevant information, including their skills, positions, and preferences. They also help organize all work processes and create educational courses that show in detail the company’s work processes. CleverLMS is an example of a tool used for such a purpose. It’s a learning management system with the options of task planning and learning tracking.
Such tools facilitate work with employees greatly, but they cannot replace it. For efficient onboarding, to ensure that there’ll be no tension and disappointment, you need a good orientation strategy.
Work orientation
Now we see the employee onboarding definition, but let’s dive into its elements.
All newcomers in your company start with being accustomed to everything happening here. It includes adopting the corporate culture, understanding how exactly to perform work processes, and becoming familiar with all other team members. Let’s see each component closer.
- The corporate culture is the set of rules, expectations, customs, and behavioral patterns that are usual in your company. It can be formal, informal, highly distinct, or there can be no defined culture, but in all people communities, some form of the culture exists. To introduce the employee to it, group and personal meetings with the discussion of expectations, work processes, and workplace peculiarities are helpful. However, in some cases, it’s not so important, for example for remote teams or contract-based work.
- The company’s workflows are very specific for each company. It’d not be an exaggeration to say that there are no two companies where workflows are the same, although they can be very similar. For example, two clothing stores have similar workflows, but their assortments, work approaches, and target audiences will be at least slightly different. While new employees already have work skills, they should be guided, directed, and aligned with your company’s processes, so they perform the work exactly as necessary. That’s why employee onboarding training is so important. In the form of online courses and personal mentorship, a newcomer will learn everything they need and implement it right during the work.
- Communication is essential to ensure efficient work. It should be clear and meaningful, with the opportunity to ask anything or leave feedback while being polite and understanding each other. Introduce a newcomer to everyone with whom they’ll work and make sure that they understand how they are united by the company’s workflows. Ask all teammates for feedback regularly, so you’ll evaluate the communication efficiency and whether all of them are satisfied. Digital employee onboarding is useful here, enabling constant contact and involvement using messengers and other communication tools.
In addition to that, onboarding includes various paperwork, such as work contract signing, tax-paying, and similar legal and documentation things. It’s important to create a checklist for such activities and be sure that they’ll be completed.
How it works
Before going to overview the tools, let’s focus on details. While each strategy proposes its own methods of onboarding, the employee onboarding process has several distinct stages, and specifying each can be very helpful.
- A work interview is an organized communication with a candidate to evaluate their skills, background, dedication, and other relevant characteristics. It often also includes a test task that shows the company’s leadership how proficient the candidate is and how they understand the company’s needs.
- The first meeting with colleagues can be the group meeting where each team member will communicate with a newcomer. Alternatively, a newcomer may be introduced to each of them separately. The objective here is to establish stable connections and ensure that a newcomer understands what they need to do and why.
- Work introduction is when an employee starts work activities. At this stage, educational materials and orientation courses are very helpful, as an employee will implement this knowledge at work right after learning it.
- Workflow integration is the last stage when a newcomer becomes a full employee and performs their job regularly. Here, it’s important to monitor it and provide feedback and expectations to ensure that they are satisfied and evaluate how their work processes may be further improved.
Source: AIHR
Onboarding relies heavily on employee socialization, as the most efficient work requires good connections with teammates and management. According to the MIT Sloan Management Reviews, most newcomers are motivated by pursuing their own goals and want to be understood by others from this perspective.
Also read: The Ultimate Guide to USA Staffing Onboarding: Tips and Best Practices.
Applying onboarding tools
All these processes can be automatized, and for efficient online employee onboarding, they should be. We’ve already mentioned learning management systems (LMSs), but there are more HR software types. Let’s see some of them that are suited for onboarding.
- Learning management systems are based on course creation and serve as platforms for knowledge exchange and skills uplifting. They often offer features to increase motivation, such as reward systems and high interactivity, and you can see CleverLMS features as an example.
- General HR management tools focus on employee management in all aspects, from hiring and interviewing to work management. They serve as databases for employees, storing their data and enabling the leadership to access them each time. They also help with paperwork, such as payrolls and document completion.
- Talent management systems (TMSs) are specific employee onboarding tools that are similar to LMSs but focus more on work result tracking rather than learning. Also, similar to HR management tools, they often help in talent searching and hiring.
- Project management tools work as advanced workflow organizers, enabling task creation, deadline setting, tracking, and communication regarding each task.
Best examples
Let’s now see which of these tools could be best for you. An employee onboarding app can be a management system of any type that suits the company best. So, we’ll be short: here is a table with several app examples, specifying their types and for what they’re best suited.
| Tool | Category | Description/Best for |
| CleverLMS | Learning management | Enables course creation, task assignment, task completion tracking, and personalized mobile learning, being the best for companies that need to teach specific activities to their employees. |
| BambooHR | HR management | Tracks employee work, saves their data, creates payroll, helps in document filling, and shows concise statistics, so it’s the best for medium and large companies with high staff turnover. |
| ClearCompany | Talent management | Focuses on talent search, creating job vacancies, tracking employee work, communication, and creating reports, so it’s best suited for startups and companies requiring a qualified workforce. |
| Asana | Project management | Provides extensive features for task planning, scheduling, and communicating about each task, so it’s good for project-based work. |
Conclusion
The company consists of workflows, each of which produces some value, and the driving force of them is people. Their specific professional activity, powered by motivation, moves these workflows. Thus, onboarding is the alignment process between workflows and the people who drive them.
It consists of educational activities and directed guidance to show how exactly newcomers should perform their work. Another important element is introducing the newcomer to other team members, as they should understand what they should do and why. Finally, their work should be monitored to pro
While you can apply onboarding manually, using group meetings and messengers, the right employee onboarding software will be very helpful. These platforms, for a small subscription payment, will facilitate all onboarding processes and save hours of your time each month while increasing efficiency.
Autor: by Veronika Sinitsa
