There are many onboarding tasks that a human resources (HR) department needs to complete on any given day. From filling out forms and other paperwork to sending out notifications and constant check-ins, these repetitive tasks can become overwhelming.
However, in today’s fast-paced business environment, employee onboarding automation has emerged to enhance the onboarding experience.
This technology helps hiring managers, HR teams, and other stakeholders streamline the time-consuming manual tasks of their onboarding programs, allowing them to focus on other key areas.
This article explores some of the benefits of employee onboarding automation and how to apply it for the best results.
Disclaimer: The information below is accurate as of March 5, 2024.
What is employee onboarding automation?
Employee onboarding automation means using automation software capable of streamlining various tasks and workflows that go into an employee onboarding program. This typically includes things like document completion and management, employee orientation, communication workflows, new employee training programs, etc.
The aim is to create a streamlined and consistent onboarding experience for both HR teams and new hires. Such an automation platform should be able to track predefined business events and trigger specific actions across multiple apps, data sources, and teams across the organization.
If applied effectively, HR automation can reduce the administrative burden, improve new employee experience, increase accuracy and efficiency, boost employee retention, and more.
Here are some specific automated onboarding workflows:
- Assigning new employees the applications and equipment needed
- Distributing and organizing all onboarding-related paperwork for signing and reviewing
- Sending welcome emails
- Scheduling orientation meetings
- Pairing new hires with their assigned mentor or onboarding buddy
- Streamlining the e-learning training course enrollment process
- Sending notifications to all stakeholders involved in the onboarding program
- Delivering feedback surveys to new employees, then sending them back to the HR department for review
While this list is not exhaustive, it gives you a better idea of what types of functions to expect in an automated onboarding process.
Let’s now take a closer look at how it differs from the manual process.
Manual vs automated employee onboarding processes
The non-automated process of onboarding a new hire involves a lot of manual work in terms of data entry, paperwork, and other administrative tasks. This puts a lot of strain on HR teams and hiring managers to keep human error at a minimum and their own workflows under control. It also often leaves them struggling to form personal connections with the newly onboarded employees, who may themselves experience a negative onboarding process because of it.
Automated onboarding eliminates many of these time-consuming manual tasks.
Here’s how:
Onboarding workflow automation software takes over much of this grunt work and frees up the HR department to interact with new employees more.
Yet many companies still rely on manual tasks for even their most critical workflows. This can stifle efficiency, the new employee’s time-to-productivity, and even the company’s bottom line. Here are some benefits that an automated onboarding process offers that a manual process does not:
- Saves time: While it may take a bit of time and effort to initially set up, an automated onboarding process saves your HR department time in the long term. Once working at full efficiency, it removes many time-consuming repetitive tasks, allowing both the HR team and hiring managers to focus on other key aspects of the onboarding process.
- Makes compliance easier: Compliance with all employment laws and regulations is essential to keep your company away from any legal liabilities, fines, or other penalties. Automation can help ensure you remain compliant by providing access to the latest versions of documents and legal forms. This also includes things like workplace safety, anti-discrimination, or equal-employment opportunities.
- Increases employee engagement: When HR is overwhelmed by too many administrative tasks, they tend to neglect new hires, failing to answer their questions or engage with them directly. In fact, 40% of new employees say it takes too long to get a response to an HR-related question. By automating those repetitive tasks, your HR team is free to focus more on new hires and their needs which increases employee engagement and retention.
- Boosts onboarding efficiency: By automating many repetitive and time-consuming tasks, HR teams can focus on other key aspects of their job. Instead of having to constantly and manually send and receive contracts, message new hires, send out notifications, or schedule check-in meetings, the HR department can ensure new hires are settling in and are getting familiar with the company culture.
- Lets you focus more on employee well-being: By automating many HR processes, you’ll be able to spend more time on in-person meetings with new hires. In addition, the employee onboarding experience will also be more positive and less stressful for them.
- Increased employee autonomy: An automated onboarding program also helps drive more autonomy among your employees. It not only reduces their time-to-productivity metric but also encourages self-learning. Onboarding automation allows new hires to finish tasks at their own pace and access the necessary resources on demand. They don’t have to constantly ask around or wait for others which enhances their autonomy, sense of empowerment, and ownership.
- Get access to data analytics: With automation technology, you get access to built-in analytics tools that can track employee engagement, learning progress, and other e-learning metrics. These help you understand the challenges that exist and what areas need improvement. Data analytics provide you with actionable insights that can boost the onboarding experience.
- Gain a competitive edge: According to the Human Capital Institute, most organizations place too much emphasis on new-hire paperwork, neglecting other strategic areas for long-term success. By using automated onboarding, you attract better talent thanks to your enhanced new hire experience, retain better talent, and free up time to focus on other business aspects.
The best way to access these employee onboarding automation benefits is with the help of a learning management system (LMS).
5 tips to automate the onboarding of new hires
One of the most important things a company can do for better talent retention, increased efficiency, and increased profits is provide an excellent employee onboarding experience.
These practical tips will help you achieve just that.
#1: Simplify the workflows during pre-boarding
First impressions count for a lot and businesses don’t have to wait until the employee’s first day to start fostering their relationship. The pre-boarding stage is the time frame between when a candidate accepts an offer and the start date at their new job. In some cases, this period can be several weeks long, during which time many new hires can also feel anxious about their decision.
HR teams and hiring managers can take advantage of this period to set their new team members’ minds at ease. They can do so by holding an informal meeting, either in person or over Zoom. Some even send out so-called “care packages” filled with company merch, handwritten welcome notes, and other tokens of appreciation that highlight the company’s culture and values.
Pre-boarding is also a great time to handle some administrative tasks. This includes things like setting up the new hires’ email and Slack accounts, assigning them a mentor or onboarding buddy, and preparing and assigning the right training materials, etc.
A manual pre-boarding process is more prone to human error, especially if you’re onboarding multiple people at the same time. Your HR team could miss critical employee information, assign the wrong training material, or otherwise let things slip between the cracks. This can often lower the employee onboarding experience or make your company look unprofessional. In fact, 67% of businesses say that they experience a 10% drop-off rate during their pre-boarding.
Automation helps to provide a consistently positive onboarding experience for all new recruits and also streamlines the process.
#2: Take care of the paperwork with automated tools
Going from pre-boarding all the way to off-boarding, HR teams can optimize the onboarding process by automating repetitive tasks like sending and receiving documents and employee contracts and signing papers. While plenty of HR automation tools have these functionalities built-in, many companies also work with integrated third-party software. These platforms allow new employees to sign contracts, NDAs, and paperwork digitally, streamlining the entire process. Digital forms can collect and store various new employee data such as contacts or emergency contact information. By storing this data in a central location, these platforms allow HR teams to access it easily and on demand.
In addition, they can also monitor the real-time status of each onboarding activity, sending users deadline reminders and notifications.
#3: Connect people automatically
Automated employee onboarding software can also help the HR department connect new hires with their teammates and other stakeholders. You can use this functionality to schedule pre-written messages or videos for your new hire before their start date. The rest of the team can also use it to send their new colleague a special welcome message.
You can also automatically appoint a mentor or onboarding buddy to every new hire. In addition, you can schedule various team events, office tours, orientation, coffee breaks, or lunches aimed at connecting your new employees with the rest of the team.
#4: Invest in an LMS
New employee learning and development is essential for any effective onboarding process. It gives your new hires the necessary know-how to do their jobs effectively by boosting their time-to-productivity metric. It also helps to improve employee retention by fostering growth opportunities. But, unless you’ve set up a standardized and automated employee training program, it would take you a lot of time, money, and energy to keep your employees’ learning needs satisfied.
An LMS is a software tool that automates the learning and development parts of your employee onboarding program. An employee onboarding LMS like Docebo will improve the overall effectiveness of your training program by acting as a central hub for all of your training-related activities. It also allows you to automate enrolments based on branches or groups, create personalized learning plans based on job roles and functions, and track learner progress in real-time.
Docebo will even integrate with the most popular human resources information system (HRIS) software to ensure a streamlined, personalized, and consistent e-learning experience for all new hires, regardless of their job role or experience. Put simply, an LMS will improve employee satisfaction, retention, and time-to-productivity by streamlining and optimizing your training program.
#5: Don’t forget feedback can be automated too
Employee feedback is essential to gauge the overall effectiveness of any onboarding program, automated or not. It tells you how well it’s performing, what areas are working, what areas aren’t, and where you need improvement.
You can ask for feedback at various points throughout your onboarding process such as after pre-boarding, after orientation, during and after training, or after assigning an onboarding buddy, for example. You can automate the feedback process by setting up an email with a linked survey. This can be sent whenever a new hire reaches a certain milestone in their onboarding. Sending such an email manually can risk delays or, worse yet, some emails not being sent at all. By automating the process, you ensure that you get employee insights every step of the way.
Automate onboarding with the help of an LMS
Employee onboarding automation plays an important role in streamlining and optimizing your onboarding process. It helps the HR department stay on top of new employees, boosting their experience, efficiency, and productivity.
An LMS will help you achieve the desired level of employee engagement and productivity through its many learning features and functionalities. Schedule a demo with Docebo today and see exactly how it can benefit your organization.