When you begin to scale your company, hiring and onboarding employees is a big part of the process. However, many business owners don’t realize how much onboarding a new employee costs.

More importantly, they don’t know how easy it is to lose that same employee and have to repeat the process again within the first ninety days of employment.

Bringing new employees into the fold isn’t as simple as recruiting and handing them off to human resources. Onboarding is a much longer process - or at least, it should be!

If you are still using outdated onboarding techniques, here’s what your employees think of them:

Paperwork is old news

If your typical employee’s first day consists of sitting at a desk to do stacks of paperwork by hand, here’s what they think of it: It’s boring.

Why? Because it is boring! The easiest way to kill forward momentum is to take an eager, new employee and force them to face a pile of repetitive, endless, required documentation.

This is 2019, which means it’s time to digitize. Instead of stacks of forms for every department, streamline your new hires’ experience. You can create an onboarding funnel that allows them to enter all pertinent information once -- and only once -- into a centralized system. Each department, from HR to IT to security, should be able to access the pertinent bits for their internal processes:

• HR can set up schedules, payroll, and benefits, forwarding specific packets to the new employee within your onboarding system for review and electronic signature.
• IT can generate the required permissions for internal systems and networks.
• Security can create and issue badges, keycards, parking passes, and door codes as needed.

Meanwhile, your newest employee can be moving along to more engaging and interesting things, like meeting their co-workers, touring the workplace, and learning how to use the coffee maker.

Benefit: Maintained momentum on day one. (Want more tips on how to make your employee’s first day amazing? These five steps can help!)

Orientations are tedious

If you’re still using paper employee manuals and handbooks for new hire orientation, here’s what they think of it: It’s tedious.

Why? You guessed it - it is tedious! Unless every single employee in your organization does exactly the same job, no handbook or manual is going to be tailored for a streamlined experience, and your new hire is likely to get bogged down and completely demotivated. 

Switching to an online orientation allows you to build training systems that focus on your employees’ knowledge and skills, while keeping things fun and interactive. 

• Information can be chunked into easy to digest, bite sized pieces
• Key points can be illustrated and made interactive
• Employee knowledge can be tested with quick quizzes

A customized orientation process lets your employees know you consider their time to be valuable. Instead of mandating that they waste it on a tedious, mostly inapplicable-to-them process, you make sure they have the information they need, and move on. 

Benefit: Heightened motivation out of the box. By owning your onboarding system, you can help your employees fall in love with it -- and you!

Onboarding and training? Often insufficient

Does your company have a “sink or swim” policy? Throwing an employee in the deep end and waiting to see what happens is possibly one of the worst things you can do - and here’s what they think of it: It’s not worth it.

Why? Because you proved right out of the gate that you don’t think they’re worth it - “it” being the time it would take to properly prepare them for their new job.

• 94% of employees said they would stay at a job longer if they felt their employer was invested in their career
• One study revealed that 60% of employees say they don’t have all the skills they need to do their job well... but only 30% say their employer helps them gain needed job skills
• More than a quarter of managers say they weren’t ready to become managers, and more than half say they received no manager training at all

How can you help close the skills gap, make new hires feel supported, and focus on employee retention? The answer is simple -- invest in your employees’ training.

Provide a knowledge and skills-driven onboarding process that doesn’t end after a day, a week, or even a single month. Support new employees through the entire first 90 days, encouraging them to learn and grow. This will help you improve your employee retention stats and show new hires you are invested in them.

Benefit: Engaged employees who see a future for themselves with your company. (Another important aspect for employee retention: your company culture!)

Trainual can set both you and your employees up for success, minimizing time spent on repetitive onboarding processes and providing an intuitive learning environment. When your new hires see you’re willing to go the extra mile to make their first experiences stress-free, they’ll be motivated to give their best in return!