At the first glance, all employee onboarding software might seem a bit identical. Every software captures confidential employee data, stores it securely, and sends it through an approval loop to complete the onboarding process. What sets them apart is the slew of features that help an onboarding software achieve its purpose.
In the clamor to automate the onboarding process, HR staff tend to overlook the list of features a solution offers. It may seem pointless to rummage around a feature-rich application and evaluate its wide array of features. But, what if you find out later that your perfect onboarding solution lacks a few indispensable features? Chaos? Confusion? Anarchy?
But, by that point, you are locked in either by price or the time it would take to find a new system. You can’t enlist the help of your already backlogged IT team. You can’t just return the application. You don’t have enough resources to request the vendor to build it for you. You’ll end up plugging the feature gap manually and be back to square one.
Need for Employee Onboarding Software
No matter how hard you work to woo a new hire, failing to meet their first expectations will make things counterproductive. Nearly 4% of new hires quit after a bad first day. What makes your new hires skip out so early? Dissatisfaction and disengagement. Here are some steps in traditional onboarding that tick off new hires:
- Too much paperwork and legal documentation to fill out
- Long wait for the document approval and verification
- Unavailability of managers and team due to miscommunication
- Failure to allot resources like workstation, access cards, etc. on time
- Lack of proper follow up from the HR staff
- The endless loop of emails and people
One look at the reasons will show us that the root cause behind all these problems is process gaps in the onboarding workflow. An Employee Onboarding Software can bridge the gap between people and data to create a smooth onboarding experience. In addition to eliminating process silos, they act as a catalyst for employee satisfaction and retention.
Just because it is hard to find the right employee onboarding solution, doesn’t mean it is wise to ignore technology in onboarding altogether.
Here are seven reasons why every business needs an employee onboarding software:
- To standardize the onboarding process
- To ease down the documentation stress
- To prevent compliance risks
- To enhance process visibility
- To reduce time-to-productivity and improve engagement
- To eliminate manual errors and miscommunication
- To integrate effortlessly with other HR software
6 Features Every Self-Respecting Employee Onboarding Software Needs
To prevent these worst-case scenarios, do a double check to ensure your chosen employee onboarding software has these must-have features.
1. User-Friendly Interface
If your new hires have to spend hours chatting with tech support or reaching out to HR staff just to complete their onboarding application, then it’s time to change your onboarding software.
The user-friendliness of the software is not just restricted to its look-and-feel. Even a best-in-class system with a sophisticated interface might put tremendous pressure on not just the HR team but also new hires. It is essential to understand the importance of a user interface and pick a software that offers intuitive design, along with ease of access, and a visually appealing layout.
2. Cloud-Based Technology
Is your employee onboarding software accessible on the run? Can a stakeholder who is either in a different office or travelling can participate or access an onboarding process? If your answer is no, then your onboarding software is definitely out-of-date and it is time to move it to the cloud.
And, you won’t be alone in the decision, nearly 40% organizations plan to move their HR operations to the cloud in 2018. The centralized document storage, state-of-the-art security, and the effortless integration capabilities of cloud technology will make onboarding hassle-free.
In addition to on-the-go accessibility, cloud-based onboarding software offers flexible subscription plans, ready-to-use interface, and rapidly deployable modules to trim down the time and resources required to onboard a new hire substantially.
3. Workflow Automation
Today’s tech-savvy workforce is brought up with a gadget from the cradle, and will have the same high expectations for their onboarding process. Making your new hires run around the office to get their paperwork signed will only squash their expectations and make them exhausted.
As the process includes stakeholders from various departments, an efficient employee onboarding software should bridge this people-process gap with workflow automation. By automating the onboarding workflow, HR staff can track the process across departments and monitor it throughout.
Automated workflows remove repetitive manual steps, pass on the application automatically to the next person in the workflow, send automated reminders to keep stakeholders on track, and ensure that every step of the process is carried out accurately and consistently.
4. Assessment Tools
After investing a lot of time and effort into implementing a brand-new onboarding software, it is essential to measure its performance. And, noting the happiness quotient in your new hire’s face isn’t enough. You need more concrete evidence.
Picking onboarding software with an inbuilt surveying tool that sends automated surveys to new hires after an onboarding process can help organizations assess the ROI of employee onboarding and software more efficiently. Your onboarding tools should also show how long each onboarding takes and where the hang ups are.
5. Gamification
Despite the technological advancements, onboarding still remains nothing more than an automated checklist. Gamifying a few aspects of onboarding process will make it interactive. Gamification is about improving the engagement of your onboarding process with the power of technology.
Utilizing the gamification aspects like levelling up and quests can spice up a boring onboarding. Make the onboarding process a quest, set up a list of actionable goals that new hires have to complete for progressing. Rather than subjecting them to an hour long training video, let them go on a scavenger hunt, and make things fun while keeping a close eye on the progress.
According to a recent Aberdeen report, only 17% organizations utilize gamification elements to their onboarding, but results are awe-inspiring. Organizations that gamified their onboarding process experience saw a 48% improvement in engagement and 36% drop in the turnover. In addition to improving employee performance, gamification can align onboarding with the business goals.
6. Reporting and Analytics
Retention and engagement are major concerns of every organization today. It is bound to be the case when the cost of losing an employee in first year is 3 times the annual salary of that employee. Analytics and reporting features in an employee onboarding software will help organizations identify the key areas for improvement in their candidate-to-employee transition phase.
Inbuilt analytical HR tools will come in handy to devise, manage, and measure the effectiveness of an onboarding process. Visualization and faster reporting will help organizations make the leap to a data-driven strategic onboarding process by enhancing the efficiency of onboarding.
Automate Your Onboarding Process Using Kissflow HR Cloud
Cloud HR Management Softwares are suitable for both SMBs and enterprises. Organizations get the flexibility to scale up or down according to business needs. Kissflow HR Cloud allows HR staff to create a dynamic employee onboarding software using HR workflow automation.
Automating the onboarding process with Kissflow HR Cloud is easier than most organizations assume. Even business users like HR staff who don’t have any coding expertise can create an employee onboarding app in simple steps:
Configure Onboarding App
Tweak data fields on a digital form, link this to a master database, and customize the workflow to meet your business needs.
Keep an eye on the progress of a new hire onboarding request real-time using automated validations, balance update, and one-click visual reports.
Publish
Publish the app and share it with all stakeholders to put a stopper on constant paper shuffling, email races, and spreadsheet hunts.
And… TADA! Your employee onboarding software is ready-to-use!
Conclusion
The onboarding process can’t be overhauled overnight. Based on the organization’s size and requirement, implementation time and cost will vary. Although it might seem like a far-fetched investment, the right onboarding software can boost accuracy, improve decision making, enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and increase the ROI of onboarding.
But, even best-in-class systems will fail to onboard new hires efficiently if it lacks any of the above-mentioned features. To prevent such a dilemma at a later point, organizations must weigh in the value and power of each employee onboarding software to ensure a good return on investment. A robust onboarding software like Kissflow HR Cloud can save dozens of HR hours every week and prevent expensive litigation before it starts.
Looking to build an engaging employee onboarding process that can be measured easily? Try Kissflow HR Cloud for free and see easy it is to align the onboarding process with your organizational strategy using our employee onboarding software.
