What is a New Onboarding Portal?
An employee onboarding portal is a platform where new employees kickstart their journey when joining an organization. New hires can access a plethora of information about your business, company policy, workflow, tasks, organizational structure, benefits enrollment, performance evaluations, organizational culture resources, and reports via the portal.
Onboarding portal can be looked upon as a “gateway” to the first experiences of new employees at your organization. It gives all new hires access to a centralized repository with pertinent information.
An onboarding portal (or employee portal) is an online platform where new hires can do a range of onboarding tasks, including learning about the company, signing up for benefits, completing training, and signing electronic forms, among others. Without a doubt, a high-quality onboarding portal is the backbone of a quick onboarding procedure.
Importance of an Onboarding Portal
The importance of an onboarding portal cannot be understated as new hires get ready to start a new job, they are cutting ties from their previous role and are excited to garner as much information as possible about their new role.
New hires can receive a link to the site upon accepting the job offer. The link then takes them to a landing page full of various resources where the new employee can learn about the organization, the culture of the company, the nature of the job, and what to expect on the first day.
Advantages of Utilizing an Onboarding Portal
In addition to offering your new hire a centralized location for accessing valuable information, an onboarding portal will be one of their first impressions of your organization. Additionally, a portal can:
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Highlight Culture
The onboarding portal helps new hires to understand the culture: What do we believe, what are the values we stand for, and how do we work with one another? The onboarding portal generally contains a mission and vision statement, and a video snippet among others to achieve this aim.
New hires can listen to a welcome message by the CEO highlighting the culture and values of the Organization.
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Build Relationships
Work gets done by collaborating with other people in the organization. The faster new hires make those connections and help build those relationships, the faster we will allow new employees to be productive. Access to photos in the portal gives new hires a glimpse into the team members the new hires are going to be working with and be familiar with the team.
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Gather Feedback
A Portal is a smart way to retrieve new hire feedback. Some questions you can ask your new hire include, Did you get the information you needed? Did you complete your forms? Feedback can be used to further refine the onboarding process.
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Streamline Onboarding
By automating your onboarding process your new hire can complete their onboarding tasks easily and kickstart their role in the new organization. By digitizing forms you can get rid of cumbersome traditional processes and streamline your company’s new hire onboarding process by simplifying time-consuming tasks so you can invest more in relationship building and collaborating with stakeholders across the organization.
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Enables Employee Independence
A portal for onboarding empowers the employee to function independently. This not only reduces administrative workload but also allows the employee to learn about their job and integrate with the company faster. In contrast to traditional onboarding, they can take their time within an onboarding site. This includes training, conducting independent research on benefits and policies, and selecting benefits.
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Increases Engagement
A well-designed onboarding portal Increases employee engagement, productivity, and retention by making onboarding tools more accessible and less cumbersome. Brandon Hall Group found that organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent. New employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58 percent more likely to be with the organization after three years.
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Secure Access
As an employer, you need to keep a record of varied information about new hires and other related employee data. Here, security is not something that can be compromised. The employee info should not be publicly available but only accessible to the users with permission. For the onboarding portal, to ensure enhanced security, login to the platform requires a unique user id and password. The login details are given only to the account holders to prevent any data leaks.
Features of a Great Onboarding Portal
The majority of onboarding portals are adaptable to fit the specific demands of each firm. Depending on the program your business employs, they may have additional or fewer alternatives. The most prevalent onboarding portal features include:
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Secure Document Storage
The majority of onboarding portals provide an encryption solution for workers to safely upload private information. This frequently includes electronic signature alternatives. This allows employees to fill out benefit applications in full and upload them digitally to the company without worrying about cyber security.
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Training
Providing training through a digital portal in the form of plain text, slide shows, videos, audio, and quizzes saves the hassle of arranging, printing, and scheduling in-person sessions and gives employees the flexibility to complete training whenever and wherever they choose.
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Relevant Content
Since every employee has access to the portal’s functionalities, this is the appropriate location for posting newsletters, policy updates, and announcements.
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Benefits Access
Within the portal, the new hires can get a walk-through of all the benefit options available to them. When an employee experiences a life-altering event, an online gateway allows them to ask for benefit modifications without involving the HR department.
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Policies and Details
A web portal is a mini-database that contains all company policies and related information. With the convenience of access provided by keyword search functions, the answers to any queries an employee may have can be cleared with a single click.
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Communications
New hire portals also feature a social component. This may include discussion boards, group chat options, and even a digital suggestion box that is anonymous. These events foster employee camaraderie and cooperation.
The Advantages of a Portal for Employee Onboarding
An employee onboarding portal enables a business to provide its new hires with a centralized location for all necessary information.
Additional advantages of methodical onboarding include:
Enriching Onboarding Experience
Paperless onboarding enhances your brand and organization’s reputation while accelerating the integration of new workers. In the race to win talent, an onboarding portal facilitates the delivery of an engaging and competitive experience.
A streamlined onboarding procedure increases employee retention and satisfaction. 60% of firms with a streamlined onboarding process have an optimized recruitment strategy, per research by Brandon Hall Group.
Establishes a Centralized Repository
Valuable time is wasted on scheduling, tracking, and sending out reminders when you routinely hire new employees. Onboarding portals serve as a centralized vault for all information and automate portions of administrative tasks with alerts, notifications, and timely reminders to all stakeholders.
They also provide comprehensive information on visual content and document access. This puts both new hires and the HR team at ease prior to their first day.
Simplifies Task Management
An onboarding portal helps the HR department to track the status of tasks, to determine which processes have been completed and who is responsible for monitoring and follow-up. Timely notifications, alerts, and reminders are scheduled to ensure tasks are completed as per schedule.
