Technology has made the process of onboarding more slick, more connected and easier for both HR and employees. We would say that - we're a tech company! However, do some applications of tech in this area risk reducing the valuable experience of employee onboarding to a list of automated tasks and time spent looking at a screen?
Is the point of onboarding to send tasks for new hires to complete in their own time? To automate time-consuming administrative tasks? Or to communicate working hours and dress code? I’m not sure that it is.
Thinking of onboarding as a list of tasks to complete compromises the emotional connection that can make or break the relationship between a new hire with their manager and employer.
Onboarding, induction, orientation?
Onboarding isn’t the induction (coffee machine and fire exits) or orientation (mission, vision, values), it’s the cultural, emotional and developmental part of starting in a new job. Creating an onboarding process that increases engagement, builds ambition and solidifies culture, requires a few things that the average tech app can’t conjure up:
- Manager advocacy
- Face time between the new hire and their manager
- Off-record chats with a trusted peer
- Purposeful, timely interventions that avoid information overload
What should onboarding feel like?
I was talking to Marc Earnshaw this week about the employee lifecycle template library that we’re building in Appraisd (launching this month) and he spoke about his vision for onboarding:
“Take a moment to imagine all your new hires feeling inspired, welcomed and included during their orientation and onboarding. They’re finishing each day feeling like they made the right choice to join the company and are happy to be delivering against expectations so quickly. Despite starting with the firm so recently, they already feel like they know how things work and like they belong.”
Of course, the box-ticking needs to be done, but let’s not confuse that with successful onboarding. Let’s keep the things that the HRIS can do well (right to work, security checks, employee handbook etc.) separate from the important, human, experience of employee onboarding.
Onboarding takes months, generally around three months, to get a new hire up to speed. Careful planning to make sure all the basics are done well is key to making this process as successful as possible.
How to design your onboarding process
There are lots of options for designing your process; some are apps, some are HRIS modules and some are paper and PowerPoint! My own view is that the ideal design for onboarding is rooted in performance management.
Why?
Using your performance management tech as the basis for onboarding:
- Provides a clear structure with milestones such as what should happen in week 1, month 1, the first 90 days and connects this with probation.
- Prompts people to have the right conversations at the right time including managers, team members, peers and mentors.
- Provides user-friendly forms and templates for every type of onboarding conversation.
- Ensures the plan for onboarding is aligned to everything from company goals to values to career progression.
- Allows HR to have visibility on how someone is settling in so there are no surprises come end-of-probation.
- Flags when certain milestones are achieved or missed such as the setting of objectives, or regular manager check-ins.
- Facilitates the setting of objectives for during the probation period and progress against them.
Using performance management as the basis for onboarding puts the foundations in place. It means that after successful probation, objectives can be re-set, career conversations can be logged and feedback can be gathered.
A truly connected onboarding experience
The best onboarding experience should feel simple, connected, and with the new hire at the centre. We all have compliance things to tick off the list, but thinking about your own onboarding process, where could you draw the line between the compliance elements and the cultural elements of it?
To make the onboarding process feel connected, valuable and enriching, Appraisd has developed a library of templates that includes forms for:
- New Starter Check In
- 30-day review
- 60-day review
- 90-day review
- End of Probation
And many more! They’re launching this week at our community event in London but if you can’t make it you can register your interest in them here: Register for early access to the form library.
