It’s 2022 and It’s High Time to Move Your Company to New Employee Online Onboarding—Here’s Why

Old fashioned onboarding ineffective. New employees roll in for their first day on the job to kick butt and take names and then they’re banished to a desk or the break room to complete forms, insurance cards and other required first day papers. Once that drudgery is complete 3 hours later, then they are brought out to meet their coworkers or teammates that are already knee deep into their day. This process interrupts everyone’s day and is completely inefficient. The new employee is told to ask questions they may have about their onboarding, but many times they end up not doing it because they don’t want to interrupt anyone.

The old way is the way it has been done for years, decades and with some company’s nearly a century. This method of onboarding makes sense, correct?

One plus to move from first day paperwork-oriented onboarding done in a two to three hours is that a more thorough complete longer onboarding system is that it works far better for the employee and employee retention. Recent studies have shown clearly that short onboarding systems retention rates are very poor. The fact is it has been demonstrated that companies that offer onboarding systems that take under a month were approximately 10% lower in employee retention rates than ones that have onboarding systems that take a month or more.

The critical factor is creating an onboarding system that requires enhanced direct employee involvement, includes caveats of requiring finding out answer to multiple questions throughout the process and one that assists them in building up job skill sets required to be successful at the job. How can companies find a balance between the necessity of a high-involvement onboarding system and not make the new employee end up disinterested and disconnected from their new job? The answer to that question is to move your company to online onboarding.  

Here are three pluses about how online onboarding that will help your company directly and make your new employee highly involved with their new job from the first day they get their employment offer in their email to the time they are looked at as full trained and full function employee producing for the company.

Reduced Work and Far More Effective

It’s a fact that online onboarding takes way less work. By signing up with an established online onboarding system, companies can now steer clear of tons of forms and documents that destroys a new employee’s first day enthusiasm and that take up tons of the company’s time. Alternatively, companies that switch to online onboarding can set up a new employee with their own login credentials to the system that features digital forms and documents which logically means time savings for the company and its new employee.

On top of that fact, companies can provide new employees their login credentials to its online onboarding system prior to their arrival on the job site whereas part of the new hire process, new employee forms and documents can be completed by the employee first before they begin work at their new job. When this method is implemented, it saves companies significant amounts of money on new hire costs. 

Online onboarding systems permit companies to lower costs on costly printed HR packages, and it allows them to connect all the companies HR areas including payroll, Human Resource Information System and Enterprise Resource Planning to name just a few. These to factor alone will help companies save money, make new employees more effective and improve employee retention rates. The biggest plus of all, an online onboarding system will make a new employee’s first day a lot more engaging and make them more connected to the company.

Online Onboarding Builds a Personal Connection to the Company

Logically it wouldn’t make sense to see online onboarding as a way to build a personal connection to the company for a new employee, but because it is so efficient it provides the company and its new employee the space to personally connect with their new boss and new job more readily which allows them to get up to speed in their job much more quickly. Online onboarding gives the needed time to start training, establish goals and assigned job duties and to talk directly about what is expected in the job which in turn improves new employee productivity.

Online Onboarding Means Better Employee Engagement

Here’s an important question. Which would be more effective, listening to the Human Resources plow through company’s edicts, productivity goals and mission statements or listening to a well-done new employee first day company online interactive video that showcases the company’s corporate culture, complete with real employee interviews and real company numbers and examples of what the company and its employees are all about?

Logically, most companies provide the first example to newly hire employees. The second example is what many companies are providing to their new employees.

Online onboarding can be exciting and interactive and provide much needed information critical to new employees. By building in high-tech interactive things into the online onboarding hiring process such as video, engagement games and interactive tasks with actual task and goal building, companies can engage new employees about growing their skill sets and be super productive for the company.

Everything your company does to enhance the hiring process so it engages new hires and creates a super positive experience the better the outcome will be for the company and its new employees. By making the hiring process super engaging, focusing on improving skill sets, job knowledge, goal setting and productivity the more likely you will end up with happy, productive long-time employee and hopefully a higher employee retention rate as well.