The process of onboarding new hires is critical both to the organization and to the success of new employees. A well-designed onboarding process improves employee retention in the first three critical months of work, sets the pace for engagement, and can either make or break initial productivity.
And yet, according to a Gallup report, only 12% of employees reported that their companies did a good job of onboarding. With that in mind, it should be no surprise that 51% of organizations reported losing new hires within the first 6 months.
Clearly, employee onboarding is in a bleak state. The situation has only deteriorated since the pandemic began and work-from-home policies were implemented.
But with HR automation, employee onboarding does not have to be a task for HR teams to dread and avoid. The right workflow automation software takes away most of the onboarding work from your hands and makes it much more fulfilling, engaging, and effective for everyone involved.
While workflow automation is normally a strategy employed by IT teams, and might not seem rife for use cases within HR, Onboarding has increasingly become a set of processes that take well to automation. Even more so when paired with a low-code platform that can be utilized by those without a developer skillset.
Specifically, onboarding involves new hire paperwork, orientation, training, performance tracking, and project management. These are repetitive tasks, and intelligent automation systems handle them effectively.
For new hires, onboarding is full of uncertainty, pressure, expectations, and a general feeling of being overwhelmed and oftentimes, lost.
One study showed exactly what employees want from onboarding:
With this data in mind, it becomes easier to understand just how powerful workflow automation in employee onboarding can become to make the process easier for all parties involved.
Remote working threw a wrench in an already difficult onboarding process. Without physical contact, tasks like training and document generation have become more of a challenge. However, virtual onboarding using automated workflows can make sure the proper training, resource provisioning, and other critical processes are always consistently counted for.
What makes automated training so effective is that employees are taken through every process step-by-step without room for manual error. Unlike an employee handbook, automated workflows are dynamic and can pivot quickly to handle new policies.
Automated HR workflows carry you through pre-processing, onboarding, and ongoing employee management. At each of these stages, an automation solution like BP Logix’ Process Director generates dynamic forms for applicants to fill along the way and automatically stores, shares, and updates records as needed. Audit trails are always there for compliance purposes.
You can even automate the setting up of new accounts in payroll systems, trigger notifications to the people concerned, and requisition any resources needed such as software licenses or access credentials. This eliminates the headache of manual document pivoting from system to system, or worse: scanning and filing.
An automated workflow system also allows HR teams to track the progress of all new applicants as they go through the virtual onboarding process. Processes can be designed to automatically capture important metrics and run reports as needed to keep track of applicants as they advance through the system.
The detailed data and analytics availed by automated HR workflows provide precious insights that can help you figure out how to improve your onboarding processes for the future, including finding the critical path to make processes more efficient.
In organizations without automated onboarding processes, some new hires come in and receive a full concierge onboarding program, while others come at a bad time and are left to their own devices. Leaving onboarding processes to individual leaders allows for markedly different new hire experiences.
Automated onboarding processes streamline and standardize this experience so that everyone receives the same treatment.
The system also ensures that employees are trained in the same way, creating a consistent brand experience for every client. When new hires are left to figure things out, variance exists between the way each employee carries out supposedly similar tasks.
The right onboarding platform can be programmed to ensure compliance at every stage. Whether that's overtime compliance, fair labor standards, FMLA, federal civil rights, accountability, or labor laws, automated workflows can be built to take care of the complex compliance regulations for you.
It is common knowledge that HR compliance has become a minefield. However, unlike manual onboarding processes, automated onboarding also provides visibility into the whole process and makes compliance audits much easier.
Integration with finance applications, active directory and legacy ERP systems like Peoplesoft make sure data easily gets from one system to another, without manual error. Low-code automation platforms equipped with robust integration capabilities, like BP Logix, make sure documents and data can be easily actioned and never fall through the cracks.
Using automated workflows for onboarding new employees sets up channels for communication and collaboration not only with HR teams, but with other team members as well. The right onboarding platform can integrate with email and UCC platforms to ensure that even new team members stay involved and engaged with their team.
Onboarding is a challenging and complex process that demands a high level of commitment from HR teams to conduct successfully. However, thanks to the power of a Low Code onboarding platform like BP Logix, you get to take much of this workload off your plate and create an effective onboarding process for your new hires.
BP Logix specializes in intelligent BPM software with a low-code platform that excels in automation of critical business functions in HR and across the business.
Contact us to learn more about how our intuitive AI-powered engine can help transform your HR onboarding to a smooth, effective process for you and your prospective hires.