Onboarding
Employee onboarding issues can seriously impede the progress of an organization. So a fundamental responsibility of HR and management is to ensure seamless onboarding of the new hires in an organization.
The major reason for onboarding failure is that still, many companies view onboarding as a one-week exercise. But in reality, it is a long-term process that might take anything from a few weeks to months to a year before people feel comfortable in their roles.
Employee engagement, productivity, and retention rates may all be improved with proper onboarding. However, if new recruits are not off to a good start, many may quit within months, wasting the high cost of acquiring top talents.
First-Day Information Overload
On the first day of a new job, it is natural to feel worried, stressed, or even excited. It’s a new workplace, new coworkers, and an unfamiliar environment and culture. The employees are not sure what their specific function is or who their peers will be but we can all agree that it is an unforgettable experience for all!
In a fast-paced environment, management may be eager to get their employees up and running as quickly as possible, but this may overwhelm them and create a severe onboarding issue. A new employee must complete several forms, remember numerous names, and learn multiple applications. All of this cannot be accomplished in a single day, not even in a week.
Firstly, as a part of the digital onboarding practice, businesses should automate paperwork with an employee onboarding software. This allows onboarding professionals to focus on other key onboarding operations while guiding new joiners to fill out the paperwork without any human mistakes. Not only that but the papers are saved in the cloud. So there will be no possibility of misplacement or loss of the documents in the future.
Lack Of Clarity About Roles And Responsibilities
One of the most common onboarding challenges is that most new employees are unclear about their roles and responsibilities.
In most cases, they believe they signed up for a certain position or role but are actually doing something else. The new employee may feel confused or eventually become dissatisfied with the position and work.
HR is responsible for ensuring that team leaders or supervisors meet with new hires to discuss these issues and provide clarity. They should explain and assist new employees to understand how their present function will benefit their career in the long run.
Skills Will Never Stay Relevant Forever
One may employ amazing talents and provide them with all the training and tools they need to succeed in their roles. The employee onboarding software registers new hires in training software or in an LMS to receive training. Next, they may assume employees will continue to work brilliantly for the rest of their lives and remain with the company indefinitely. But it is not possible.
Even the finest talent suffers from knowledge drain. Therefore, it is the obligation of the leadership and the management to provide continuous learning opportunities to the employee. They should provide on-demand, micro, and virtual training opportunities to reinforce initial training and keep upskilling employees.
Regular training will make the employees become more involved in their work. It will minimize employee turnover. Also, this will encourage them to stay with the company for a longer period of time.
The Correct Onboarding Content For The Correct Roles
Organizations have to customize onboarding processes for individual job responsibilities. It is inefficient and unnecessary to train everyone for everything. The same example holds true for all of the apps and procedures that the new employee will be educated on. The onboarding procedure should be relevant to the new employee and must not be overwhelming. Giving them unnecessary information may imply that the company wants them to perform other duties too and it may result in lower employee satisfaction and retention rate.
Conclusion
It is nearly impossible to train and onboard new personnel on all applications. Furthermore, it is a waste of time, money, and effort. Ideally, you should guide new hires with only relevant and appropriate materials, videos, and on-demand walkthroughs. They should be able to access these whenever they need them. It will reduce their dependency on HR, L&D, managers, and colleagues, and instead, they will be able to become more self-reliant.
All essential documents, videos, walkthroughs, and knowledgebase links must be available within the application that the employee uses. They should be able to access it preferably with the help of the employee onboarding software or training software or learning management system to overcome the challenges and perform better.
