The digital onboarding process is time-saving and improves the employee experience
What is Onboarding?
In today's modern workplace, onboarding is a term frequently mentioned. But what does it mean, and why is it essential?
Defining Onboarding
At its core, onboarding is the process of welcoming and integrating new employees into the organization. It's more than just a one-day orientation; it's a structured journey that spans from initial introduction to ongoing training and cultural assimilation.
Why Onboarding Matters
Onboarding serves vital purposes fundamental to organizational success:
- Familiarization: It offers new hires a valuable opportunity to immerse themselves in the company's culture, core values, and overarching mission.
- Training: Onboarding isn't limited to generic information; it encompasses both comprehensive, company-wide training and role-specific guidance.
- Engagement: Effective onboarding isn't just about information; it's about engagement. Onboarding fosters early engagement, boosting morale and job satisfaction.
- Retention: Well-structured onboarding can have a direct impact on employee retention rates. When new hires feel supported, valued, and well-prepared for their roles, they are more likely to stay committed to the organization, reducing turnover and the associated costs.
Key Components
Successful onboarding includes elements like orientation, training, mentoring, paperwork, and regular feedback. Many organizations now use digital platforms to enhance this process.
In the following sections, we'll explore the benefits of online onboarding and guide you through creating an effective digital onboarding course.
There are many benefits to conducting onboarding training online:
- Time Savings: Managers save a significant amount of time since they no longer need to cover the same topics with each employee individually.
- Comprehensive Coverage: Online onboarding ensures that all necessary topics are effectively covered and understood.
- Flexibility: It makes the onboarding process more flexible, allowing employees to go through some parts individually.
- Consistency: Online onboarding helps ensure that onboarding is consistently delivered to all employees.
- Ease of Access: It is easy to access materials when questions arise later.
Feel free to explore our onboarding template here!
How to create an online onboarding course
When conducting a course digitally, you have more flexibility with the content. Many aspects can be made more engaging and diverse compared to traditional paper-based methods. Additionally, materials can be updated or modified during the course; there's no need to prepare everything at once.
1. Planning the most crucial parts:
Begin your course by outlining the essential topics that need to be included. You can also download a ready-made template for your course here.
Keep in mind that onboarding is an ideal opportunity to boost employee motivation. In addition to practical instructions and employment guidelines, consider sharing information about your company's story, values, and culture.
2. Staying focused on the most essential contents:
Once you've outlined the course contents at a high level, start creating the course on your learning platform. Begin by defining the critical points for each topic. Content can be added in text, video, or image formats. If your company has previously used a booklet for onboarding, it can serve as a reference when creating the course.
You can subscribe to a free 30-day trial to test our online onboarding platform here.
3. Adding images and tasks:
After creating the most crucial content, enrich it with tasks and images. Tasks are motivating and can also assess competence to ensure vital information is understood. Visual content is more engaging, so consider adding plenty of images from your organization's photo gallery or open photo galleries online.
4. Guiding and monitoring:
Once your remote onboarding training is published, provide clear instructions to those responsible for onboarding in your organization. They can send course invitations and track employee performance. Employees can also complete online onboarding on their devices, including mobile phones, making it accessible and user-friendly.
5. Pre-onboarding:
Pre-onboarding involves completing some onboarding tasks before the first day on the job. It's a useful way to provide advanced information, reducing stress when starting a new job.
6. Collecting feedback and continuous improvement:
Updating and improving online onboarding courses is straightforward. Consider adding a feedback section at the end of your course to gather improvement ideas. You can easily create and edit content based on new ideas and needs.
Multiple courses and training modules can be added to the same learning platform, or you can create a learning path consisting of several courses.
Read more:
5 tips for building a successful onboarding for new employees
Pre-onboarding for new employees - providing a smooth start for your new hires
Online onboarding - How to successfully deliver modern onboarding for new employees