A Step-by-step Guide for Automating the Employee Onboarding Process

Blog: ProcessMaker Blog

The start of a new employee’s journey in a company begins with onboarding. A large part of what determines the future success of new employees is how smoothly the onboarding process is performed. Additionally, each new employee represents risk and a temporary loss of productivity for the company, especially if they are replacing a more experienced former employee. In the past year, Millennials in the workplace changed jobs three times more than their older coworkers, representing a loss of $30.5 billion in turnover costs annually. Therefore, it is worth investing money to ensure that new employees stick around.

Investing in a workflow automation software tool can help increase new hire retention rates while freeing up HR and IT resources for more important tasks. Read this entire post find out how workflow automation software helps HR increase new employee engagement by streamlining the onboarding process.

The first step to new hire success: creating a formal onboarding process

According to the results of this workflow mobility survey, 22% of companies do not have a formal onboarding process. The same survey also reports that 58% of companies do not measure new employee productivity at all. Without a formal onboarding process, companies lack a way to measure the success of new hires after they enter the company. This also means that there are no benchmarks for improving failing onboarding processes.

Automating the employee onboarding process with workflow software helps companies retain new employees by ensuring the correct process is followed each time a new employee is onboarded. By using workflow software to automate the employee onboarding process, companies have the tools to track the success and productivity of each new hire. Workflow software automatically maintains a record of what was done for each new employee as they entered the company. This means that companies now have benchmarks for the success of each new hire and how to improve low retention.

The next steps: streamlining the onboarding process

There is more to a successful onboarding program other than simply formalizing the process. During the onboarding process, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Maybe there is a miscommunication regarding the employment contract. Perhaps the new employee does not receive the IT resources they need to do their job efficiently. Or, perhaps clear expectations are never given to the new hire in the form of goals and milestones, thus eroding their relationship with their direct supervisor. If any of these occur during onboarding, it could leave the new employee with a bad impression of the company and eventually result in their departure.

Workflow automation software addresses each of these potential oversights by orchestrating all of the tasks and software involved in successfully integrating a new hire into the company. Principal of these tasks include the employment contract, allocation of IT resources and managing the goals and milestones of each new hire. Automating the onboarding process helps HR perform all of these tasks without error and as efficiently as possible to increase the retention rate of new hires.

Step one: sending and tracking contracts

Contracts are the foundation of the employer and employee relationship. They outline the expectations on the part of both parties, and protect both from any breach of agreement. Therefore, it’s important that companies follow a standard process for each employee to ensure that the relationship with a new employee starts off on the right foot.

Workflow software makes the contract signing process as easy as possible through integration with popular e-signature platforms, such as Adobe Sign and DocuSign. As soon as HR starts the onboarding process, workflow automation software sends out a digital contract to the new hire for review. Not only are e-signature platforms convenient and secure, they also track the progress of each contract with automatic notifications for both the employee and the company. As a result, contracts are never lost and the employee is left with a positive impression of the efficiency of the company right at the start.

Step two: creating IT accounts

These days, employees require a multitude of software tools to complete their tasks. This means that when new employees are onboarded, IT is in charge of assigning a number of accounts for each person. Creating accounts manually results in mistakes and headaches for the IT department when their resources could be put towards more valuable tasks. Getting access to all the software tools needed in a new position spells out frustration for both new employees and the IT department.

Workflow software can be connected to a multitude of software tools so HR can create multiple accounts for each new hire at once. This means that IT no longer needs to be involved with creating accounts for each user in the company because the workflow automation software tool can do it automatically. All HR needs to do is input the new user information to generate new accounts for any number of software tools. This way, new hires have all of the software tools they need before they arrive for their first day and the IT department is freed up for more challenging projects.

Step three: tracking goals and milestones

As mentioned above, many companies lack the tools to measure the productivity of each new hire. Part of this problem includes the lack of relevant goals and milestones for onboarded employees. If companies do not measure the progress of each new hire based on established benchmarks, they have no means to determine the success of their onboarding program. To do this requires a set of standards that HR and managers can apply to each position at predetermined times during the onboarding process.

Workflow software helps companies implement goals and milestones for new hires by automatically reminding HR and managers to check in with new hires at timed intervals. As part of the onboarding process, evaluations can be programmed to start at set dates and times so new hires are regularly evaluated until they are fully integrated into the company. HR, managers and new hires should meet on a regular basis, as this not only helps measure the productivity of new hires, it is essential for increasing retention. HR professionals cite the employee-manager relationships as the number one cause of new hires leaving the company. Building evaluations into the process ensures that management checks in with new hires and helps establish a positive relationship between new hires and their supervisors.

Crossing the finish line

Automating the employee onboarding process gives every new hire the smoothest experience possible, giving them confidence their first day on the job and a head start on their future success. Onboarding employees with the help of workflow automation software makes it easy for HR to manage contracts with e-signature tools and eliminates the need for IT to manually create accounts. It also ensures that new hires meet established goals and milestones as they begin their journey in the company. To find out more about how to automate HR processes with workflow software, contact us today.

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