A deep dive into the world of Automated Onboarding and how it is changing the industry
Download the expert's guide to document automation for Automated Onboarding
According to research done by Gallup, Only 12% of the current employees are fully satisfied with the onboarding process experienced when getting hired. This is a stat that we should not take lightly if we want our employees to be productive and satisfied with their job. Moreover, this can also significantly harm the reputation of the company and set a bad start for the people working in it.
But how can we provide an engaging onboarding process that allows employees to be satisfied while also enjoying a hassle-free experience? Well, this is precisely where onboarding automation comes into play.
What is onboarding automation?
Onboarding automation is a technological system that allows the HR professionals of an organization to automate various onboarding activities. These activities can include anything from documentation, setting up multiple reminders, to taking care of common queries at the beginning of the recruitment.
This process is an effective way to ensure a structured experience for both the potential employees and the HR department. Automation onboarding allows the hiring party to complete almost every aspect of the onboarding program without having to put any manual effort whatsoever. And the great thing is that you only need to set up the whole system only once, and it can take care of various onboarding processes till you make any changes.
Moreover, it not only allows the HR department to save their work time but also offers a positive experience for new talents who are joining your organization. As a result, these positive impacts make them more delightful towards your company.
Automation also allows you to give the new recruits a personalized experienced and help them with various queries or unavoidable issues.
What are the types of onboarding?
In order to ensure the most efficient onboarding process, one must understand all the aspects of the onboarding process. And this calls for a comprehensive understanding of the onboarding types. Below are the 5 most common types of onboarding in modern-day companies.
- Customer onboarding
- Employee onboarding
- Merchant onboarding
- Vendor onboarding
- Partner onboarding
Customer onboarding
Getting new customers and selling to them can be 5 to 20 times more expensive than retaining current customers. That is why making sure every organization’s customer onboarding is top-notch.
Customer onboarding is the comprehensive process that involves all the activities related to introducing your products or service to potential clients and transforming them into loyal customers.
Employee onboarding
Employee onboarding is the overall process that takes of every aspect needed to integrate new hires into the organization. Everything is part of the employee onboarding, from the initial interview to orientation, W-2s, documentation and employee id card supply.
This onboarding process should also teach the new talents about the work culture, mission, and values of the organization they just joined.
Merchant onboarding
Marchant onboarding is the process that takes care of the online verification of any business. That means it deals with the creation and maintenance of a company's electronic profile and information such as a business address, incorporation, business name, and much more.
In short, it is a simple way of creating a digital footprint on the internet so creditors and your clients can access all this information whenever they want.
Vendor onboarding
Vendor onboarding is the process that guides new vendors for your company into the network of your organization. This onboarding process makes sure that you are working with the right partner to help your business grow to the next level.
You also want to make sure that the interest of your vendors is aligned with your company and that they are very excited to work with you.
Partner onboarding
There is more to partner onboarding than meets the eye. It is not just a simple sign in the form but a comprehensive process of validating, gathering, and maintenance of various Documentation to ensure your potential partners get the most satisfactory experience while working with you.
Want to scrape data from PDF documents, convert PDF to XML or automate table extraction? Check out Nanonets' PDF scraper or PDF parser to convert PDFs to database entries! Check out OCR API, Invoice automation, Passport OCR, AP Automation Solution, Receipt OCR, License OCR Solution, or start your free trial by clicking below!
What are the crucial phases of onboarding?
In today’s heavily candidate-driven market, ensuring an effective onboarding process has become essential. That is why organizations are looking to go the extra mile to ensure that they are attracting the right talents and optimizing the whole onboarding process.
You want to ensure that once the onboarding process is finished, your employees clearly understand the company’s values and have a good insight into the work culture.
This is why the onboarding process is divided into four crucial phrases. Here is a brief discussion about the phrases of onboarding.
Pre-onboarding
Pre-onboarding is the first phase of onboarding that starts right as a candidate accepts your job offer. This phase goes on until the day of joining.
This is a crucial part of onboarding for your employee and your business because the slightest misinformation or lack of understanding can be the difference between a happy employee and a lost talent.
During this phase, your potential employee will handle all the relevant paperwork needed to join your company. They should also get enough time to exist in their previous company.
Welcoming phase
This is the second most vital part of the onboarding process that starts on the day of joining. This phrase ensures that your new hires experience an engaging orientation and feel welcomed in their new company.
As they are new to your company, for the time being, they might not know about anyone inside the company. They also do not know which team they will have to collaborate with during their work hours. That is why it is crucial for you to give them full insight into your organization before they get to work.
Training
Now comes the part where you need to offer your new hires role-specific training. Even though companies usually like to hire experienced candidates, modern-day companies are now more willing to work with fresh graduates.
Regardless of their previous experience, working in a new company calls for some specific training. This training phrase will transform them into full-fledged employees.
During this phase, the company must make sure that the new hires know what they will be responsible for. However, keep in mind that the training course should not be too overwhelming for your employees as it may do more harm than good.
Transition into the new role
Once the training is complete is time to transition them into their new role. During this phase, the team leader must help them visualize what success in their role should look like. They must also set a clear standard for productivity and quality, so the new hires know exactly what is expected from them.
After a month or two, the company must also conduct a comprehensive performance review to help new employees how they can improve in certain sectors.
Want to automate repetitive manual tasks? Check our Nanonets workflow-based document processing software. Extract data from invoices, identity cards or any document on autopilot!
Automated onboarding statistical benefits that you should know about
Before we dive down into automated onboarding, we need to take a look at some of the stat that makes it the ideal choice.
1. You will get an 18% improvement in initial performance from the new hires with automating onboarding tasks in place.
2. You will get a 16% increase in the retention rate for new hires with automating onboarding tasks in place.
3. Around 36% of the HR professional stated that the sole reason behind not being able to automate the onboarding process is due to lack of technology in hand.
4. According to Sapling, 58% of the company’s onboarding program is centred on processes and paperwork.
5. According to Gallup, only 12% of the employees completely agree that their organization is doing a great job of onboarding. That means almost 88% of the companies have room to improve.
6. According to Brandon Hall Group, a good employee onboarding process can improve employee retention by a massive 82%.
7. According to the HR Digest, You can improve the productivity of your new employee but ensuring an effective onboarding process.
8. Automating the onboarding process can increase employee engagement by 49%.
9. After Covid restrictions, 18.9% of companies switched to remote hiring using automation onboarding. (Source: Career Plug)
10. A great onboarding experience ensures that 69% of employees stick with a company for three years.
Want to use robotic process automation? Check out Nanonets workflow-based document processing software. No code. No hassle platform.
How does automation resolve onboarding challenges?
Once you find the right person for your job, it is time for you to make sure the onboarding process becomes as engaging and effective as possible. However, there are various challenges that come with this process. But the great news is that you can simply resolve this by introducing automation to the mix.
Here are the top challenges that can be resolved by automation.
- Having way too much paperwork
- Coordination between all the departments
- Offering process visibility for everyone
- Offering a consistent yet personalized experience for new hires
- Dealing with the cost of failure.
Automation takes care of all those challenges by offering a streamlined approach, where bots can deal with all forms of paperwork filing, data handling, and transparency. Automation also takes care of various repetitive tasks like,
- Documentation
- Data collection
- Content delivery
- Data entry
- Reminders
What is the difference between manual onboarding and automated onboarding?
Even in today’s time, there are lots of companies who are still using a manual, labour-intensive, and document-heavy onboarding process. This not only makes the company spend more time and resources on the onboarding process but decreases the overall productivity of the HR professionals.
On the other hand, when it comes to automation onboarding, companies now have the power of AI in their arsenal. These allow the company to spend less time on the hiring process, resulting in a quick, efficient, and effective onboarding.
In the case of manual onboarding, both the HR professionals and the potential candidates have to do manual data entry. On the other hand, automated onboarding introduces online form submission.
Due to the manual paperwork, the company will also have a higher cost when it comes to manual onboarding. But due to the streamlined process, automation offers a massive reduction in cost and a productivity boost.
And finally comes the time to look at errors. As in manual onboarding, most of the work is done manually; it is highly susceptible to human error. But automation allows you to enjoy an error-free process.
If you work with invoices, and receipts or worry about ID verification, check out Nanonets online OCR or PDF text extractor to extract text from PDF documents for free. Click below to learn more about Nanonets Enterprise Automation Solution.
What are the benefits of automated onboarding?
Due to the massive number of benefits of onboarding, it is the most desired automated process by most businesses. Let us take a look at what it brings to the table.
Avoiding security risk
One of the most significant risks regarding the onboarding process comes from human error. For instance, an HR professional can easily give a new employee access to documents for which he should have authorization. This can lead to various security issues, which can come down to the company with a hefty fine.
However, automating the onboarding process has a low chance of error, which guarantees a risk-free procedure.
Minimizing onboarding time
Onboarding automation takes the whole manual data entry from the equation and introduces an online platform where potential candidates can come in with their PC, Mobile, and much more. This enables the company to reduce the onboarding time and save on many talent accusation costs.
Increased engagement
The next benefit we are going to take a look at is the increased engagement with new hires. Over 40% of new employees say that their onboarding process was too long.
This situation occurs when the HR team gets too busy with all the manual paperwork and administrative tasks. With Automation in the mix, HR professionals finally get more time on their hands, which is better utilized by reaching out to new hires and offering themselves as a helpful resource.
How to automate the onboarding process?
To automate the whole onboarding process, you need to have a clear idea about what specific approach your onboarding process requires. If you already have a manual onboarding process in your company, you need to take a look at what aspect of this process works and, more importantly, what does not.
Once you have outlined what your ideal onboarding process should look like, you will have a clear idea of which part of automation needs to be implemented.
Automation of document delivery
One of the biggest challenges with hiring is the sheer amount of paperwork it comes with. This is why automation for document delivery is the first thing that you should focus on. This ensures all your new hires can easily access all the documents they need to get started. Moreover, it also ensures that all the ecstasy documents and agreements are signed off.
Integrating all the new hire data to the HR app
Having a central repository is one of the biggest benefits of onboarding automation. With all the new hire data automatically placed into the repository, HR professionals can focus on more productive tasks for the company. This also saves time by preventing workloads related to double-checking new employees’ information.
Automatically providing all the accounts and logins.
With an effective automated onboarding system in place, you can provide all your new hires with the account information and the logins they will need to start their job right away. It also allows the company to track all the logins and control the access level automatically.
Want to automate repetitive manual tasks? Save Time, Effort & Money while enhancing efficiency!
What are the best practices for automated onboarding?
With more companies going through a digital transformation, Automation of employee onboarding is becoming the new norm. That being said, many companies are still not getting the most out of automation due to traditional practices. And this is exactly where we need change.
Below are the best practices for automated onboarding that will elevate your company’s productivity to the next level.
Not forgetting the human touch
Regardless of how many processes we can automate, we should never forget that onboarding should be an engaging process. And when there is a need for engagement, there should be a human touch.
New hires are usually hesitant to connect with one another. So at the end of the day, HR professionals should keep an eye on them and talk to them frequently, asking if they need help with anything. New employees in your company should always feel valued and apricated if you want a motivated workforce.
Introducing new hires to the team
Even if all the logins and information are provided to the employees automatically, walking into a new office without knowing anyone can be nerve-wracking for new hires.
This is another sector where you can harness the power of automation. Keep instruction to the system, which will email all the relevant team with the new recruit's name prior to their first day. Also, include their role and a photo with background information if possible. This will allow the team to charge and introduce themselves to the new hire to make them comfortable.
Streamlining paperwork
There are various forms that you need in hand for the onboarding process. And some of them are required by the law, so there is no way out of it.
It is ideal for making sure all of this employment paperwork gets automatically delivered to the new hires. They should also have a platform where they can fill up the forms and send you any additional files to the centralized repository.
Some other noteworthy best practices are,
- Tracking progress with in-depth analysis.
- Showcase your company’s culture.
- Leverage automation only at places where you will get the most ROI.
How long can the automation onboarding process take?
According to Gallup, only 12% of the employees completely agree that their organization is doing a great job of onboarding. That means almost 88% of the companies have room to improve. And the main reason behind this is the amount of time it takes to complete the whole manual onboarding process.
Source: Archbee
According to this data, we can see that most automatic onboarding process takes one week for full completion. That being said, faster onboarding comes with its own sets of challenges. If you can not make sure you have a perfect automation system in place, your new hires will tend to walk out due to bad onboarding practices.
On the other hand, over 51% of the employees say they are also actively looking for other jobs while they wait for the onboarding process. So finding the right balance between quickness and quality is the key.
FAQ
How do you conduct virtual onboarding?
Here are the steps needed to ensure the most effective virtual onboarding.
- Give your recruits all the data they need to complete their documentation.
- Set clear expectations and get to know them during the onboarding.
- Make sure to check in throughout the whole onboarding process.
- Offer one-on-one video chat so they feel valued.
- During the first week, constantly ask for their feedback.
What is onboarding workflow?
Onboarding workflow is a set of steps that all the new hires have to go through to get started on their new journey within the company.
Nanonets online OCR & OCR API have many interesting use cases that could optimize your business performance, save costs and boost growth. Find out how Nanonets' use cases can apply to your product.
