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Many businesses invest in creating an enviable employee experience outside of work, offering perks like top-tier amenities, world-class dining, and relaxation lounges. Yet, despite these benefits, high employee turnover can persist if critical internal processes, like digital employee onboarding, are neglected.
Digital employee onboarding is more than just a formality—it’s the cornerstone of employee engagement and retention. Fixing internal processes to provide a seamless and efficient work environment is just as vital to keeping your employees as offering perks. Onboarding is your first and best chance to introduce new hires to your company culture, foster engagement, and inspire loyalty right from day one.
Recent research highlights the impact of a strong onboarding process, showing that it can boost new employee retention by 82% and improve productivity by 70%. By setting the right tone during digital employee onboarding, you’re not just onboarding employees—you’re laying the groundwork for their long-term success within the company.
When done effectively, digital employee onboarding creates a positive employee experience, reduces turnover, and accelerates the productivity of new hires.
To get a deeper understanding of what you can expect with Digital Employee Onboarding, we’ve covered the following in this guide:
What is Digital Employee Onboarding?
Digital Employee Onboarding is the process of leveraging digital tools & technology to onboard your new hires. Companies use Digital Onboarding to create a cost-effective & efficient employee onboarding process.
Digital new hire onboarding provides 24/7 access to the information they want, rather than explaining things they already know). This helps your new hires to learn quickly & effectively.
Current Onboarding Scenario
Many companies still hold on to the traditional onboarding methods. The traditional onboarding process demands your new hires to participate in training programs for long hours, if not days.
It is time-consuming for both the employee & the employer. The longer the onboarding process, the higher the chance that your employees might get frustrated and possibly churn.
Organizations take a fairly passive approach when it comes to onboarding. Things that are almost always confused to be the be-all-and-end-all of onboarding.
Especially with things like paperwork, company policies, work tools, roles & responsibilities information that your new hires must understand. But what needs to be acknowledged is that spending too much time on just these activities is not everything.
Most often, new employees are bombarded with too much information in their first week. This is a bad practice. You must have a new employee onboarding guide or an effective checklist in place and stick to it.
Tips for creating an awesome Digital Onboarding Experience
In the digital world, employees expect seamless onboarding & training experiences that simplify their work. With the technology & tools available today, you must provide the best onboarding experience.
The following are some effective tips that you can follow to create an awesome Onboarding experience for your new hires.
a. Do your research
Analyze your existing onboarding process and search for areas of improvement. Communicate with your new hires to find out their issues & pain points.
Always remember, the digital employee onboarding process needs to start from day 0. You must keep them engaged & slowly integrate new hires into the organization. Paperless Digital Onboarding is more efficient & compliant.
b. Automate & streamline the Onboarding process
This makes it easy for your employees to navigate & engage in their initial days. Every learner is unique. Understand the learning style of every individual and provide them what they needed. Have a virtual meeting & aid them at every possible instance.
c. Assign a mentor
Find a team member who is knowledgeable & friendly. Remember not to overwhelm your new hires. The mentor must be in charge of teaching them the ins & outs of your organization & how to perform their daily tasks.
Create a progress bar or checklist that enlightens employees where they stand & how far they need to go.
d. Give them a good head start
Start your digital onboarding with excitement. Create curiosity about what they are going to learn. Show some statistics or graphs that how their work will have an impact on the organization’s growth.
e. Set metrics & timelines
You must have a measuring unit. Your employees may not be aware of how long it takes to complete certain tasks, typically. Set timelines (the average time a task should take) and the right expectations. Do frequent check-ins to ensure everything is going as per the agenda.
Benefits of Digital Employee Onboarding
Let us understand some benefits that explain the need for digital employee onboarding.
For any business to succeed, effective use of time is crucial. Digital onboarding processes are significantly less time-consuming compared to traditional methods, offering businesses the flexibility to onboard employees efficiently. With digital onboarding, new hires can learn at their own pace and on their own time, contributing to a smoother and more comfortable employee experience.
Efficiency & Scalability: A digital onboarding experience streamlines repetitive tasks, such as form submissions, document verification, and policy acknowledgments. This reduces manual efforts for HR teams, allowing them to scale onboarding processes without compromising quality. Additionally, digital employee onboarding requires less manpower, helping businesses cut down on expensive one-to-one or classroom training sessions.
Improved Employee Engagement: A personalized digital onboarding for new employees boosts engagement by offering tailored content that is accessible anytime, anywhere. Employees receive timely information and resources, making it easier for them to connect with the company from day one. This level of engagement is challenging to achieve through traditional methods, which are often more tedious and time-consuming.
Enhanced Learning Experience: The flexibility of digital onboarding allows employees to start learning as early as day 0, even before their official start date. All necessary information, such as handbooks, learning modules, and manuals, is available online, ensuring that information is consistent, accurate, and up-to-date for every new hire, whether it’s a team of 50 or 50,000. This accessibility reduces the overwhelm that can come with new roles and helps employees adapt to tools and processes more quickly.
Real-Time Feedback and Continuous Improvement: With embedded analytics and feedback mechanisms in digital employee onboarding, HR teams can gain real-time insights into the onboarding experience. This data-driven approach allows continuous improvement of the digital onboarding experience, addressing any gaps and enhancing the journey for future employees. Queries and pain points can be addressed quickly and effectively, contributing to a positive and supportive environment.
Consistency Across Locations: For organizations with multiple locations or remote teams, digital onboarding ensures that every employee goes through a consistent process. This uniformity helps eliminate discrepancies in training and policy comprehension, which can arise when onboarding is handled through location-based variations in traditional practices.
Reduced Paperwork and Focus on Employee Well-Being: By digitizing the onboarding process, companies significantly reduce paperwork. This allows HR teams to focus on more meaningful tasks, such as ensuring that new employees feel comfortable and welcomed. A well-executed digital onboarding process not only boosts engagement but also contributes to long-term employee satisfaction.
Incorporating a digital onboarding strategy helps businesses save time, reduce costs, and provide a more engaging and personalized experience for new employees. This leads to higher employee satisfaction, better retention rates, and a more efficient onboarding process overall.
Relevant Read: Employee Onboarding Questions that Apty helps you Answer
Improving the Digital Employee Onboarding Experience with Apty
If you’re searching for digital employee onboarding software or a versatile digital tool to overcome onboarding and training challenges, a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) is your best solution. A leading Digital Adoption Platform like Apty not only simplifies the digital employee onboarding process but also enhances every software experience by making complex tasks easier to execute.
Apty provides more than just digital onboarding for new employees. It covers various business needs, including digital employee onboarding and training, Software adoption, business continuity, and change management. With Apty, new employees can learn directly within your application, thanks to interactive software walkthroughs tailored to their specific needs. This results in an improved digital onboarding experience, leading to a smoother transition for new hires and a better overall employee experience.
What sets Apty apart is its cost-effectiveness and efficiency. Unlike traditional onboarding software, Apty follows the DAP cycle, which involves understanding employee interactions with your applications and creating personalized walkthroughs. This unique approach ensures that each piece of content is enhanced with Apty’s expertise, allowing your organization to deliver a seamless digital onboarding experience.
By making complex software easy to use, Apty not only streamlines the digital employee onboarding process but also helps your employees adapt quickly and effectively, setting the foundation for long-term success within your organization.
