New employee onboarding software guide

Let’s face it. It’s tough making sure your large group of new hires all get the onboarding experience we want them to have. Gone are the days when we should be relying on in-person, classroom training full of endless PowerPoint presentations, tests, and activities. By relying solely on manual processes, onboarding new employees can be more difficult than it needs to be. It’s time for a better and more modern onboarding experience.

Enter new employee onboarding software. This form of employee training software makes it easy to build, deliver, and track your new employee onboarding efforts. Not only is it easy for employers to use, but it also creates a seamless learning experience for your new hires. By incorporating an online training system into your onboarding strategy, it’ll be easy to create best in class onboarding programmes. Let’s learn more.

The benefits of employee onboarding software

Save time by consolidating to one platform

Most small to mid-size businesses use a combination of HR Cloud software combined with Survey Monkey and emails to build, deliver, and train. You and your learners deserve something better. With Seismic Learning’s (formerly Lessonly by Seismic) onboarding solution, you can easily build your programme, share lessons and training tracks, and even measure the results, all within one user-friendly platform.

Create automatic workflows

Online training systems can also streamline the onboarding process by automating tasks over a certain period of time. An automated onboarding system helps streamline paperwork. In many cases, the new hire can complete their documents at home. This gives the company more time to concentrate on the employee, focusing on the tasks related to their job. Training modules can also be assigned ahead of time, and the system can track which ones are complete, which ones are not, and where the employee has deficiencies. This creates a stress-free experience for everyone. This means that managers and trainers don’t have to manually push out training content or schedule training session after training session. This creates an effective communication process between leaders and new hires while assuring managers that everyone is hitting necessary benchmarks and predetermined milestones throughout onboarding.

Know who learns what, when, and how well

The crown jewel of our training programme is it’s easy to automate onboarding and tracking. By default, you gain insight into who knows what they need to and who isn’t quite getting it. We believe accountability is just the beginning of measuring learning. Our most successful customers use Seismic Learning to highlight problem areas and even reward over-achievers.

Drive performance and productivity

Companies that deliver a great onboarding experience are also more likely to see an increase in employee retention, performance, and even productivity. In fact, companies that automate onboarding tasks with new employee onboarding software have a 16% higher retention rate of new hires. If that doesn’t show the benefits of onboarding software, then consider the fact that 77% of new hires who hit their performance goals had a formal employee onboarding experience.

Employee onboarding and development

Just as a first impression is critical for interpersonal relationship assumptions, employee orientation and any ongoing integration efforts, are some of the most essential elements of long-term happiness in a career. While most companies have a new employee onboarding process, most employees would say the experience they had could have been better. When onboarding new employees, keep in mind that your new hires are most likely comparing the way you are onboarding employees to the way they have been onboarded in the past. That’s why employee onboarding software is a great way to not only develop employees efficiently but also to stand apart in a positive way from an employee’s previous onboarding experiences. Then, once a new hire has been onboarded, it’s critical to keep the employee development going with ongoing training and education opportunities to keep the employee engaged. Seismic Learning’s software can also help you track the results of ongoing training efforts.

What does the onboarding process look like?

The onboarding process for new hires is crucial to get right and in spite of common practice, includes much more than the first day of work. In fact, best in class onboarding programmes last more than just a few weeks. We’ve seen some great onboarding programmes create 30,60, and even 90 day checkpoints for new hires after the initial onboarding process ends. Similarly to the group dynamic process flow, a good onboarding programme will be aware of and include the phases of forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Forming

The forming stage is typically referred to as orientation and will normally include only the first day of work. This is the part of the onboarding process where an employee is typically spoon fed general company knowledge, filling out new employee forms, and very little job-specific training is happening.

Storming

The storming phase of the employee onboarding process will usually include the first week of work. This is when the new hire gets to learn the details of their specific role, get to know the other members of the team better, learn the lay of the land in the office, and start to understand where they can provide value.

Norming

The norming phase in a new hire process will last from the second week until around the sixth week of employment. This is where an employee starts to become comfortable with their new surroundings and begins to move beyond the barriers of learning the basics of the company. This phase should not be ignored by onboarding programmes as it is critical to transition from this phase to the next.

Performing

The performing stage of the onboarding process is typically marked by the seventh week of employment until the individual exits the company. This is the goal of the new hire process as it is when the employee begins to provide true added value to the team and earn their paycheck.

New employee orientation

Referenced in the onboarding process flow chart above as the norming phase, new employee orientation is the first of four stages in proper new hire onboarding programming. New hire orientation is generally understood to be the first part of a new employee’s experience with their new job. It is considered new employee orientation best practices to be as thorough as possible in the beginning of a new employee orientation programme because that is the time when new hires are expecting to learn onboarding-type training materials. It is also common practice to introduce a new employee to the rest of the staff with an announcement email.

New employee orientation ideas

In addition to leveraging new employee onboarding software, here are some ideas to make your orientation programme for new employees more effective:

New employee orientation activities

Some of the best new hire orientation ideas are around the activities for the day. Be sure to make them fun and engaging, keeping in mind that most people are either excited or cynical about this type of experience. It’s best to feed on the excitement of those interested and make it engaging enough that even the cynics will at least smile a few times during the day.

New hire survey

A new hire survey can reveal a lot about the individuals going through the onboarding process and can reveal quite a bit about the process itself as well. We recommend conducting one before orientation and one after. Then, you can compare the results and understand how well a new hire has engaged throughout the process. Be sure to include some questions that are completely open-ended so that you can learn fresh ideas from your new team members.

New hire orientation presentation

Creating an orientation presentation obviously makes the onboarding process more efficient, but make sure it’s not boring. We find one of the best ways to relieve the tension and boredom of a typical onboarding presentation is to use a lot of funny and interesting animated GIFs rather than relying on text to convey information.

Different forms of training and development

As a part of the onboarding process, it is important to keep in mind the new employee’s experience with the company after their first day and first week. After planning the initial phases of the orientation process are complete, be sure to plan for the ongoing training/development that should take place to push a new hire to the performing phase. Although this is often found in T&D departments of larger companies, we’ve found that many companies now expect ongoing training and development to be completed by the functional area where the employee works.

Human resources training

For the HR department, there are typically a number of company-wide human resource training materials that need to be distributed to all incoming employees regardless of their position. Human resource training and development will usually include information around company culture, corporate values, and other ways to keep the company consistently drumming to the same beat. It may also include training and development in human resource management if the new employee will be working with the HR team.

Training and development of employees

Training new employees can be difficult, but just like most things, new hire training gets easier over time, especially if you implement a new employee training plan. A training plan will help others know how to train new employees better and will help the training and development of employees add to your culture to retain more talent. Remember, the more you plan and prepare for training and developing employees, the better equipped they will be to be successful in their roles and lead to growth for the entire company.

Staff training and development

Oftentimes, training for individual employees is just simply not efficient, so you may resort to staff development and training, where your entire company or a specific team will be trained. This type of staff training and development is very common, especially when you are paying for an expert to come and train your team. To help organise staff and team training like this, we have implemented the Group feature in Seismic Learning, so that you can assign training materials to your entire company or a team, rather than just an individual.

Professional development training

There are many occupations where professional development training is a requirement, such as education, real estate, and other licenced positions. It is important to discuss how the professional development process will be handled with your team. Who will be paying for the ongoing development? Will you provide resources that help prepare for exams? Will you provide reminders for each new employee as they reach their requirements? Will you provide leadership development training? Make sure these expectations are set before, during, and after the onboarding process.

Get started with our employee onboarding software

If you’re ready to roll out the red carpet and welcome your new hires in a special way, take a look at our online training software. Not only can we help you create an onboarding programme that engages and excites your new hires, but we can also help you deliver ongoing training that will help everyone grow in their careers. Get a demo to learn more.