Your onboarding process is a fundamental part of your company’s culture. Often, it plays a big role in the first impression your organizations make on new hires, providing the kinds of insights that aren’t available during the hiring process.
Failing to meet new hire expectations can be incredibly damaging. Not only are you missing an opportunity to set incoming employees up for success, but you may leave them wanting, at times, to the point where they opt to end their employment and seek out new positions elsewhere.
Thankfully, getting your onboarding experience right doesn’t have to be a challenge. If you want to cultivate this critical part of your culture, here’s how you nail onboarding.
Embrace E-Learning for Onboarding
The e-learning approach to onboarding can be ideal for a variety of reasons. First, with many professionals now working remotely, it allows you to offer a comprehensive experience online. Second, it gives you the ability to provide onboarding materials before a new hire’s first day, guaranteeing they have immediate access once the need arises.
Additionally, with e-learning, you can not only share information but test for knowledge retention. This can be ideal for presenting certain subjects where comprehension is critical, or compliance requires proof of understanding.
Finally, by using the e-learning approach, modules are easily repeatable. If a new hire feels they need to review a section again, they do that with ease.
Present Complex Information in Bite-Sized Chunks
Often, the onboarding process involves large volumes of dry information. By dividing complex topics into bite-sized chunks, you make the content more digestible. This can be crucial for knowledge retention, ensuring the incoming employee isn’t overwhelmed during the process.
Further, bite-sized chunks create natural breaks. New hires can rest between modules, giving them opportunities to process what they’ve learned before moving forward.
Lengthen the Timeline
Traditionally, onboarding is a short process requiring high-degrees of attention for several days straight. However, this approach is far from ideal. Not only can it be overwhelming, but it can also be quite tedious. As a result, knowledge retention and engagement flounder.
By lengthening the timeline, you ensure that the new hire isn’t spending every hour on onboarding. Instead, they can split their time between those tasks and getting integrated into their new team. Along with giving them more variety, this helps them start building critical relationships early, including some who can support them during these early days with your company.
Are You Ready to Boost Your Onboarding Experience?
If you need support from learning and development (L&D) experts to boost your onboarding experience to make it more functional and engaging, Clarity Consultants wants to hear from you. Clarity has more than 25 years of experience in the L&D sector, and they can use their expertise to assist you in achieving your onboarding program goals. Plus, Clarity can serve as your candidate search allies, creating pathways for locating and securing the talent you need to thrive.
If you want to partner with a leading L&D team that can enhance your onboarding experience, Clarity Consultants is here. Contact us today.
