The Secret to Automating Personalized Employee Onboarding
Personalizing the onboarding process for new employees creates remarkable experiences that leave them feeling more connected, appreciated and engaged. The good news is, it doesn't have to be difficult or expensive.
Truly personalized onboarding processes that have the "human touch" are too often seen as requiring arduous, manual processes. Thus we put it in the "too hard" bucket. Or you might be tempted to just use the mail merge function with the new hire's first name and call it "personalized".
But it doesn't have to be an expensive pipe dream – in fact, you can create a powerful, personalised user experience that delights both your managers and your employees at the touch of a button – so, why wouldn’t you?
Time is our most important commodity: personalisation aims to respect time.
Personalization saves time, creating happier hearts
It’s the ultimate user experience.
Think of the Netflixes and Spotifys of our world that use machine learning tech to provide personalized, tailored streaming experiences to their customers. Customer preferences are updated in real time with every song or show or genre chosen or given the ol’ thumbs up.
These companies understand the power of personalization. They understand the customers’ eternal gratitude when relevant options are presented to choose from, saving hours of scrolling and trial and (almost always) error. Just send me what you know I’ll like!
Automatic personalization in onboarding benefits both your new hires and your managers
The benefit of personalization is a superior employee experience that enhances engagement. Which means higher retention, lower turnover, and greater employee satisfaction.
When personalized onboarding is automated with the power of multi-level logic, managers can provide a remarkable experience for new employees that will leave them feeling more connected, appreciated, and engaged than ANY paper checklist ever could.
Managers will thrive from the ease of use and automation of their tasks, eliminating hours plugging away at keyboards typing team-specific communications and re-hashing onboarding templates that have been over-used so much the words have lost all meaning, emotion, and energy – hardly an inspiring introduction to a new workplace!
Logic-driven personalized onboarding means managers are no longer disgruntled by all this extra manual work they need to do.
On the other hand, new hires no longer have to face a lacklustre welcome that looks and feels like it was pulled from a 1980s induction manual.
“Our employees have mentioned how unique our onboarding is and they've never seen anything like it before.”
- Yu-Ann Chen - Head of people and Culture - Live Hire
What kick-ass personalization logic should look like for employee onboarding
Many systems claim to personalize onboarding, but some are smarter than others. In most cases, personalization is basic – the digital equivalent of a mail merge with fill-in-the-blank tokens.
[Hi there, {name}! Welcome to {team name}!
With Enboarder, our personalization extends beyond the basic mail merge into workflow, sequence, and module levels.
Let’s check them out:
Workflows: when a new hire starts, you can route them into different pre-set workflows, depending on a variety of factors:
- location/region
- employment type (permanent, contract, casual, contingent)
- brands
- divisions
You can also set up workflows for a variety of internal scenarios like parental leave, offboarding, office moves, relocation, etc.
In many cases, the routing is automatic – for example, if you enter the details of the new employee into your existing HRIS system, Enboarder can pick up on details like location or division, and the fact that it's a new starter, and automatically enrol them into the correct onboarding workflow.
“I was pleasantly surprised with how easy Enboarder was to use, workflows are so easy to create, fast to tweak and keep up to date. It’s head and shoulders above other HR technology I have seen.”
- Domain - Nicholas Barry
Sequences: each workflow consists of a number of sequences, which are associated with milestones, key events, and things that need to be done. These include, for example, the initial welcome messages, IT requests, team introductions, requests for documentation, and providing information for day one, etc.
Again, the onboarding journey can be customized so that even though, for example, all the new hires enter a workflow dedicated to US-based permanent employees, they trigger different sequences based on their team, specific office location, and IT requirements.
Module: you've guessed it – sequences themselves consist of modules. Modules are basically the individual pieces of information and communications that make up the experience itself. Here you find the basic mail-merge type functionality which allow us to automatically address messages to the new hire by name.
With module-level logic, you can also route communications to automatically include the new employee's line manager and assigned buddies (again, with integration, all this information can be pulled from your HRIS). Even more useful, you can automatically branch communications based on their behaviours and responses to earlier interactions.
For example, we have customers using this function to delegate onboarding tasks to other members of staff, and to trigger email alerts when the new employee provides negative feedback, or fails to engage with onboarding communications.
How to find ‘The One’
When most onboarding systems are on their soapboxes claiming to be flexible and customisable, how can you decipher which one will fit your needs now, and in the long term?
It's important to look towards your future as well, because if your business intends to scale and still provide personalised onboarding, you’ll need a system powerful enough to deliver winning employee experiences, but one that remains easy enough to set up and edit in seconds.
You’ll encounter trouble if you choose something that fits OK now, but will chew through your time and cash-flow with the continuous amendments needed to keep content in line with changing organisation values, processes, and priorities.
The key is finding a system that can change as you do. Like, Enboarder.
Think your business is unique… like a snowflake?
Challenge us!
Want to find out in more detail about how the multiple levels of logic work together to deliver an ultra-personalized onboarding experience, without all the manual intervention?
Or is your business doing something uniquely personalised that you wish you could automate? Send it our way via the interactive form below!
If we can’t do it, we’ll send you our Surrender Cupcake.
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