New hires are bombarded with information as soon as they walk through the door on day one.
In today’s enterprises, much of this information relates to data and digital systems that are often complex and disjointed. This leaves employees feeling overwhelmed.
In fact, more than 40% of employees “always or frequently” feel frustrated by disconnected technologies within today’s “virtualized” business landscape.
That’s why you need to deliver a fantastic user onboarding experience — it’s the single most important factor in good employee morale and retention.
The role of web-based onboarding
A Gallup survey found that nearly half of all workers surveyed (43%) spent at least some time working remotely. And this is an upward trend.
With globalization, enterprises are operating beyond their own geographical borders and time zones. The digital world makes it possible to work 24/7. But the costs associated with onboarding employees in multiple countries and offices can be crippling.
This is why organizations need to take web-based onboarding seriously.
It is possible to deliver an engaging, informative introduction to your organization’s culture, business, and processes without being physically present with new hires.
What’s even more interesting is that allowing new hires a degree of independence, as opposed to indoctrination, could actually improve their onboarding experience.
“Organizations will talk about recruiting from outside the company because they need new ideas and new blood, but then there is this tendency to shut off the new and basically transfer the corporate culture over to the new employee,” says Francesca Gino, an associate professor at Harvard Business School.
“It was interesting for us to think about how part of your identity seems to go away as you go through that process.”
Individuality and self-efficacy are critical to employee satisfaction. And in fact, the turnover rate in Gino’s “identity experiments” was 47.2% lower for participants that were encouraged to express their individuality.
So yes, self-expression and identity are important to the employee onboarding experience. But so is the feeling of being part of a “tribe”.
Humans are pack animals, so it’s important to make employees feel welcome and an integral part of the team from the get-go.
Both of these key components — individualism and being one of the “pack” — can be achieved through web-based user onboarding methods.
4 secrets to fantastic web-based user onboarding
1. Engage from the get-go
You might think it’s hard to pull off a warm welcome when there’s a computer screen and several hundred miles between you and your new employee. But you’d be wrong.
Technology provides us with the ability to engage and create personal connections wherever we are. Consider what tools are available to you for upping engagement levels throughout the onboarding process.
Try where possible to treat your web-based onboarding process as you would if they were face-to-face.
Use video conferencing to welcome your new hire and introduce them to the team. Connect them with a mentor or “buddy” who can show them the ropes and answer any questions.
2. Follow a format
As with any process, it’s a good idea to plan it out and follow a format so you can track progress and measure outcomes against clearly defined goals.
Decide what you want employees to get out of the onboarding experience and design your process around that. Consider speaking to existing employees to find out what else they might have benefitted from.
3. Commit to the process
Often, onboarding gets put on the backburner or interrupted when pressing deadlines or other customer-related issues arise. This makes it very difficult for new hires to focus on the onboarding process.
If you can’t commit to the user onboarding process, neither will they. So make sure everybody understands what’s expected of them while new hires are being onboarded.
4. Use a DAP
It’s useless getting a new hire to logon and use your software or enterprise apps, only for them to churn and request help within the first few minutes because they’re unfamiliar with their navigation.
This is why you need to prioritize digital adoption.
If there’s any friction in the process of using digital tools as part of their role, new hires will churn. By making digital platforms as easy to use and engaging as possible, employees are given the best chance of being productive and valuable as soon as they join the organization.
Adding a digital adoption tool to your enterprise’s digital platforms will streamline and ensure rapid and successful adoption. This in turn improves employee engagement, performance, and retention.
Because employees are guided by the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP), they instantly become self-sufficient and able to achieve their goals. The DAP uses AI and machine learning to understand user behavior and personalize guidance, so engagement levels are always high.
Final words
Engagement, structure, commitment, and rapid adoption are the four secrets to successful user onboarding. All are possible within an entirely web-based onboarding process.
The DAP is a central component in a successful user onboarding experience. It will help you to make employees productive members of the team from day one.
