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Common Problems With Employee Onboarding

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Let’s face it…employee onboarding can be problematic. Particularly because it plays second fiddle all too often to its predecessor – the recruiting process. Furthermore, onboarding is complicated by the fact that so many moving pieces must align to effectively realize an organization’s end goal for the effort…arming a new hire with the tools and knowledge to thrive in her new organization. Oh, and doing so while also instilling in her a real sense that she’s found her new work home.

Make no mistake though – the employee onboarding process must be a regular priority if you want your organization to be the coveted employer of choice in your industry and/or community. However, before you can determine what adjustments should happen with your own company’s process, it’s helpful to be familiar with potential red flags. In this blog, I’ll review a list of common problems with employee onboarding.

Failure to Launch – No Compelling Business Case

If you find yourself surrounded by members of senior management that think onboarding is still just about getting new hire paperwork completed the first day, then it will be an uphill battle to sell your boss on how the benefits of onboarding improvement will outweigh the costs. However, making a business case for employee onboarding process reengineering doesn’t have to be too difficult if you go about it the right way.

Consider the business outcomes that matter most to your company. Now ask yourself how many of those outcomes are driven by people? I’ll be surprised if you don’t say all of them…and so that’s where you start building your momentum with management. While there are certainly costs associated with addressing your onboarding issues, your objective is to demonstrate how the expected return on investment of the change will outweigh the current opportunity cost of doing nothing. After all, engaging your people to be more productive and content over a long tenure with your organization will ultimately drive your bottom line.

As you make your case for change, don’t just go for a blessing from upper management. In order for your program to succeed, you absolutely must get their involvement and public buy-in, as well. Otherwise, the program will lack the credibility it needs to succeed long-term.

Poor Participation from Stakeholders

Speaking of getting company brass to cheer on your revolutionary onboarding efforts, don’t forget the importance of rallying your peers. These are the other stakeholders included in employee onboarding such as hiring managers, new hire buddies, mentors, cube mates; and, those tasked with the administrative side of the process including equipment provisioning, payroll enrollment, form approval, etc. Even though the HR team is often the department that champions the importance of onboarding and is therefore tasked with keeping others accountable, the other stakeholders must embrace the process and make it their own, too. All too often there is a disconnect here–other departments must be encouraged to jointly own the onboarding process with HR. Otherwise, they are only hurting their own departments’ (and organization’s) productivity and morale in the end.

A root cause of this problem is the failure to train stakeholders on how to deliver an optimal experience to new hires during onboarding. Additionally, part of training should include dialogue about why the process is critical to success; and, it can easily borrow from the business case details already made to upper management.

Details Slipping Through the Cracks

Many circumstances can affect the extent to which details are missed during employee onboarding. If you don’t yet have a documented onboarding checklist then some of the following items may sound familiar. Some common examples of missed details include:

  • employee’s key card doesn’t function on the first day
  • a key piece of equipment did not arrive before the employee did (i.e. laptop, computer mouse, cell phone, etc.)
  • new hire arrives before supervisor does on the first day
  • email address isn’t set up by IT in time
  • employee uniform wasn’t ordered before the new hire arrived
  • a benefits enrollment meeting was forgotten and the new employee is rushed to make decisions as a result

Not only does the omission of these details leave your team scrambling at the last minute, but it also makes a shoddy first impression on your brand new employee. For additional motivation, think about what new hires facing these setbacks may be saying about their first few days to their family and friends. Now, think about how that might be amplified on social media. Great onboarding is great PR for your business.

Blind Onboarding Faith

Many of us in human resources appreciate the opportunity that our profession offers to really help and support people. That inclination toward a glass half-full mentality can quickly turn into the belief that doing something different is good enough…because at least it’s better than what we used to do, right? It’s not enough to just fix it and forget it…you’ve got to measure, too!

Here’s what happens when your process isn’t documented and you don’t have any ongoing metrics.

  • No one owns the effort, there is no project champion to keep others accountable (which leads to…see “Details Slipping Through the Cracks” above)
  • Because there is no benchmark (even if it starts at the bottom of the barrel), you don’t really know when real improvement has been made
  • Therefore, it becomes unclear whether the process is failing, flailing or actually fulfilling

A documented employee onboarding process enables you to state objectives and identify key performance indicators that support business outcomes. It includes periodic opportunities to evaluate progress, discuss lessons learned and enact action steps. Central to the lessons learned component, is the necessity to gather feedback from all participants…both new employees and stakeholders. Not doing so really does leave you flying blind for the future.

Not Taking Your Time

Timing is a strategic element of rock star employee onboarding. Without support from others involved, if you start off too strong, the effectiveness of efforts can fizzle out too early due to lack of direction. Or, in the absence of preparation and organization, activities can lag leaving the new employee bored and disengaged.

Many organizations don’t devote enough time to employee onboarding. If your current process isn’t comprehensive enough to go beyond paperwork and directions to your breakroom, you have room to grow from both ends of the process. Incorporate pre-boarding activities before the new hire’s first day to calm his nerves and get some of the administrative items out of the way. Then, expand your view of onboarding beyond a few days to include opportunities for training, mentoring, culture assimilation, performance management and employee feedback during the first year.

Conversely, some organizations have good intentions but try to pack too much into a short time period in the hopes of making the employee productive sooner than reasonably possible. Don’t force new hires to drink from the fire hose. Trying to digest too much information in only a few days will lead to poor retention anyway. To alleviate this potential issue, some smaller companies invite full-time new employees to work a few half days their first week. This allows the new hires to soak up the information with a better chance of retention, and it places less demand on the process stakeholders in a small business to be with the new hire constantly (thus, pulling them away from getting daily work done for a long period of time, too).

Not Customizing the Experience

Depending on the size of your organization, allowing for a good deal of flexibility may be necessary within your onboarding process. After all, some of the activities and requirements for onboarding a C-level executive at corporate headquarters will differ from the details associated with welcoming a new machine operator at a production plant in another region.

Failing to customize the employee onboarding experience can be just as detrimental as not having much of an onboarding process, too. No new hire wants to feel like the latest model coming off the just-in-time onboarding assembly line. Determine the core elements of your process…those activities that should be introduced to all new hires, and then flex the experience to cater to different new hire requirements that may be based on:

  • employee geographic location
  • department and/or division
  • employee role / level in organization
  • special accommodations for employee
  • assessment results

Overlooking Technology Solutions

Because the definition of employee onboarding encompasses so much more than in the past, it’s no surprise that so many potential problems now exist. There’s so much to track, so many others to involve. Growing organizations begin to utilize independent systems to alleviate some of the administrative burden. Emails are manually sent to different stakeholders to remind them to order business cards, create a timesheet and coordinate their department members’ schedules for a new hire lunch. Excel spreadsheets are used to keep track of which employees have signed off to acknowledge the latest policy update.

This piecemeal approach to systems is a step in the right direction; however, it pales in comparison to the efficiency and productivity that can be realized with web-based onboarding technology. Having a single system to integrate all onboarding-related forms, tasks and activities can fix many other problems…and at the very least free up time to address the other more strategic aspects of the onboarding process.

Robust employee onboarding software can handle your tasks, notifications, employee signatures and HR countersignatures, form updates, prompts for benefits enrollment, equipment provisioning, training curriculum and more. Plus, moving cumbersome paperwork into the cloud means no more illegible handwriting and incomplete fields on statutory forms.

The popularity of gamification has important ramifications for onboarding, as well. Use it to revitalize the way you train employees and hold them accountable for progress. By turning what might otherwise be tedious sessions in memorization into interactive, rewarding simulations, knowledge retention will increase and employment brand perception will improve, as well.

Shabby Face Time

Despite the increasingly prevalent role of technology in employee onboarding, it’s imperative that companies still build in frequent “face time” opportunities. Think of these sessions as chances to deepen the employee-employer bond, as well as a window to take the temperature of your onboarding process.

Companies that neglect these activities will fail to reiterate and elaborate on their expectations for the employee in her new position. Valuable discussion regarding timelines for achieving certain performance levels will be lost. Conversation about specific job success factors will be forgotten. If you don’t recognize the importance of the timing of these discussions, as well as your follow-through on any relevant action steps that result from them…your precious employment brand will undoubtedly suffer–specifically, in the form of early turnover that probably could have been thwarted.

Overcome Your Onboarding Problems

Now that you are better equipped to see your problems’ impact on your own onboarding process, it’s time to start laying the groundwork for innovative change. But with any process improvement, it’s important to visualize your destination before charting your course.

Examining the approach and creative ideas of peer organizations can be a helpful exercise at this stage of the game. Good ideas elsewhere may not always work well with your own industry/culture/location; however, a few golden nuggets will surely surface.

ExactHire works with small- and medium-sized organizations to help them leverage technology in hiring. For more information about our employee onboarding software, try our pricing estimator and/or schedule a live demo with us today.

Image credit: Seedling by Ray_from_LA (contact)

The Unsung Benefits of Effective Employee Onboarding

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Now that you have hired the employee who you envision to be part of your team for the long-term, how do you help ensure that this newest member of your team stays for that long-term? One way to help fulfill your prophecy is through effective onboarding.

Onboarding? Yes, onboarding! There are many facets of onboarding that encompass a smooth transition for newly hired employees, and which will benefit all parties involved. A new hire wants to feel informed, connected and valued. An organization wants team members who actively contribute and who fit well within the existing work culture. Both goals can be achieved and solidified through an effective onboarding process.

The first day for new hires should be geared towards bonding with their new team, learning first-hand what the new culture is like, and building rapport. Onboarding is not just a manager’s task; it is the responsibility of all team members within the organization itself to provide accurate information in an encouraging manner. Teammates need to welcome new hires and provide a climate of support for them during the acclimation time frame.

The Time in Between – Pre-Onboarding

In the immediate days after new hires accept an offer–and definitely before their first day–you should ensure that they complete many of the “to-do list” tasks that often bombard them on Day 1. Send new hires any packets, paper or paperless, that contain items like tax forms, personal data forms, and insurance registrations. They can review, complete and submit the information to HR before arriving to work. This will help them avoid a first day solely spent on documentation, while providing them with time to become acclimated to team policies and departmental/organizational expectations.

Keeping Connected – Onboarding Technology

Onboarding technology helps an organization keep in contact with new hires during the time between their offer acceptance and their official first days on the job. A lapse in communication between new hires and their managers at this critical time can potentially cause a big disconnect, which can be detrimental to relationships that must be developed between new employees and their teammates. Onboarding technology is also the most efficient means to continue promoting your organization’s employer brand that was introduced during the recruitment phase–especially for new hires that are working remotely on a full-time or part-time status.

Setting and Meeting Expectations

New hires have a lot on their minds. Whether they are recent graduates or seasoned workforce veterans, they will have acquired notions of what a workplace should be from their previous environments. They will bring these past mindsets along with them in the back, or possibly the forefront, of their minds when starting at a new place. The norms of the environment from which new hires come can affect the way they perceive and perform their tasks and acclimate within the new culture.

Since it is inevitable that some form of internal comparison will take place in the new employees’ minds,  it is important for current team members to be cognizant of this as they interact with new hires. Having a component within the onboarding process that shares norms and expectations of your organization will give your manager and team the opportunity to communicate expectations, as well as learn more about the new hires’ past experiences.

Improving Your Onboarding Experience

Simply put, there are always additional means to improve a process whether it is part of the onboarding process or an organizational based procedure. Within each new hire’s onboarding process, solicit feedback from each person. Ensure new hires that constructive criticism will help improve the organization’s onboarding process, and reiterate that their feedback will be taken positively.

The new hire’s feedback could lead to change that could positively impact the morale of the organization along with profitability.  With feedback from a new hire, additional training and employee development opportunities could develop.  The fresh, open mind of a new hire can help stimulate others to open their minds and discard the “But We Have Always Done It This Way” mentality.

As you develop and implement your organization’s onboarding process, realize that continuous improvement of the setup, content and delivery of the onboarding process itself is an objective for which to strive.  What works today for your new hires will not necessarily work for tomorrow’s new hires since we are in the midst of rapidly changing workforce dynamics.

Resources for Building an Onboarding Process

SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series outlines the Four Cs of Onboarding which gives an organization an excellent foundation on which to customize its onboarding process.

  • Compliance – Teaching employees basic legal and policy related rules and regulations
  • Clarification – Ensuring employees understand their new jobs and job related expectations
  • Culture – Providing employees with a sense of organizational formal and informal norms
  • Connection – Creating relationships and interpersonal networks that new employees need

Creating and delivering an onboarding process which encompasses the Four Cs provides initial direction that can be adapted to the intricacies of any organization delivering the onboarding piece.

A Final Note: Enthusiasm Is Contagious

Ultimately, the quicker new hires feel connected and knowledgeable about their job duties, the quicker they will be positively contributing to the overall goals of your organization. Onboarding should not be perceived by new hires and the organization’s team as something tedious and monotonous.  Onboarding is not that at all!  Onboarding helps generate excitement for something of high value–your organization, its team and your organization’s mission and vision. Enthusiasm is contagious!  Build excitement on what you do and who helps you do it!  Your organization’s mission is a calling, and positively communicate that calling to new hires in your onboarding process.  If new hires hear that calling, let them answer.

Image credit: Speak Your Mind by Ben Grey (contact)

Preboarding Employees for the Long-Haul

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Fighting to attract and keep good employees is a challenge for all companies; but it appears to become more relevant in smaller to medium sized businesses. Companies not only want to find and keep good employees to avoid high turnover rates, they need to create a partnership with employees. In doing so, smaller businesses provide a layer of protection to their own entrepreneurial success.

First Impressions

Pre-boarding begins the instant job seekers land on your job opening and begin evaluating your company’s ability to provide a stable, fulfilling workplace. It’s a part of the hiring process that is often overlooked and regarded as being unimportant. But this train of thought couldn’t be more wrong, and it is a frame-of-mind that could potentially result in the loss of good employees.

Whether you are actively recruiting for your open positions or simply using an ATS to find employees, the way you present your job is important. Make sure that the position is clearly defined and presented without typographical or grammatical errors. Provide the information that a potential employee will want to have to make an informed decision about working with your company. Many ATS providers offer ways to enhance the look and feel of your advertisement with HTML, images, videos, and links to company information. Don’t overlook these little items when searching for a team member.

Face to Face

During the interview process your company should provide a clear timeline with regards to future communication and the next steps that will take place. This includes responding to every applicant that has applied to let them know their application was successfully submitted. It may not seem important, but it really does help build that relationship early on with the right candidate.

Once an offer has been made and accepted, the race is really on to make that new employee comfortable that the correct decision was made to work for your business. Letting the new hire know what is expected and communicating employee information before the first day is imperative to creating a lasting relationship. Think about accepting an offer for employment and then having your new employer go ghost until you show up at the office in 2-4 weeks. It is unsettling, at best.

Take the Work Out of Paperwork

If you use electronic onboarding, you can set the new hire up and let them know what information is available to them. This would likely include the benefits information, policies and procedures for their role, an employee handbook, and other paperwork that takes time to review and complete. Of course we aren’t lawyers, but you might want to check with yours on what is okay to release before the first day on the job. We suggest offering the employee the opportunity to complete the paperwork before their first day but make it very clear that it is not required to start anything before they are on the clock. Another side note would be that state and federal identification and tax forms, including the I-9, should not be done until the employee is in the office with the proper representative to sign off on those items.

Be Prepared

Finally, in order to round out preboarding and the first impression of your new hire, make sure that the first day is structured and that the company is prepared to impress your employee. Nobody wants to start a new job and arrive to find out that nobody has prepped anything for their arrival.

Designate the new hire’s office space, phone, computer, and any other equipment that is needed for the job. Creating your new hire’s email account and setting up their printer before their arrival are added steps that show you care about your new hire’s first day.  If you are planning a pitch-in or taking the team out for lunch to welcome your employee, he or she should be aware before they walk into the office on the first day. Creating an outline for the first day or even the first week can give your new employee that warm feeling that your company is excited to have them on the team.

Getting the employees engaged before the first day can create a bond and some excitement for the new recruit. Additionally, the manager can gauge the employee’s drive to jump right into business. All of this is vital to ensuring that your hiring decision will hold up for the long haul.

Image credit: hunt truck in ca desert by Ted Gresham (contact)

Rethink Customer Service to Create Exceptional Employee Experiences

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Customer service is commonly understood as how an organization interacts with–or serves– its customers (those individuals who buy its product or service). A key tenet of customer service is that an organization should have the goal of providing an exceptional experience by anticipating and meeting customer needs before the customer even asks. Imagine if the employees of an organization did the same for each other. Well, businesses with a strong employer brand do.

If we go back to the definition of brand, we are reminded that brand is not smoke and mirrors, it is the core of what you are as a business. To extend that concept to employer brand, an organization cannot expect an “employee appreciation day”, company swag, and an annual “employee satisfaction survey” to be the drivers of its employment brand. Those are nice expressions, but to truly possess a strong employment brand, an organization must offer an exceptional experience on the other days of the year too.

Every week, and indeed, every day will bring its own ups and downs–this is true inside and outside the workplace. When we talk about providing an exceptional experience for employees, our goal is not to create a workplace utopia. Rather, a business should seek to foster a culture that respects the dignity of the individual and affirms their contribution to the business on a daily basis. By doing this, employees feel supported and confident in their work, and thus, are more likely to collaborate with each other in an open and honest way.

5 Ways to Foster an Exceptional Employer Brand Experience

  1. Set realistic expectations of your work culture during the application process
  2. Provide new hires with a “culture book” that summarizes your work culture
  3. Announce milestone achievements, while also affirming the work and small wins that helped the organization get there
  4. Provide monthly or quarterly group incentives for valuable, collaborative objectives
  5. Develop a continual improvement plan that engages employees

ExactHire provides hiring technology for small to medium-sized organizations. Our SaaS solutions include HireCentric ATS and OnboardCentric which can streamline your hiring and onboarding processes, while providing an exceptional experience for new employees. To learn more about how you can enhance your hiring process through the use of our software, contact us today!

Image credit: People seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile – Lee Mildon by rohit gowaikar (contact)

Engaging Applicants – New Economy New Rules

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It’s March in Indianapolis, Indiana. That means two things: wildly fluctuating temperatures (March 6: 2℉…March 11: 65 ℉); and basketball (this year will mark the 7th time since 1940 that Indy has hosted the NCAA Men’s Final Four). It’s through hosting events like the Final Four–and that spectacle in Speedway–that Indianapolis earned the nickname “Amateur Sports Capital of the World.” However, increasingly, the word “amateur” is becoming unnecessary.

Last week, I had the privilege of listening to three leaders in the Indianapolis professional sports scene. Rob Laycock of the Indiana Pacers, Dan Plumlee of the Indianapolis Colts, and Tom Dunmore of the Indy Eleven spoke at New Economy New Rules–a monthly event organized by TechPoint. The event seeks to introduce new ideas about how business is done today and how it will be done tomorrow, often with an emphasis on technology as a catalyst for change. Accordingly, the discussion topics at this event were less about on-field action and more about evolving technologies that enhance the fan experience and fill seats.

The talk was exciting for me in my career as a digital marketer–these guys have metrics on everything–and eye-opening from my perspective as a sports fan–who knew they could track bathroom traffic at stadiums in real-time?! But how can Human Resources departments–large and small–incorporate technology into their operations?

Start With A Clear Destination

Before adopting new technology, an organization should first have a clear understanding of its business objectives and goals.  From there, it’s a matter of exploring and selecting technologies that will provide employees with value-added assistance in meeting important objectives–those that will directly impact business goals.  In varying degrees and ways, each sports organization uses technology to meet important business objectives. However, all three emphasized the importance of using technology to engage the community, with the goal of cultivating passionate, loyal fans to fill their seats.

In the world of Human Resources, our organizations can use technology to engage job applicants and fill our “open seats” with passionate, loyal new hires too. Let’s explore how this can be done by taking a look at how these sports organizations engage and cultivate fans.

Engaging Applicants-More Than Filling Seats

A common theme throughout the conversation was that, yes, the goal is to fill the seats, but focusing on gross tickets sales as the sole indicator of success is a mistake. For these organizations, it’s more about building relationships with fans for the long haul. In fact, Mr. Laycock likened it to dating, wherein a team gradually develops a closer, stronger relationship with a fan; the end-goal is to gain and maintain a fan’s lifelong loyalty, which is hopefully expressed through annual ticket purchases.

For HR Departments, we are looking to find the right match for our organization too–although this is speed dating, and we have many significant others, and…well let’s just stop the metaphor there. The point is: we want to attract talented people to our organization who stay and become passionate brand ambassadors. These individuals will value both our organization and the relationship they have with it.

Does your hiring process seek to find, hire, and onboard individuals who will be passionate, loyal fans of your organization? If not, you’ll be looking to refill your seats real soon, and your organization will suffer for it. To avoid this, consider investing in an Applicant Tracking System that streamlines the hiring process and increases applicant engagement through  automated job postings to multiple job boards, integrated social media sharing, and timely, personalized applicant status updates and follow-up requests. By utilizing this technology, you’ll provide a more welcoming hiring process for the applicant and have more time to meaningful interact with job candidates–your future fans.

Engaging Applicants-Highlight Star Players

With the right perspective on what your hiring goal is (hiring passionate, loyal fans of your organization) and a strong foundation of hiring technology in place (a robust Applicant Tracking System), you will be ready to attract top talent to your team. To do this, you must impress job seekers with how awesome it is to be a part of your team. It’s important that you do this in a way that is–and is perceived to be–authentic. There’s no better way to do this than to highlight your star players.

Pat McAfee of the Indianapolis Colts has over 300,000 followers on Twitter. His tweets inform, entertain, and ultimately galvanize the Colts fan-base. The content isn’t always about his place of employment, but this works to the Colts’ advantage as it helps in reaching new fans–especially younger ones. Do members of your team have a platform from which to tell their story?

engaging applicants as fans

McAfee engages fans through Twitter.

Job seekers need to experience it to believe it. If your organization is only providing a list of “Why ‘ABC Corp.’ Is A Great Place To Work”, then you’re missing out on an opportunity to engage job seekers who are looking to bring their talents to a special place. Highlight your current employees via your website and social media to illustrate not just what your organization is about, but who it’s about. If you already employ passionate, loyal fans of your organization, then you’ll likely attract the same.

Engaging Applicants-A FANtastic Experience

FANtastic Experience
This is FANtastic!
Courtesy of totalprosports.com

 

We know that an Applicant Tracking System can provide an HR Department with the time and features needed to make a positive impression on job applicants. But what happens after you’ve hired and filled the open seat? What is the new hire’s experience?

Onboarding a new hire is equivalent to welcoming a new fan to their first game. The Pacers, Colts, and Indy Eleven don’t stop engaging fans once the ticket is sold. They continue strengthening their fan relationships with the goal of cultivating life-long fans. These organizations use technology to accomplish this where it makes sense, but these are simply tools to convey a sentiment: you belong and you are appreciated.

How does your organization provide a fantastic experience for new hires? This question, of course, is part of the larger topics of  “work culture” and “employer brand”. But a simple way to create a pleasant experience for your new employees is to provide them with a highly organized and personalized onboarding experience. And again, this can be accomplished with the help of technology…Onboarding Software.

Just as a new fan’s first-game experience should not be marred by long waits at the gate, concession stand, and restroom; a new hire’s first day should not be marked by completion of forms, redundant tasks, and an office supply scavenger hunt. Onboarding Software can streamline the common tasks associated with the onboarding process and eliminate the need for new hires to fill out stacks and stacks of forms.

When your organization’s new employees are not swamped with an endless number of mind-numbing tasks or confused about what form is needed next, they are free to interact with new colleagues and begin building a relationship with your organization. This also provides the organization with the opportunity to be creative with how it welcomes and orientates new employees. An onboarding like this will show appreciation for new hires, and it contributes to their sense of belonging.

New Economy New Rules

In today’s competitive economy, finding and hiring talented individuals to fill your open seats (and stay in them) is vital for an organization’s continued growth and profitability. Successful organizations like the Colts, Indy Eleven, and Pacers invest in technology to efficiently reach business objectives, HR departments can do the same by embracing technology as a tool to improve the hiring and onboarding processes. It’s important to know that an investment in hiring technology will certainly create efficiencies in operations; however, more importantly, it will support a powerfully engaging experience for applicants and new hires–one that will cultivate passionate, loyal employees–and fans–of your organization.

 

ExactHire offers hiring technology that helps small to medium sized organizations scale for growth. Our HireCentric Applicant Tracking System features social media and job board integration to maximize an organization’s recruitment operations. Additionally, our Onboarding Software helps ensure that new hires enjoy a FANtastic experience with your organization.  Learn more by contacting a member of our team today!

 

Image credit: Game Over by Andrew Malone (contact)

Employee Onboarding: What’s It Mean?

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What does employee onboarding mean? Because one of our software tools helps to automate many of the tasks and documentation commonly associated with new hire onboarding, this question is asked of me quite frequently. And while the definition certainly changes from one workplace to another, I think it is helpful to break it into two main categories: 

New Hire Onboarding

I think you can also refer to this as “short-term” onboarding.  What I mean by that terminology is that this definition is pretty limited to the initial documents/forms/tasks associated with a new hire. Tax forms, policy acknowledgements, direct deposit sign-up, etc. are good examples of things that tend to be done right upfront for any new hire. These need to be completed before that person is able to really jump in and start their employment with the organization.  From my experience over the past few years, this tends to be what most people in the SMB market space think of when they hear about onboarding.

Employee Onboarding

A little different than above, I would tend to refer to this more as “long-term” onboarding. While all of the items mentioned with short-term onboarding would certainly be a part of this process, it doesn’t stop there.

Instead, this process often can go on for the first several months of an employee’s stay with an organization. Likewise, this tends to be done in phases within those first few months on the job for a new hire.  Examples of things that are included in this form of onboarding include: training/safety videos and acknowledgements; provisioning of different items (laptop, phone, desk space, etc.); job-specific learning milestones, etc.

Currently, this definition of onboarding tends to be found more in larger organizations.  However, with technology continuing to progress, I’m seeing more and more SMB’s going this route.

Guidelines For Onboarding

Regardless of how your organization views onboarding, there are some core guidelines that apply to everyone:

  • You must follow the old adage of “you never get a second chance to make a first impression”. Make sure new hires feel welcome and that there is an organized process to assimilate them into your company.  Do everything you can to reinforce their decision to come to work for you.
  • Have a methodology to keep track of where people are in the onboarding process.  This may be onboarding software, or it may be a simple checklist.  Either way, be sure nothing slips through the cracks.
  • Stay organized and compliant.  It’s imperative that you keep record of the various documents (I-9’s are a great example) new hires complete, as you may be required to provide them at some point in the future.

Onboarding new employees is a critical function for companies of all sizes. Pay attention to this and stay close to your onboarding process to ensure that new hires are engaged, which will improve the odds that they’ll stay with you well into the future.

 

To learn more about how ExactHire can optimize and automate your HR processes, including new employee onboarding, we invite you to contact us today!
By Lhb1239 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

How to Make Sure an Electronic Signature is Valid – Whiteboard [VIDEO]

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If you’re trying to determine how you can use technology to make the employee onboarding process paperless, then there are some things you should know about e-signatures. In today’s Whiteboard Chat, Jeff Hallam discusses the elements that are included in a legitimate electronic signature.

Video Transcript:

Hi! Today we’re going to talk about electronic signatures. And this is something that comes up a lot in today’s world as more and more organizations are looking for solutions that can help expedite collecting signatures, and really, the idea today is to make sure that we can help you better understand some of the essential items that have to be there in order for an electronic signature to be as valid as a regular physical signature.

And again as a quick precursor, none of this is meant to be legal advice. If you have more detailed questions, I would always recommend that you seek your attorney of choice. But hopefully this will at least give you a pretty good checklist of things to consider as you go down this path. So really everything starts with a piece of legislation passed back in 2000 called the E-Signature Act. More commonly know as the E-Sign Act. So as you go down this path you’ll probably hear that terminology used and really all that was designed to do was to lay out a common set of protocols that all providers and organizations could use to make sure that key elements of an electronic signature were consistent across the board.

So really, what we’re going to start with are kind of just these four common things that have to be present in order to make sure that you are in compliance from an e-Sign Act perspective.

So the first one is review. As you would expect with any kind of typical physical document, nobody’s going to sign that until they actually have a chance to see what it is that they are signing. The same thing applies with electronic signature. You have to give the person who’s being asked to sign the document access to that document so they can confirm what’s on it, and that they can indicate that they are in agreement with that. Pretty standard, but again, just to make sure that that would be part of what’s offered and to check on that.

Secondly, and this is really more at the core of the technology side of things, is the ability to prove that the signature is unique and verifiable. And, there are different ways to do this and I’m going to hit on more of the best practices approach. Really there are three elements involved in making sure that this signature becomes unique and verifiable. Number one, you have to be able to record something that constitutes a signature. And, that can be anything from checking a box, filling their name into a box of text on a screen, all the way down to an actual mouse pad signature where somebody would attempt to replicate their signature electronically. Whatever approach somebody uses doesn’t really matter at that point as long as that is recorded.

Secondly, you’re typically going to want to make sure that there’s a date and a time stamp to that signature so that it can be found and tied back to when this actually occurred. And then finally, in most instances you’re going to want to record the IP address of the computer or the device where someone was when they issued that signature. And now as you combine all three of those elements, it is very easy to go back and confirm that the person who appeared to sign the document actually did.

Thirdly, we get to consent. If there are documents that are longer, or a little more complicated, and/or those that have repercussions if certain conditions aren’t met or rules aren’t followed, its always a good idea, again best practices-wise, to have a way to make sure that the person is really clear on what that consent means. So, for instance on the I-9 form, which is something we run into very frequently, there are certain penalties that may be imposed if you’re found to have been untruthful in documenting somebody’s citizenship status. Well, as the person being asked to sign off on that, while it is in the document, the I-9 is several pages long. So, what you might do in those instances is look for an opportunity to either highlight those key areas so its very clear to the person and those are called out; or, perhaps even bring a copy of those key elements down into the signature area where they are being asked to sign so that its very clear again that they understand what it is exactly that they are consenting to at that point.

And then finally, access and change. This kind of works both sides of the street – access means the person that we have asked to sign the document has to have the ability after that transaction is complete, to download and access a copy of that for their records. Print, save, whatever it might be. Likewise, on the other side of the street, the group that originated the transaction, is prohibited from making any changes to that signed agreement unless its approved by the person that was asked to sign it in the first place.

And again, nothing different than what you would see in a regular contract or signing arrangement physically, but again, making sure that these four elements are all there, and that those criteria exist, and that whatever vendor or developer you’re working with can prove those items will make sure that you can stay in compliance and that your electronic signatures are every bit as valid as a physical signature. Thanks!

For more information about how ExactHire’s employee onboarding software utilizes e-signatures, please visit our resources section or contact us today.