Employee onboarding software is designed to streamline the procedures and tasks that would typically be handled by a company’s HR department when hiring new employees. Modern onboarding programs can assist in automating anything from a simple “welcome to the company” greeting to employee payroll information. In addition, these software programs are highly customizable in most instances, so you and your new workers will only have to access essential information about your working environment.
Benefits of Using an Employee Onboarding Software
As it is, newly hired employees may feel uneasy about their new role in a company. Their focus may be taken away from orientation during the onboarding process and put on their nerves. Fortunately, A well-equipped onboarding program is mutually beneficial to employers and their employees alike, meaning that all of the pressure is taken off the new employee, and you don’t have to take time out of your busy schedule to walk them through individual training tasks needlessly. Below are just a few benefits of upgrading to an electronic employee onboarding system.
For New Employees:
- Streamlined training allows new hires to learn quickly and start producing sooner.
- Electronic communication through the new hire portal provides instant clarification on company policies and procedures.
- Digital onboarding allows employees to access orientation material at their own pace, allowing them to integrate into the working environment with a sense of confidence.
- The Integrated human relations portal allows new hires to learn about and sign up for company benefits.
For Employers:
- Time is money. Virtual training prevents you and your staff from taking time away from your workload to orient a new hire to company procedures.
- The employee portal allows you to monitor the progress of a new hire’s training.
- Go green. Using electronic forms allows your company to be more organized and cuts down on paper use as well.
- Companies that use onboarding software allow their new hires to feel part of their culture, leading to higher employee retention rates.
Features of an Excellent Employee Onboarding Software
When looking at the different employee onboarding software solutions in the market today, at first, they may all appear to be identical on the surface. After all, they all have the shared goal of making the onboarding process easier for employers and new hires. However, if you take a closer look at their features and what these programs are capable of, you will quickly see that not every piece of software is created equal.
What sets onboarding solutions like EMP Trust apart from the rest of the available solutions are the high-tech features that take the new hire onboarding process to the next level. Some of those features include:
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New hire onboarding portal
In addition to assisting in the paperwork process, the new hire portal feature on an onboarding software program allows your new employees to get up to speed with your current HR policies, access training material, sign up for company benefits, and learn about your organization’s culture. Additionally, as an employer, you also have the advantage of monitoring their training progress and directly communicating with them regarding any questions or concerns they may have.
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Electronic paperwork management
A capable digital onboarding solution automatically maintains and updates all of your company’s important forms digitally, allowing you to manage crucial tax and onboarding information for new hires easily. Some of the electronic forms provided through EMP include Form I-9, Federal and State tax Withholding forms, Direct Deposits, Paycheck forms, Beneficiary forms, Policy forms, References, and Employment and Credit check authorizations.
Paperwork is increasingly on its way out, and this is not just in HR processes. Onboarding is no exception. Taxing the new hire with multiple papers to fill out on day one, and filling the same details numerous times is detrimental not just for onboarding but also for the company processes. Keeping it paperless is an elementary feature of any good employee onboarding software. Data filled in one form should appear on all other forms automatically. Keeping it in the system helps avoid any compliance lapse and mitigates risk for your HR teams.
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Pre-Employment checks
Before you can bring an employee on board, you need to know who they are. Skill assessment, background checks, and drug screening are all integrated features of capable digital onboarding programs, eliminating the hassle of conducting these checks through a third-party company.
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Multi-language support
More than ever, companies are discovering the benefits of utilizing a hybrid or remote workforce. Sometimes this means hiring employees who reside in other countries and speak a different language. Under normal circumstances, language barriers can be a nightmare when it comes to paperwork. However, modern onboarding systems like EMP use state-of-the-art translation technology that allows data to be processed and compiled in various languages.
HRIS & ERP system integration
While digital HR solutions can be used as stand-alone programs for new hire onboarding, they also integrate seamlessly with HRIS and ERP systems like PeopleSoft, Oracle, SAP R/3, and various 3rd party payroll vendors. This cross-platform compatibility helps to eliminate data duplication and reduces the likelihood of information loss.
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Structured content and initiation during onboarding
While most companies would prefer to make an employee’s introduction to the work environment relaxed and unwound, at the end of the day, the employee would like to get a sense of what is expected from them. It must go beyond a casual chat and the first day of initiation. Research indicates that 52% of hires would look forward to receiving organized, pertinent, and relevant content during the onboarding process.
While you may want to steer away from a stiff and demanding process on day one, you would want to impart a sense of what their role and expectations are and what their work environment is likely to be. The employee onboarding software you are searching for must scale to the company’s strategic onboarding goals, and not merely tick the requirement for the software.
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Easy navigation
A good onboarding software makes the initiation process simple and easily navigable for the new hire. The first day brings with it a load of concerns and apprehensions. With nearly 33% of new hires quitting within 3 months of joining, it helps to have technology that lets new hires understand, navigate, and comprehend policies and nuances at their pace. Avoid lengthy, wordy documents and provide simple solutions that keep them clean, and easy to understand with an uncomplicated interface. Provide tool tips, in-app training options, and a team or help tools to assist when required.
Many employees are left exasperated by having to navigate through the systems that come along with an HRIS or ATS package. These systems are often developed to cater to HR teams and often overlook the onboarding process from the perspective of the new hire. Keep in mind to ensure the interface is user-friendly when looking for an employee onboarding process.
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Seamless integration with other applications
This is fundamental in the search for a good onboarding system. One of the key questions to ask the developer is to find out which systems would integrate with your existing software platforms, and which applications would not. If any features are proprietary and wouldn’t work with other systems, it’s best to look at your next option. You wouldn’t want to spend your money only to find out that it doesn’t fit into your existing technology framework.
An integrated system can automatically populate identical fields from one application to another. Information retrieved from the ATS can be used to auto-populate new hire forms. This reduces time and cost and improves efficiency. Also, HR managers and hiring managers can seamlessly transition the candidate through the recruitment funnel and after hiring into onboarding, benefits, and payroll, and so on. With a seamlessly integrated onboarding platform, the management gets access data and insights such as candidate feedback in the interview process which can be used to customize an onboarding program for the new hire. It also guarantees no workflow steps are missed along the way and ensures new hires are entering onboarding are completing all the requirements and steps in the recruitment phase.
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Functionality and budget
Define your objectives and identify the features of the onboarding solution you might need for your business. Some onboarding solutions come with a plethora of functionalities that you won’t require but have to pay for. So, decide on the must-have features that will help you meet your hiring and onboarding goals. Most solutions come with different payment models and segments, such as basic, expert, and advanced, with different functionalities. Choose the solution that fits in with your budget.
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Integration with tools
Integration with the tools and apps that are frequently used at work is important. All tools that employees generally use should integrate seamlessly into the business ecosystem. There are many tools in the marketplace that make their mark every day. Choose software that integrates with the most commonly used tools in the workplace such as Office 365, calendars like Outlook, and Gmail, and communication channels like Slack.
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Workflow automation
Making your new workers trot around the office to sign paperwork will simply lower their expectations and exhaust them.
Because the process involves stakeholders from multiple departments, effective employee onboarding software should use workflow automation to bridge the people-process divide. By automating the onboarding workflow, HR professionals can track and oversee the process across departments.
Automated workflows eliminate repetitive manual procedures, automatically transfer the application on to the next person in the workflow, issue automated reminders, notification and alerts to keep stakeholders on track, and verify that every stage of the process is completed precisely and consistently.
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Analytics and reporting
An employee onboarding software’s analytics and reporting features will assist firms in identifying critical areas for improvement during the candidate-to-employee transition phase.
Inbuilt analytical HR tools will be useful in designing, managing, and measuring the efficacy of an onboarding process. Improving onboarding efficiency, visualization and speedier reporting can assist firms in making the transition to a data-driven strategic onboarding process.
Stay Ahead with Employee Onboarding Software from EMP Trust
Next-generation employee onboarding software that helps create great new hire onboarding experiences globally.
EMP Trust is a best-of-breed provider and industry leader for employee onboarding, Form I-9, and E-Verify software that allows companies to effectively hire, manage and onboard talent. The onboarding solution helps you comply with federal and state regulations while creating a visually rich onboarding experience for your new hires.
Why do companies choose EMP Trust?
EMP Trust is a new hire onboarding solution for tomorrow’s businesses. Our core HR solutions allow companies to create unique onboarding journeys for new hires with new hire portals, forms, and task management with advanced tools. We provide customizable electronic forms & an extensive set of forms libraries for onboarding packages with electronic signature capability across countries with multi-language support. Our new hire forms come with a standard new hire portal and branding with electronic Form I-9 and E-Verify.
Easily create & customize new hire forms with electronic signature capability. Enable new hires to get acquainted with the culture, and improve employee intake, engagement, and productivity from day one. The solution is completely paperless with the automation of internal tasks, a branded new hire portal, custom welcome messages, and video embedded on an easy-to-use HRIS platform.
The importance of an effective employee onboarding strategy can not be overemphasized. One research study conducted by Brandon Hall Group discovered that “organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.”
It’s clear that in the ever-changing business landscape, priority needs to be given to training new employees. If you are looking to take your new hire onboarding to the next level, there has never been a better time to upgrade to a digital solution. EMP Trust provides state-of-the-art HR solutions to small local businesses along with some of the world’s largest fortune 500 companies. We would love to show you what a modern employee onboarding strategy could do for your organization. Click here to request a free trial today!
