Reinvent The New Rent Onboarding Course of: Studying’s First Impression
A new onboarding process for new hires for the modern age
Successful onboarding of new employees is still crucial for the long-term success of a company. According to Glassdoor, companies that delivered a strong onboarding experience saw their new hires increase by 82%. L&D professionals in particular know that onboarding is the foundation of an effective learning culture and that the right onboarding solutions prepare your employees for a positive company experience.
With the growing demand for flexibility in remote working, organizations rely on their Learning Management System (LMS) for excellent onboarding and consistent training experiences. Here are the ways an LMS can enable accelerated onboarding for the modern workforce.
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Bring your onboarding training into the digital age
While the flexibility of working remotely is sure to increase, we must remember that some companies will return to the office at some point. Both the virtual and in-person onboarding experience needs to be considered – it can even be a mix of both!
For remote workers, first impressions are digital, and for businesses, getting them right is important. The first day at work can be nerve-wracking, but also exciting. Usually new employees meet their colleagues, are shown around the office, and go through a new hiring process. Think about it: what does an ideal virtual experience look like? With an LMS you can:
- Create videos of teammates introducing themselves while virtual calls are scheduled for a face-to-face introduction.
- Offer a virtual tour of your digital tools and software in a bespoke course that covers areas such as the company’s intranet, Sharepoint, online tools, etc.
- Create a source of truth for critical information like organizational charts, SOPs, key technology and support details.
- Assign new settings documents and software training to get them up to date quickly.
For those onboarding in the office, creating a mixed personal and virtual onboarding experience can help improve the overall process. For example, team presentations and the office walk-through can be carried out personally, while documentation for new employees and training courses on corporate software can be carried out virtually. It all depends on the goals of your company’s onboarding program. As always, keep track of how well this new hire onboarding process is being received and make changes as needed.
Personalized onboarding through diverse content
Everyone absorbs new information differently. According to LinkedIn’s 2020 Workplace Learning Report, more than three-quarters of every generation of learners (including Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers) value personalized course recommendations based on their career goals and skill gaps.
Most L&D professionals recognize this and strive to develop onboarding solutions that are as personalized and engaging as possible. Fortunately, an LMS provides an opportunity to diversify your teaching format. Instead of just sending a virtual batch of documents, it’s helpful to use different types of media to reach out to your learners and engage them in the format they like best. A suitable LMS for onboarding should have many teaching methods, including:
Video
These course modules can vary in length, with shorter micro-tutorial videos being preferred for this type of training.
documents
Send out helpful guides and instructions that your learners can save and review whenever they need a refresher.
Webinars
Look for an LMS that integrates with a web conferencing solution so you can give live, interactive instructions to your new hires.
Gamification and Social Learning
Social learning is another powerful way to drive engagement and improve onboarding of new employees. Find an LMS that has gamification features like badges, leaderboards, polls, and social media feeds.
Discussion forums
Offer new employees the opportunity to ask questions and get in touch with their new colleagues at the same time.
The more diversity of content built into your onboarding solutions, the more likely it is that your learners will engage with the information and keep it. And the more your new hires keep their education, the more likely you are to keep them.
The onboarding process for new employees: Scalable onboarding solutions that grow with you
We can’t talk about reinventing new employee onboarding without downsizing and mentioning how growth and scaling can affect it. For example, some companies might choose to cut overheads by going online and make room in the budget to expand the hiring to more locations. For situations like this, it’s important to find a platform that can grow and change with you. So what should you watch out for in order to offer you the greatest possible scalability in an LMS for onboarding?
Global access and regionalization
As you grow, it can mean expanding in regions around the world, and the right LMS will allow you to do that with ease. You will likely need to support training in multiple languages. be able to group learners according to different regions, locations and departments; and take regional regulations and requirements into account.
User and data management
With growth comes an increase in employees, users, partners, customers, and more. If you plan to use an LMS to support these different groups, you need to ensure that it can handle the user capacity and data without delays or overloads.
Integrations
It goes without saying that as your business grows, so does your tech stack. In such cases, you need an LMS that not only offers turnkey integrations, but also enables custom integrations via an API. This enables data transfer between your tools in order to build a unified learning ecosystem.
automation
As a small business, training or in-person events processing could have been done manually, but scaling up requires automation to efficiently manage resources and processes. The right LMS can take over most, if not all, of your typical tasks and perform them automatically. These can be user creation, course enrollments, recurring certifications, and even administrative tasks.
Finally, check the frequency of upgrades when considering onboarding solutions. For example, suppose the LMS you selected is seldom updated or added new features. If so, you can quickly outgrow the software or be left behind as competing platforms work to regularly offer more advanced learning features that keep up with industry trends.
Conclusion
As a first glimpse into working in a new organization, learners should have a great onboarding experience. Keep these tips and considerations in mind as you optimize and ultimately scale the program.
Are you looking for ways to not only build a thriving onboarding program but also an engaging learning culture? Download our eBook Lifelong L&D: How to Develop a Continuous Learning Culture in Support of Modern Work Environments for strategic tips, evolving L&D trends, and best practices to support your modern learners through a learning management system.
