The five pillars of a great onboarding programThe strategic building blocks for employee onboarding

hronboard.me

IntroductionDisengaged workers costs billions annually. Gallup calls it an engagement crisis. Others are not as gloomy in their view. Whichever side of the spectrum you are, what’s undeniable is the massive shift that has been going on in businesses globally, regardless of their size or employee count.

Employees want a change. There’s an overall disruption in what employers expect from workers, and what employees value and look for in employers. Now more than ever, employees are choosing who they work for as much as organisations are going through the recruitment process to find their ideal candidates.

There is a shift in power, a realignment where businesses are listening to employees who are demanding change.

Glassdoor has gone from zero to over 15 million employee reviews of companies in less than 5 years.

We call this the employee experience revolution. Organisations embracing this revolution will focus on employee experiences as a way to drive innovation, increase customer satisfaction, find and hire the best people, make work more engaging, and improve overall performance. It might not be an overt or loud revolt, but it is taking place right now. Switched-on HR departments will try and deliver an engaging employee experience as soon as the employee journey kicks off: right after the successful recruitment process. And that’s where onboarding begins.

Companies are being negatively impacted in terms of performance , while employees are using their voice to petition a better way.

At HROnboard we believe there are five pillars that can ensure an experience-driven employee journey, ensuring new hires have higher levels of engagement, from onboarding all the way through to the time they leave the company.

The five pillars

GET THE BASICS RIGHT ONBOARDING IS A TEAM SPORT

EXPERIENCE & INTERACTIONS

PERSONALISED & ON DEMAND

MONITOR, MEASURE, IMPROVE

#1 get the basics rightWhy is this pillar important Your engagement dies the minute you ask new hires to navigate a bureaucracy of forms and enter information already captured. The compliance side of onboarding might not be engaging, but needs to be executed flawlessly. In other words, the hygienic pieces should “just work”.

How does HROnboard live by it • Offer creation: tailored to the contracts, policies and requirements of

each organisation, this should remove 85% of paperwork from the process.

• Employee provisioning: bringing everyone together ensuring that information is entered once.

• Systems integrations: information flows seamlessly, reducing errors. • Audit & security: everything leaves a trail so it’s virtually impossible to

miss any employee’s history; HROnboard is also ISO27001 certified.

#2 onboarding is a team sportWhy is this pillar important Real engagement comes through relationships. Onboarding can't just be quilted together from the work of different departments. It must be holistic, a joint effort by HR and team leaders. The team and team leader need to be part of the onboarding experience. Building relationships with co-workers is key to long term retention of employees. Empowering managers to be their team’s engagement champions can yield unprecedented results.

How does HROnboard live by it Each team has its own quirks and culture, so HROnboard allows the team to express it in each onboarding program. • Team welcome message: every person can leave a tailored message

for the new hire • Team-authored content: they can also add activities, posts and any

other content they believe will allow culture to transpire through the onboarding process.

• Meet the team activities

#3 experiences & interactionsWhy is this pillar important People learn and engage through experiences and interactions. Managers and leaders should keep employee engagement top of mind because every interaction with employees can have an impact on engagement and organisational performance.

How does HROnboard live by it HROnboard allows teams to engage through activities and tours, spanning both the digital as well as the real world. • Pre-start interactions: before the new hire’s first day, the team is

already interacting by means of activities, calendar invites or messages.

• 360 virtual office tours: imagine if your new hire could get to visit the office with a virtual tour?

• Activities

#4 personalised, on-demandWhy is this pillar important People are different and engage in different ways. And that’s ok. Employees, especially millennials, expect a unique experience, targeted directly at their own personal preferences. Engagement artifacts should be available easily anytime, anywhere.

How does HROnboard live by it HROnboard is there when you need it and, as a rule, • Mobile first • Recommendations: instead of enforcing activities, we allow teams to

recommend, leaving the new hire to feel a sense of empowerment towards their own onboarding.

• Contextual information: on demand, based on location.

#5 monitor, measure, improveWhy is this pillar important HR teams should become engagement agents. “Engagement isn't determined by an abstract feeling; it's the result of concrete performance management activities, such as clarifying work expectations, getting people what they need to do their work, providing development or promoting posit ive coworker relationships.”

—Gallup, Global Engagement Survey

How does HROnboard live by it Onboarding should be measurable and tied back to business goals. HROnboard enables HR teams to lead the employee experience one employee at a time, while tracking results to ensure continuous improvements can be implemented. • Early warning indicators: they allow for early intervention when there

is a problem • Onboarding analytics: learn from what works and doesn't • Program recommendations & benchmarks

About HROnboardAbout HROnboard HROnboard is a Melbourne-based company on a mission to enable HR teams to lead the employee experience revolution, one new hire at a time. We work with forward-thinking companies across Australia and New Zealand like Vodafone NZ, Tatts Group, Nova Entertainment, Swisse and Red Bull.

At HROnboard we believe that people are at the core of every successful business, and that technology can help improve not only processes, but also relationships between companies and their employees. We build software that helps reduce the paperwork and red tape that prevent HR teams from focusing on their people vision, as well as create extraordinary engagement experiences across all stages of the employee journey, from onboarding, to welcome programs, all the way to crossboarding and offboarding. For more information, visit hronboard.me