How to Build Your Employee Onboarding Program in One Afternoon
Building an onboarding process (paperwork and all!) can seem like a daunting project, with many moving parts, and many stakeholders. Managing it can be a nightmare, or a piece of cake.
(And we prefer it be a piece of cake!)
All you need is the right system in place, and you can be setting up best practice onboarding in one afternoon! Yes, even if you’re big and global.
We’ll step you through how.
Your first impression matters; make it count
Your onboarding process creates an impactful impression that new hires will have of you. If you make the wrong move, it can affect their engagement with you before they even start. And we all know how that ends.
Most onboarding experiences…just kinda happen. There’s no strategy driving it – it’s all about compliance and HR policies and workplace laws. They’re just a necessary procedure, with little regard for the employee’s experience.
Enboarder’s nifty HR technology empowers deliberately-designed onboarding experiences.
That is, you identify the arduous tasks that can and should be automated and free yourself up to enhance the employee journey with more personalised communication and face-to-face interactions. It’s 100% experience-driven.
Start with awesome employee onboarding tech
When choosing your onboarding solution, the five key points to consider are:
- Integrations:
Choose a system that integrates with everything you do and works the way you do - User-friendly design:
Great design saves hours. Ensure learning the tech, changing your setup, and kicking off is made easy by dummy proof design - Smart automation:
Automations aren’t all made equal. Don’t be dazzled by simple paperwork automations, seek the wow factor for managers and employees too. - Personalisation:
Prioritise powerful, personalised user experiences that will delight managers and new hires, effortlessly - Support:
Ensure there’s a support team focused on your success.
Once you have these essentials in place, you can start mapping out your new hire journey and then design your employee onboarding program plan. In one afternoon. Just sayin’.
Yes, it’s possible to set up onboarding in one afternoon – we’ve done it before
We work with some super cool employers which means we’ve seen it all. Probably. But as with everything in life, the more prepared you are the better your results.
We worked with fast-growing, world-leading influencer and content marketing platform, VAMP, to help them set up their best-practice employee onboarding program. In one afternoon. Without wine.
Here’s what they did:
Step 1. They kicked things off with a training and workflow design workshop and invited their operations manager and HR. They also invited our customer success team along to facilitate (we know things).
Step 2. They set their goals and objectives. They then drew a timeline, from Day minus 30 (around the time a contract is signed), through to the first-year work anniversary. VAMP then mapped their current onboarding journey (checklists, questionnaires, and policies), and recorded every single action that would need to be taken from HR, managers, and the employee throughout those 395 days, including:
- Organise a new laptop and mobile from IT
- Order uniforms
- Sign contract
- Set up in payroll
- Invite (and meet) new employee for welcome lunch
- Pulse check employee feedback from first day, first week, first month (and ensure it’s actioned accordingly!)
Step 3. We all identified gaps and opportunities. Thanks to this visual mapping activity, the VAMP team were able to see the gaps in their process and mark opportunities where the employee and manager experience could be improved. It’s the beginning of what we call ‘The Wishlist’, and it takes a view of onboarding from the manager and employee perspective.
Step 4. Our customer success team advised on best practice, and with the slurp of a coffee and the snap of a scotch finger, they were set to impress.
Step 5. This is usually the part where our amazing team build your program with you. Buuuuuut, Enboarder is so darn easy to use, VAMP built it all themselves #winning.
Step 6. Test, test, test. We tested their new onboarding program with them, covering all bases and optimising where required to ensure it was correct and ready to go live (so there’s no stress)!
Step 7. The best part. We went live!
Impressive, yes?
We’re an honest bunch here and don’t want to mislead you, so here’s the ‘fess – an onboarding program mapping activity usually takes 2 days to complete. But, like we said earlier, preparation wins.
The VAMP team were uber prepared for our workshop and used many of our best practice workflow ideas that we have set up as prompts in the system ready to use!
You don’t need to take our word for it, here’s what they said about the experience;
“I was so surprised at how easily it all came together, because of the way Enboarder is designed, we literally managed to launch in one afternoon!”
– Bianca Villareal – Operations Manager – VAMP
Wanna create an ‘out-of-this-world experience for your new hires’*?
Building workflows is super easy, intuitive, and user-friendly regardless of the complexity of your onboarding process.
Your success lies in the technology you use, and the support provided to ensure you’re designing a best-practice program. Which is why we aim to excel at both.
If you’d like to snap up a free consultation with one of our onboarding specialists, just push this magical button:
*Our customer’s words, not ours.