Congratulations! You convinced leadership that when it comes to onboarding, paper needs to go. Everyone is on board with the fact that automating new hire onboarding will reduce the burden on HR, your new hires, and current employees while driving engagement and improving the overall experience. Your team is pumped, you’re over-the-moon excited, and everyone can’t wait to get started!!https://www.clickboarding.com/4-easyways-to-drive-employee-engagement
So you start shopping. You start digging into platforms and requirements and processes and prices. You see lots of shiny new bells and whistles, some so amazing you’re sure you need them – even though they were nowhere on your scratchpad of business requirements when you started. Then there’s budget; you’d hate to go over it, but if the platform pays for itself….and how will you know when it has? What does success look like, anyway? And don’t forget technology requirements. Bet you didn’t know you needed a crash course on API integrations in your search for an onboarding solution did you?
Don’t panic. Slow the roll.
Switching a manual process to an automated one is exciting – don’t get me wrong. And it does take elbow grease upfront if you want to do it once and do it right. Slowing down, being clear about the benefits you expect to receive, reducing scope to achieve those benefits (no more, no less), and defining how you’ll measure them are keys to success when it comes to selecting the right solution and partner.
A partner that can bring you the benefits you expect…
- Reduced HR overtime
- Reduced time-to-hire
- Reduced compliance costs
- Increased new hire productivity
- Improved employee experience
- Streamlined and consistent processes
…just to name a few.
If this is your nirvana, rest assured it’s worth your effort and easier than you might think. Take a minute and check out this list of 6 things to do before automating HR.
Run through your current processes from hire to retire – and from hire to fire – as an employee. Run through it again from the HR perspective. What stages exist and what are the requirements? What data is collected and how is it processed?
- Be sure to map it out as-is. RESIST the urge to make tweaks or improvements. I know it’s hard, but trust me on this one.
- Unless you’re in danger of falling out of compliance or causing serious harm. If that’s the case, fix away, my friend!
Highlight all the manual bits and evaluate the time needed to complete the processes from an applicant/candidate/employee view as well as an HR/hiring manager/payroll view.
- For example: How long does it take for a new hire to manually fill out the required onboarding paperwork? How long does it take for HR to prepare, review and approve it?
- Hint: The answer is almost always way too long.
Take a look at how much time HR actually spends interacting with applicants, candidates, and employees at each step from hire to retire and hire to fire. Survey these user groups when they complete the process. Any discernible patterns?
- Look for spikes, dips, and patterns of engagement. Backtrack to the cause. Was it 1:1 contact, forms and information, or something else entirely? Once again, resist the urge to improve! That part will come soon enough, I promise.
Determine what parts of the process can be optimized, standardized and streamlined to improve employee engagement time requirements.
- Areas with data collection, compliance and maintenance are great starting points. Once you get those automated, you can see higher levels of data accuracy and more face time between HR, applicants, candidates, and employees.
Clearly define your biggest pain points, your goals for the new process, and the KPIs you’ll need to track in order to determine success.
- This is where you start strategy. By pinpointing your actual pain points and determining how to measure the success of the solution, you can narrow your scope to products with features that fit your needs rather than wasting your time on “solutions” that don’t.
Build your ideal lifecycle for an employee from talent acquisition to talent management based on the information collected. Clearly outline which processes are manual, which processes are automated, and how the information has to flow between them. This will give you a great idea as to which platforms work best for your organization.
If you follow these steps, invest in due diligence upfront, and have a solid understanding of your organization’s processes and needs, you put yourself in a position to make an educated decision on the best platform to drive the business outcomes you need and realize the greatest ROI.
Want to learn more about how onboarding connects talent acquisition and talent management? Let’s talk!
