The Complete Guide That Makes Automating Employee Onboarding Simple

Are you integrating new employees into your workforce? This can be a challenge, especially when you don’t have enough resources and expertise.

Everything will fall into place if you are knowledgeable in automating employee onboarding. This is because automation eliminates repetitive and challenging processes that make onboarding problematic. In addition to that, it reduces the amount of work you need to bring the new workers on board.

This guide helps you find various ways to automate the hiring process and get the best results.

Understanding Employee Onboarding

Automating employee onboarding isn’t as hard as you might think. It has significant benefits related to the costs and time you spend on the hiring process. It also affects the efficiency of your employees once they are hired. Consider these tips for effective automation.

Provide Welcome Kits

One of your first goals as a business owner is figuring out how to get new hires up and running as quickly as possible. You can do this by providing welcome kits that include:

• Company manuals  
• Swag  
• Employee code of conduct 
• Handbooks  
• Important contacts

This can be easy with software like Dropbox or Google Drive. With such tools, you can send a folder with all your relevant onboarding documents.

Hand Over Customer Information 

You can also hand over customer information at each stage of the process. Employees learn about your company, customers, and business processes. They’ll also be immediately involved in new client or customer care issues right from day one.

You can ensure a smooth transition into their new position by giving them information on specific people. You should also focus on telling them about customers and letting them take over as soon as they are available.

Schedule Introductory Meetings

An introductory meeting with your new hires, their manager, and other key members of your team is a great way to get off on the right foot. The purpose is usually twofold. For you as a leader, it’s an opportunity to welcome new hires in a group setting.

Use the meeting to set clear expectations for what’s expected from them in their first few weeks. It can be a critical opportunity for your new employees to meet peers and mentors. As a result, they start building relationships that will make their transition much more manageable.

Create Account Templates

Creating account templates can help you automate your employee onboarding process. Create a template that outlines which documents and information new hires need to provide. It makes it easier for HR to find and fill in all necessary information. 

You also can save yourself some time by providing new employees with blank copies of forms they will have to fill out. It allows them to write on pre-printed lines.  

Consider including form labels as well. This helps organize information and prompts employees about what type of data is required from them and how much is needed.

Teach Employees How to Use Company Tools and Technologies

Hiring and onboarding are far from simple processes. As an employer, you’re expected to teach your new hires everything they need to know about your business, from how it works to its objectives. Employee engagement suffers when employees don’t understand your company’s goals.

It’s hard for companies that lack engaged employees to grow at a healthy rate. Consider implementing programs explicitly designed for new hires. Not only will these programs help them learn more about how your business works, but they may even increase employee retention.

Display Schedules Around the Office

There are several ways you can automate employee onboarding, but one easy way is by making schedules available for all your employees.

If you make schedules available in the office, new hires will know where they need to be and when. They’ll see if they are supposed to be at meetings or heading out for lunch.

By making employee schedules easily accessible, you save everyone time and frustration. Remember, nothing is worse than having an unnecessary conversation about what someone is doing.

Save everyone some headache with automated employee onboarding.

Offer Discounted Services During Transition Periods

Your goal is to make it as easy as possible for new hires to start their jobs. This means:  

• Providing them with a clear job description  
• Setting up a training program  
• Buying employee onboarding software

But don’t stop there. You can also offer discounted services during transition periods. You might offer free or discounted health insurance or W-2 bookkeeping services for immediate payment.

Share Policies and Procedures

If you’re automating employee onboarding, your biggest goal is probably to make sure you get every detail right. Before sending out all those documents and forms, give new employees a few minutes. They need to talk to someone who can answer questions about company culture and policies. This might be a human resources manager or a team leader.

Whoever feels most comfortable sharing information that will help employees feel like they belong can play this role. A friendly face will go a long way toward creating engaged new employees.

Train Managers on Best Practices Related to New Employees

In some businesses, managers are responsible for onboarding new workers. Others outsource it. Either way, training managers on best practices related to onboarding can help automate the hiring process.

For example, set up a series of new hire checklists that outline everything from duties and responsibilities to benefits. You should also indicate your expectations so a manager has something they can refer to when things get busy. This ensures consistent quality in how you welcome new team members into your business.

It also makes onboarding an easy task that doesn’t need any work from your HR department. In some cases, a small business may not have enough managers to handle the process, that is why automation helps.

Send Virtual Gifts to Employees Who Are Leaving

A great way to keep employees engaged while they’re leaving is by sending them virtual gifts. You can send them on social media when they announce their departure. For example, if you have a team of 10 people, buy virtual gift cards for $10 each and send them as social media notifications.

This keeps both parties warm and fuzzy in what could be an awkward separation process. Also, it allows you as a manager to pick out something that you know your employee will enjoy, so it doesn’t feel like money spent — rather, a gift from their boss.

Mistakes Small Business Owners Make When Automating Employee Onboarding

Automating your employee onboarding can have many benefits. It is good for expediting the hiring process and lowering your cost per hire. But it can also present challenges, especially if you’re not familiar with how to do it.

You will also have problems if you don’t know what to include in your employee onboarding automation plan. The following are the mistakes small business owners make when automating their employee onboarding.

Not Keeping It Simple

Companies’ most common mistake when automating their employee onboarding is over-complicating things. A workflow needs to fit with how you and your employees work or are ignored. That means not having too many steps and ensuring that each step only includes necessary details.

The more complicated you make it, the less likely employees will continue with their onboarding tasks. This can lead to high rehiring costs and low productivity for months after hiring a new employee.

A small business owner can afford to err on the side of keeping everything as simple as possible. However, it is worse to spend hours coming up with something overly creative that still doesn’t get done. 

There are plenty of tools out there that allow you to automate your onboarding process. You can do so without having to create anything elaborate. You have to find one which fits your company culture best and streamlines all of its processes. 

You have to ensure that there isn’t any unnecessary information being sent back and forth between managers or departments.

Not Creating Detailed Documentation

Without clear documentation, new employees will struggle to get up to speed as quickly as possible. This is where most business owners make mistakes. They create an employee handbook and assume that’s enough to get started.

Employees need something more than a handbook. They need detailed steps about how your company works and what they should be doing on any given day. The good news is that dozens of great tools can help automate your employee onboarding.

Not Tracking Progress

You have to be tracking progress. Otherwise, you’re leaving money on the table by not knowing what’s working and what isn’t when it comes to onboarding. Most companies that automate their employee onboarding processes lose money because they do not track anything.

If you don’t know where your business is getting stuck, how can you fix it? Keeping a checklist to track employee progress in conjunction with using an automation tool will give you a huge advantage. You will notice it when making sure employees are ready to hit the ground running upon starting with your company.

Automation Is Not Magic

Some small businesses assume that once they add an automated employee onboarding system, all new hires become productive team members. But if your onboarding doesn’t include any training component, there’s no way for an automated system to teach your new employees.

Training new employees is the reason some small businesses decide against software-based systems. In addition to that, you should design your training to reflect your working environment Remember that this is all about getting new professionals into your workforce.

Not Communicating the Benefits 

Communication is crucial when hiring new employees. It means explaining how their work will impact your organization. In other words, make sure you outline why onboarding automation is essential for your small business.

If you don’t make it clear to new hires, they might become less invested in their roles or feel frustrated by how long it takes them to get up to speed. Remember that motivation is an important part of the process. If employees are not motivated from the beginning, they will not settle in effectively.

Not Providing Support at Every Step

One of your most important goals, when you’re hiring new employees, is to show new employees how they can become successful in their position. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that every onboarding step is supported with communication.

It should also be based on process management tools like Slack or Asana. If someone doesn’t understand what they need to do, the onboarding process stops dead in its tracks.

Savvy small business owners use automation tools to keep things moving forward at every turn. During onboarding, an automated tool reminds an employee where he is in his training. It also sends relevant information from resources throughout his organization.

For example, think about a company’s six-week training program for sales associates. Internal onboarding automation connects new employees to internal social media pages. This will give them a clearer understanding of what the company stands for.

Customers use these pages with questions relevant to recent training on specific products or services. Another critical benefit of automatic communications within these collaboration tools is connecting people into broader networks while they are part of an assignment or project group. Business leaders tend not to think through this when coming up with plans for streamlining onboarding.

Doing It Yourself Instead of Hiring Help

If you’re a small business owner, the chances are good that you wear a lot of hats. This can be all well and good, but there are some hats better left off when it comes to onboarding your employees. If automating employee onboarding isn’t something you’ve done before, consider hiring someone who has.

Get Employee Onboarding Automation Help

Maybe, you are overwhelmed with many business tasks that you do not have the time to monitor the processes used when automating employee onboarding. In that case, you can get help from consultants or anyone who has experience in this work. They will guide you through the hiring process and prepare new employees for the tasks ahead.

If you need more detailed guides like this, you may want to check out those published on our website.