How to Digitalize the Employee Onboarding HR Workflow

A digitalized employee onboarding HR workflow can make a big difference when it comes to HR professionals’ day-to-day work routines.

However, a digital workflow can also have a positive impact on the employee experience.

And improvements to the employee experience, in turn, can generate positive returns for the organization.

In this article, we’ll explore a few of the main benefits of a digital employee onboarding process, for employees, the organization, and HR professionals.

Then we’ll explore how digital adoption solutions can be used to digitalize two of the most important aspects of employee onboarding: software onboarding and training.

The Benefits of a Digital Employee Onboarding HR Workflow

Digitalizing and transforming the HR workflow certainly benefits HR employees, by freeing up time, improving efficiency, and lightening workloads.

However, there are plenty of other benefits for employees and the organization, such as:

• An improved employee experience. More efficient HR workflows can help employees be more efficient and create better experiences for new hires as well as long-term employees.
• Accelerated onboarding and training. With automation and other digital enhancements, HR can process and train new hires at less cost and in less time.
• Greater productivity levels. The right digital onboarding workflow can increase productivity, not only for HR professionals but also for employees – after all, when HR workflows are more efficient, employees can learn more quickly and spend more time focusing on their work.
• Increased employee satisfaction and retention. A better onboarding experience helps to reduce complications and frustrations that can impede the onboarding process. The result: greater satisfaction rates and, ultimately, retention.
• Improved organizational effectiveness and performance. Naturally, a digital employee onboarding workflow will not transform an organization’s performance. However, a better employee onboarding experience can accelerate training and performance gains, ultimately improving their bottom-line contributions to the organization.

Of course, productivity gains will naturally be in proportion to the changes that are made within an organization.

To gain benefits as impactful as those just listed, an HR department will need to make certain changes to its operations.

One of the most powerful, effective ways to digitalize the employee onboarding process is by automating the digital adoption process.

How to Modernize the Employee Onboarding Workflow with Digital Adoption Solutions

The digital portion of the employee onboarding workflow includes product tours, initial product training, technical support, and other support functions.

The goal of these procedures is to help employees become productive and proficient as quickly and effectively as possible.

Digital adoption solutions – or digital adoption platforms (DAPs) – are platforms specifically designed to enhance onboarding and training.

• Interactive, contextualized learning. Interactive learning is the future of workplace training. AI, analytics, and interactive training software can dramatically increase the effectiveness of product training efforts. At the same time, they reduce costs and the workload for humans.
• Step-by-step walkthroughs. An interactive walkthrough takes employees one step at a time through a series of tasks that they must perform during their daily work duties. Automating this process can help users apply what they have learned immediately, increasing knowledge retention and overall proficiency.
• Automated product tours. Product tours quickly introduce a product’s features to new users. They can decrease onboarding friction, help users feel more at ease, and decrease reliance on outside support.
• Software analytics. Analytics offer valuable insight into user behavior. By better understanding how users interact with a platform, trainers can improve their training efforts, implement corrective action, and improve software utilization.

Digitalizing procedures with a digital adoption solution can result in a number of benefits above and beyond those covered earlier.

Advantages of Using a Digital Adoption Solution to Enhance the Onboarding Process

Using a DAP to improve employee onboarding can help the HR workflow by:

• Shortening learning curves and improving overall proficiency levels. Interactive, contextualized training tools deliver far better results than traditional training methods. This will shorten training timelines and prevent employee skills from stagnating.
• Lowering technical support costs. DAPs’ on-demand support functionality enables employees to solve technical support problems independently, quickly, and efficiently. This lessens the burden on technical support staff, while also improving employees’ proficiency levels.
• Creating a culture of self-reliance. When employees can access training information any time they need it, then the workforce will become more self-reliant and independent. On the one hand, this decreases training costs. Yet it also helps to cultivate a culture of independence, where employees can solve problems on their own.
• Lightening the workload for HR staff and trainers. Finally, using a DAP takes more work off the plate of the HR department and trainers. Since so many key training functions are automated, HR can then spend more time focusing on what matters most – their core duties.

DAPs are certainly not the only platforms that can help streamline and digitize the employee onboarding workflow.

HR platforms, project management tools, help desk software, and other tools can all prove beneficial to the HR department.

However, DAPs are among the most cutting-edge, advanced tools in the market. 

Proper use of these platforms can dramatically improve the employee onboarding workflow, while also making life easier for employees as well as the HR department.

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