Employee onboarding is a critical phase in the employee lifecycle that sets the tone for a new hire's journey and aims to get them integrated and productive as efficiently as possible.
However, the onboarding process is often fraught with flaws like incomplete or inconsistent processes and a general lack of organization.
These issues can lead to frustration, increased turnover, and missed opportunities to engage employees from the start.
This article offers practical strategies from top experts to help you streamline your onboarding process and create an efficient, engaging experience that boosts retention and productivity.
Step 1: Review Your Current Process
Reviewing your current onboarding process is essential for streamlining onboarding because it will help you to identify any gaps, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement.
Here are some tips and best practices for reviewing your onboarding process:
- Conduct employee surveys: Conduct onboarding surveys to gather feedback from recent hires to help optimize the onboarding experience for future ones.
- Map the process: Document each step of the onboarding process, from sending the offer letter to the end of the probation period. This will help you identify any missing steps and think about optimizations such as automation.
- Analyze key metrics: Evaluate retention rates, time-to-productivity, and employee satisfaction scores for insights into the process’s effectiveness.
- Benchmark against industry standards: Compare your process to best practices or competitor approaches to identify potential gaps or areas for innovation.
Common Employee Onboarding Challenges
While no two onboarding processes will be exactly the same, there are some common challenges that organizations who care about onboarding work to iron out.
- Lack of standardization: While some customization is required, in general, inconsistent processes can lead to confusion and an uneven onboarding experience across teams or departments.
- Time constraints: Especially in already stretched workplaces, the added work of onboarding someone can mean that the process lacks the requisite care and attention.
- Overwhelming amount of information at once: Bombarding new hires with excessive information early on can lead to confusion and reduced retention of key details.
- Delayed access to tools and resources: Technical or logistical issues in providing necessary tools, equipment, or system access can hinder productivity.
- Unclear roles and expectations: When responsibilities and performance expectations aren’t clearly defined, and their role isn’t explained in the context of organizational success, new hires (and workers in general) may struggle to make the required impact.
- Limited focus on culture: Failing to introduce the basics such as company values, mission, and culture can result in a less focused or engaged workforce.
- Inefficient communication: Poor coordination between HR, managers, and teams can result in missed steps or delays in the onboarding process.
- Lack of personalization: Treating onboarding as a one-size-fits-all approach ignores the unique needs and experiences of individual hires.
- Insufficient feedback mechanisms: Without gathering feedback from new hires, organizations miss opportunities to refine and improve the onboarding process.
5 Strategies For Streamlining The Onboarding Process
With the above challenges in mind, here are some effective strategies you can use to streamline the onboarding process to make it as efficient and effective as possible.
1. Improve the preboarding experience
The onboarding process begins right after someone’s accepted an offer and a strong preboarding helps set the stage for future success.
While you don’t want to overwhelm, you can start to engage new hires before their first day by providing essential information, access to resources and company materials, and any new hire paperwork (Form W-4, and I-9).
“We host pre-start Zoom meetings to introduce the new hire to key people and ease first-day jitters, says Sasha Robinson, VP of People at Trainual, “And every candidate has already completed our pre-hire training content in our app, meaning they've watched videos to learn about our mission, vision, and every member of the leadership team.”
This helps free up time during orientation to focus on elements such as introducing the organization and the new starter’s role within it.
Pro tip: A new hire questionnaire gathers important information from new employees, such as personal details, previous work experience, and other relevant data needed for their employment records.
However, you can also use this as an opportunity to gather some fun details like food preferences that can help personalize your new hire’s onboarding plan.
2. Automate task management
“Automation is the #1 way organizations can improve operational efficiency,” says Reid Walsh, CHRO at NEOGOV. “An onboarding solution can give new employees 24/7 access to an online portal where they can complete/submit paperwork digitally, work through their checklist, and access resources to support them as they get up to speed.”
Onboarding automation helps take some of the work off of HR and managers’ plates, minimizes delays, and ensures every step is completed consistently.
The time saved can be used to focus on more value-add activities like building meaningful connections rather than handling repetitive tasks.
3. Create a structured onboarding plan
Developing a standardized onboarding framework outlining key activities and milestones ensures everyone will know exactly what’s required of them and when and that nothing gets missed.
Things to include are: clear and measurable goals, training schedules, and any resources needed for new hires to get productive in their new roles.
“The first step is conducting a job audit to determine what tasks the new employee will actually be performing, rather than relying on outdated duties or the “way it’s always been done,” says Lindsay Mastrogiovanni, CEO of ConsciousHR. “If it’s your first hire, start by listing the tasks you lack the time or skill to handle on your own. This helps clarify the role and ensures you’re onboarding with purpose.”
We recommend creating a 30-60-90 day onboarding plan for each role and individual with some standardization e.g. a welcome presentation covering mission and values will be relevant for all roles.
Lastly here, as people ops consultant Rita Wittek, highlights "Streamline communication between hiring managers, HR, and IT by centralizing processes in one tool or checklist and assigning clear ownership for onboarding tasks to avoid confusion and delays.”
4. Leverage onboarding analytics and reporting
Use tools such as onboarding software, HRMS, or a learning management system to measure onboarding success using metrics like time-to-productivity, task completion rates, and worker feedback.
These insights, combined with data from check-ins and surveys, will help identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement, enabling data-driven decisions to refine the process.
5. Focus on culture and community
I’ve focused quite a bit on technology and processes above, but new hire success is also built on relationships and these begin to form through welcome activities, team introductions, buddy systems, and mentorship programs.
“There is the important role of communicating the 'culture', the rules that aren’t written down anywhere, but that make it so much easier for a new employee to adapt, says HR Consultant Maggie Michaels DeCan. “Pairing new employees up with a peer for the first 30 days can be very helpful to help them adapt.”
Streamlining Onboarding Is An Easy Win
Simple investments in preboarding, automation, analytics, and clear goal-setting can streamline the onboarding process and ensure employees feel supported and connected from the very beginning.
A thoughtful onboarding strategy improves retention and engagement which ultimately drive long-term organizational growth.
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