Why employee onboarding is crucial for business success

An effective onboarding process is crucial for new employees to receive the necessary tools, form impressions, and acclimate to organizational culture.

Company onboarding can have a positive effect on employee satisfaction. For example, it can increase long-term employee retention by 25% and performance by 11%.

Employee onboarding is often technical, like email setup and benefits enrollment. However, it has broader implications for culture and productivity. Therefore, it is essential for both your and your employees' success to prioritize a people-first approach when onboarding new hires.

Why employee onboarding is a critical business function

Employee onboarding is a crucial business function because it sets the tone for the rest of the employee's tenure. In the early stages of employment, employees form impressions of the company, its culture, and their supervisors. Creating a successful employment experience starts with having access to the resources they need to do their job effectively.

Additionally, well-onboarded employees tend to be more engaged, retain information better, and feel more confident in their new role. A robust onboarding process can elevate employee performance and retention, leading to a more successful and productive organization.

Your employees matter.

Your company's employees are its essence. Integrating them into the organizational culture is essential, regardless of whether they've just joined or are veterans. Show your new hires that you value their time by ensuring they can start working without interruption.

Productivity is the goal.

A person-first approach to employee onboarding benefits the individual and improves overall organizational productivity. New hires can maximize their contributions to the company's success by optimizing the onboarding process. A good onboarding process ensures employees access tools, information, and support. This emphasis helps employees perform their jobs efficiently and fosters a sense of inclusion and job satisfaction.

Preparation demonstrates value.

When companies organize onboarding, it demonstrates their commitment to the success of new employees. Additionally, being organized prevents critical oversights that can save time and resources. In addition, proper preparation ensures a seamless process that benefits employees and the organization.

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What makes for a robust employee onboarding process

You want to achieve a few essential qualities when building your onboarding process.

Documented well

A clear and comprehensive outline is essential for any complex task or process. In addition, clarity is vital for employee onboarding. New hires require structured and intuitive access to the correct information to comprehend their job roles and responsibilities.

Using plain language during onboarding is critical. Clarity ensures that new employees feel safe and confident, without any jargon to confuse them.

The use of simple and effective strategies can streamline the onboarding process. This approach aims to increase the chances of getting new employees up to speed. It also aims to create a comfortable and welcoming environment for them to thrive.

Curated

A successful employee onboarding process requires relevant and accurate information. Organizations should only include details essential to the job or company culture to achieve this. It's important to take a targeted approach by focusing on relevant information.

Then, tailor the onboarding process to fit the company’s unique needs. This curation cultivates an inclusive and satisfying work culture for employees.

To help new hires feel comfortable, provide only the necessary information. Avoid overwhelming them with everything on the first day. Instead, focus on the first few weeks; then, you can integrate the remaining onboarding into different processes.

Accurate and updated

Given the ever-changing nature of the modern business landscape, a flexible and adaptable onboarding process is paramount. Thus, it's critical to have a well-defined system enabling the organization to adapt and incorporate emergent changes quickly and easily.

Properly reflecting any changes to the onboarding process in documentation helps new hires acclimate to the company’s working methods. Additionally, such documentation ensures existing employees are up-to-date with updates and changes.

How to build an employee onboarding checklist

For efficient onboarding, create a master list of all the steps needed for any employee. Then, create sub-lists for different departments, roles, and levels of seniority.

The initial step in building an effective employee onboarding process is researching how peer organizations onboard their employees. This research can help you tailor your approach to meet your company’s unique needs. Consider what makes your team unique and what information tools employees need to perform their jobs efficiently.

The next step is to take stock of any existing onboarding materials you have. These materials might be general office information or onboarding instructions for daily SaaS tools. Rather than starting from scratch, curate and organize these materials to add to your master list.

Then, as you create your checklist, consider options for delivering it to employees before their first day. For example, many HR or workforce management tools, like BambooHR or Rippling, allow you to share documents after accepting an offer letter.

What to include in your employee onboarding checklist

A few significant categories should go into your onboarding checklist. These are:

Facilities or remote work policies

Facilities encompass the physical space where the employee will work, whether in a traditional office setting or a hybrid work environment. Therefore, providing essential information on parking options, transportation, and access codes to enter the building is crucial. Additionally, remote work policies, such as necessary equipment and security protocols for accessing company networks and data, should be included. This guide will help new employees understand the policies and procedures surrounding hybrid or remote work.

Technology

Equip employees with the technology and resources they need to succeed. For example, provide hardware such as printers, laptops, and company cell phones, as well as software accounts, passwords, and authentication. In addition, ensure access to organizational and role-specific documents, wikis, walkthroughs, demos, and training if needed.

SaaS

Ensure your new hires have the tools and resources to succeed by incorporating SaaS onboarding into the employee onboarding process. Tasks such as granting app access, implementing SSO, and creating a simple procedure for app requests are essential.

Provide new hires with credentials to access required SaaS applications during onboarding. In addition, your company should enable SSO (Single Sign On) for new hires. SSO will allow them to access multiple applications with a single set of credentials.

IT should provide clear instructions for new hires to request access to necessary applications. This streamlined process allows new hires to focus on their roles. In addition, SaaS onboarding can improve the onboarding experience and set goals for new hires, benefiting everyone involved.

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HR and Legal

This category covers the administrative and legal aspects of the new hire's employment. Your HR team should provide information on payroll setup, benefits, tax documentation, legal contracts, and the employee handbook. If applicable, you should also provide details on stock options.

Culture and connections

This category is about integrating new hires into the company's culture and fostering connections. Communicate dress code, start/end times for the first day, and company values/norms, including any welcome gifts or team lunches. Detail available mentorship or buddy programs.

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You may have additional areas to consider, such as compliance mandates that require review. Nonetheless, this should provide a good starting point.

Example employee onboarding tools

Beyond the information above, to understand how other companies handle onboarding, here are some other checklists and employee onboarding software you can use:

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a valuable tool that provides high-level guidance and sample onboarding checklists. It allows you to organize and collaborate on your onboarding checklist(s). In addition, the custom cells enable easy status updates and quick assignment of ownership for tasks. Interested in learning more about Smartsheet? Check out our buyer's guide with detailed info on Smartsheet pricing and plans.

Asana

Asana offers a new employee onboarding program for your organization. The onboarding guide demonstrates how to construct an onboarding process in Asana. It also explains how to invite team members and replicate the process for each new hire.

In addition, you can rank action items by priority and assign ownership. Asana may be a good choice if your company already uses the product for task management. Check out our Asana buyer guide for deeper insights on Asana's pricing, plans, and features.

Trello

Trello is a popular productivity app among tech-focused companies centered on boards and cards, unlike Asana’s user experience, which is more list-oriented.

We appreciate their human approach to onboarding. It goes beyond checklists by providing images of the office and team members.

Additionally, FAQs like "can I have plants?" and “who do I talk to about changing the temperature in here?”

Trello is clearly on board with the people-first onboarding approach we recommend.

BambooHR

BambooHR streamlines onboarding for small and mid-sized businesses with its widely used HR software solution. Its employee self-boarding service puts new hires in control, reducing the administrative load on HR and freeing them to focus on strategic tasks.

This service guides new hires through automated steps. It helps them complete necessary paperwork, set up employee profiles, and finish required training. In addition, with BambooHR's onboarding solution, new hires can seamlessly and efficiently get up to speed and feel welcomed into the organization.

Why onboarding is relevant to your SaaS management process

Onboarding is critical to SaaS management. Providing the right equipment and information promotes job satisfaction and reduces staff turnover. Vendr, a leading SaaS buying and management platform, streamlines onboarding by providing new hires with essential tools and resources.

Vendr can be a valuable partner in your hiring process by streamlining the management of your SaaS stack and keeping your procurement, IT, and finance departments organized. Vendr tells you who is using which SaaS product and how often.

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