Employee Onboarding

What is Employee Onboarding? 

Onboarding is the groundwork for a new employee. Onboarding encompasses all of the new hire paperwork, required compliance, company policy documents, asset management, and any other tasks needed to be completed prior to your new employees' starting their workday.

Why is Employee Onboarding Important?

Onboarding sets the initial tone of your organization. A smooth onboarding creates a positive first day experience and new hires are less likely to regret their job offer. Integrating the onboarding process allows you to keep a centralized digital copy of all employment documentation as well as reduce the redundancy of inputting all new hire information into your payroll, time and attendance, benefits, and performance management systems.

Employee Onboarding Process Steps

Let's say you've hired a new employee and have a checklist of items to accomplish. Standard onboarding processes that a cloud-based onboarding process can alleviate:

• Paperwork - all new hires have legal documents to sign.
• Employment components - payroll, benefits, timekeeping, and performance management systems.
• Compliance made easy - verify process and electronically sign, store, and audit I-9s and other onboarding documents.

Employee Onboarding Best Practices

Onboarding sets the tone for employment but it is also imperative for compliance to be followed. You can absolutely make onboarding smoother for you and your new hire while following all the rules.

• Send paperwork prior to the new hire’s first day so you have a head start.
• Make sure there is a warm welcome and the new hire knows the way around the office.
• Have all of the new hire’s materials ready to go like their computer, phones, branded clothing, etc.
• Create a daily schedule for the week. This introduces proper workflow habits and routine.

A major complaint new hires have is their new employer not being ready for them. It sets a tone of miscommunication, disorganization, and is extremely unwelcoming.

Employee Onboarding Solutions

Employee onboarding solutions allows you to save time and stay organized while reducing the number of times you have to enter new hire information, which will minimize the chance for costly errors. When onboarding processes are an organized, core part of human resources operations, companies are able to initiate a fully-documented start to the employee lifecycle.

Any solution, whether manual or software-based, should incorporate the creation of an employee record or file. These records should be updated throughout the onboarding process, and well into  the employees' future throughout their lifecycle with information pertaining to payroll, benefits enrollments, performance reviews, and much more.

Employee Onboarding Solution Features

A set of base features for employee onboarding solutions should include capabilities revolving around things like:

• Creating configurable new hire checklists 
• Digitizing traditionally paper forms and manual processes
• Auto-populating known new hire data across all required paperwork 
• Automatic notifications for new hires to complete onboarding 
• New hire onboarding self-service and digital signing capabilities
• Collecting identification documents and verifying employment eligibility  
• Onboarding alerts for company administrators upon onboarding completion
• Accessibility anywhere, on any device (for cloud or web-based systems)
• Standard integrations with other HR systems and payroll software 

Employee Onboarding Solution Benefits

Key benefits an employer and organization should experience from an employee onboarding solution should include things like:

• Streamlining standard onboarding processes and policies
• Starting a new hire off with an easy, straight-forward onboarding experience
• Allowing new hires to complete time-consuming paperwork prior to their first day
• Reducing duplicate data entry and transcribing data across multiple systems 
• Spending less time with manual processes, paper forms, and hard-to-read handwriting
• Complying with federal, state, and local labor law requirements 
• Ensuring that every onboarding step is carried out accurately and consistently
• Keeping collaborators and / or administrators on task throughout the onboarding process
• Storing all employee information in one digital employee record / file