Successful Employee Onboarding: How to Ensure a Smooth Start

Employee onboarding lays the foundation for efficient work and job satisfaction. A well-planned onboarding helps the new employee to adapt to their new work environment and improves both the quality and efficiency of their work.

A digital learning platform supports the onboarding by offering a flexible way to learn and all the onboarding material in one place as a clear learning path.

In this blog post, we explore the importance of onboarding and how a digital learning platform can enhance the onboarding experience. We also offer practical tips on how to design and implement onboarding using the Vuolearning platform.

The importance of onboarding for employees and employers

A well-designed onboarding benefits both the employee and the employer.

Good onboarding helps the employee to understand their tasks, work environment, and expectations more quickly, increases their chances of succeeding, safety, and well-being at work, and helps the employee to understand the organization’s practices, values, and culture. A strong onboarding experience helps the employees to feel welcome and capable, increasing their motivation and job satisfaction.

From the employer’s perspective, an employee that receives a good onboarding can start working independently and productively faster. The employees are also generally more satisfied and committed to their work, which improves employee retention. Good onboarding also reduces errors and risks. In addition, good onboarding practices can enhance the employer brand and attract new talents.

Benefits of a digital learning platform in onboarding

A digital learning platform allows learning to happen anytime and anywhere. All onboarding materials are easily accessible in one place and can be revisited when needed.

The platform allows for the creation of diverse onboarding paths, and the learning of the materials can be spread over several months if necessary. This gives the employee a clear path that they can follow and visibility of what is expected of them. Learning can happen at their own pace and it’s motivating to see the progress and what they’ll be learning throughout the process.

The digital learning platform also supports personalized learning needs: learning paths can be tailored by role or even individually. You can offer diverse and engaging learning materials on the platform and take into account the employees' skill levels and preferences.

The learning platform brings clarity to the onboarding process and makes it easy for the employer to distribute onboarding responsibilities for example to supervisors. The platform ensures consistent quality across all onboarding experiences, regardless of who is in charge of the onboarding. Supervisors and HR can track the progress of the employees and assess the impact of the onboarding: where the employee is in the process and how they’re performing.

Planning and implementing onboarding with Vuolearning

Setting the goals

Planning a  good onboarding starts by defining its goals.

Common onboarding goals include familiarizing new employees with the organization, its work culture, their own tasks and team, necessary tools, other staff, and the work environment.

For role- or task-specific goals, a skills-based approach can be used: you can utilize the competencies and competence profiles provided by the platform and define what competencies are required for the role or what the target competence profile should be.

Once the required skills and knowledge are identified, you can start adding content to the onboarding path based on what materials or trainings will provide that knowledge.

An example of an onboarding path tailored to customer service.

Defining the content

It’s worth investing time in planning the content of the onboarding, as well-structured and versatile, interactive material motivates learning and can help manage the initial information overload.

The onboarding content can include general materials for all new hires for example about the company policies, as well as role-specific materials.

When the onboarding is implemented using Vuolearning, utilize the platform’s learning paths and different activity types: courses, calendar events, achievements, milestones, conversation notes, and task lists. With these, you can build a versatile and motivating onboarding path.

Here are some examples of steps that could be added to the onboarding path:

• Course: The company’s onboarding course
• Course: The company’s ethical guidelines
• Course: Customer data system management (role-specific theory)
• Calendar event: Office tour
• Calendar event: Coffee with the team
• Task list: Onboarding checklist
• Achievement: First independent shift
• Conversation notes: Feedback discussion for onboarding
• Achievement: Onboarding completed

Scheduling the onboarding

It’s good to set schedules to guide the employees through the onboarding. Vuolearning allows you to set target schedules for each step in the learning path, either a specific date or relative to the user’s start date.

Onboarding can also be structured into stages like pre-onboarding, first day, first week, and the first few months. Each stage can have its own goals and content.

Implementing the onboarding

Using a digital learning platform, onboarding can be implemented fully remotely or part online, part in person (blended learning).

In the next example, we’ll give tips on what to do in each stage of the onboarding, what could be the goals of each stage, and what content could be included. The example onboarding has been implemented as blended learning.

• Before onboarding: Prepare materials and assign onboarding roles: who guides the new employee, who mentors. Order all the tools the new employee will need, like a laptop.
• Pre-onboarding:
  • Goal: Welcoming the new employee.
  • The user credentials for the platform can already be created and sent to the new employee before their job actually begins if you want them to be able to get to know some introductory materials beforehand. The introductory materials could include for example a short welcome video from the leadership, information about the company’s background, values, culture, and key people.
• First day:
  • Goal: Getting to know the new role, company and its culture, and colleagues.
  • Provide the new employee with the necessary tools and credentials, introduce them to the team and other personnel, give a tour at the office or other work environment.
  • The start of the actual onboarding path on the platform. The first steps could include a company orientation course and a “Coffee with the team” event, where the employee gets to know their new team.
  • Ensure that the employee has access to the platform and materials. Teach how to use it and provide ongoing support.
• First week:
  • Goal: Ensuring that the employee has a solid understanding of their tasks and they have learned all the essential information related to their job.
  • Take this goal into account when setting target schedules for the onboarding path’s steps: the first week's goal could be for example that the employee has at least completed the organization’s onboarding course.
• First few months:
  • Goal: Building enough confidence so that the employee is able to carry out their tasks with the team's support.
  • You can include different milestones to the path for example so that each month includes a new milestone that the user receives when they have acquired some new skill or learned a new tool related to their tasks. This supports learning on the job and provides recognition for the employee of their new skills.
• End of onboarding:
  • You can include an “Onboarding complete” step where the employee marks an achievement done themselves when they feel that they have received a proper onboarding for their job.
  • You can use the conversation notes to include a feedback session about the onboarding experience.
  • Keep the onboarding path and materials open for later reference.
  • Even after the onboarding ends, continue to support the employee’s professional development for example with trainings on a digital learning platform and continue to develop the employee’s competencies, in line with both the company’s needs and the employee’s personal goals.

Watch this video for instructions on how to create a versatile onboarding path in Vuolearning:

Tracking and evaluating the onboarding process

To analyze and improve the onboarding process, gather feedback of the onboarding and monitor the completion rates.

With Vuolearning, you can gather feedback for example by creating surveys. With the activity type conversation notes, you can also have feedback discussions of the onboarding where the supervisor and the employee use a ready-made template to discuss the onboarding process and how well it worked and what could be improved.

You can also add tasks that measure the employee’s knowledge to the onboarding material in order to find out whether the user learns the things taught in the material.

The onboarding process can also be measured by tracking how many of the users complete the onboarding. If there are many who do not finish the onboarding, investigate why: do they receive enough information to use the platform, do they have motivation or time to learn, is the material relevant? Continuously improve the onboarding process based on the feedback received from the employees and the platform’s learning analytics.