CHAPTER 6 LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY FOR ONBOARDING SUCCESS The Software Advantage Excerpt from Preppio’s upcoming onboarding book written by Amin Fard, founder and CEO of Preppio, and Dr. Talya Bauer, Chief Scientific Officer at Preppio. The book is designed to help HR professionals and company stakeholders to understand the science behind onboarding and to develop an onboarding program that fuels employee and business success.

Onboarding success can be maximized by leveraging technology to respond to the opportunities and challenges of today and those that will be encountered tomorrow. Organizations only get one chance to make a great first impression with new employees and to set them up for a mutually positive relationship.

Those in charge agree with 76% of HR leaders who admit that they are ineffectively onboarding their new employees1. The three top reasons managers gave for neglecting the onboarding process are:

● Not having enough time (57%) ● The absence of tools to measure its effectiveness (55%) ● A lack of digital onboarding technology to automate the process (39%)

Onboarding software solves each one of these problems and improves every aspect of onboarding, freeing up managers and organizational veterans to connect with new employees in meaningful ways. In this chapter, we will illustrate how onboarding software can help your organization achieve the onboarding strategic goals laid out in chapter five by leveraging the science of the 6 C’s and the automation of technology. If you feel like there is room for improvement, you’re not alone. Onboarding is all too often focused on compliance and neglects the remaining 5 C’s.

The remainder of this chapter will show you how to leverage onboarding technology and the 6 C´s, distinguishing you as a top-notch HR professional with a best-in-class onboarding program.

1 https://www.kronos.com/resources/new-hire-momentum-driving-onboarding-experience-research-report

The Psychology of potential and the 6 C’s

The onboarding experts here at Preppio frequently refer to ‘experience and science-based onboarding. Our software and methodology focus on the employee experience during the pre and onboarding phases. Preppio’s onboarding software honors people as the true currency of success for companies and organizations. It does this by interlocking mandatory business protocol and corporate needs with a heightened understanding of professional support and growth. The process is built on the psychology of potential. The 6 C’s onboarding framework devised by Preppio’s Chief Scientific Advisor Talya Bauer, Ph.D. forms the pillars of the Preppio onboarding experience - Compliance, Clarification, Confidence, Connection, and Culture moving into Checkback. Regardless of which onboarding software you use, it should incorporate the 6 C’s elements. In the next section, we provide a quick refresher of the 6 C’s before we share onboarding best practices that should be aided by onboarding technology. [Please refer to Chapter four for more detail about each of these]: Recap of the 6 Cs’s of Onboarding

Building these into your onboarding process will ensure that new hires have a meaningful and engaging experience with your organization and your brand. The key is planning, consistency, and ensuring that your onboarding software incorporates these elements into its functionality. While Compliance is important, the remaining C’s have people at heart.

1. Compliance refers to all the things required for a new hire to get started in his/her new role, from paperwork to a work computer and desk space.

2. Clarification refers to how well new employees understand their roles and performance expectations.

3. Confidence refers to how employees feel about their competence to deliver on the job and to tackle new challenges.

4. Connection refers to how accepted and valued new employees feel and the access they are granted to colleagues, including management.

5. Culture refers to how well new employees understand the norms, values, stories, and symbols of their new organization.

6. Checkback refers to surveys and interviews with new employees that give you insights on how to improve onboarding processes.

The 6 C’s in Practice Let’s revisit our friend Patrick. During his pre-boarding phase he received his onboarding paperwork to complete long before the first day (compliance) as well as a video introduction to his direct supervisor (connection). As the first day neared he received messaging with more detailed instructions preparing him for his first day and providing him with many answers to frequently asked questions (clarification). His first day was spent on high quality activities rather than mundane and tedious tasks associated with pre-hire paperwork (connection, culture). During his first days he spent one-on-one time with different onboarding stakeholders and received clear onboarding benchmarks and expectations from his direct supervisor (clarification, confidence). At the end of each week he had a one-on-one with his direct supervisor to check on progress and monitor the effectiveness of the onboarding process (checkback). Patrick might not even be aware of it, but all of these activities were helping to form his perception of the company beliefs, mission, and implicit social expectations (culture). Fortunately, the company understood the importance of incorporating culture into the onboarding plan. So, intentional activities and communications were crafted from the moment Patrick received his first pre-boarding messages. These helped to form his perceptions of the company culture rather than leaving it to chance. Patrick was not only impressed with the level of organization and communication throughout the onboarding process but felt like a valued employee before he arrived for his first day of work.

With the 6 C’s fresh in our minds, we will now move forward to explain how these integrate into onboarding best practices and how both can be achieved using onboarding software.

How technology supports onboarding best practices

HR is often responsible for setting up the process and tools to enable stakeholders to deliver good onboarding. Thanks to technology it has never been easier or more rewarding to maximize onboarding success. Onboarding best practices are enhanced when using the right technology. The following recommendations reveal the ways in which onboarding technology can enhance each step of the way.

1. Get the basics consistently completed to leverage Compliance. Compliance is the most basic requirement of the onboarding program and thus is often an obligatory and time-consuming activity on the first day of work. Use onboarding software to help achieve compliance while freeing up valuable time on the first day for a memorable employee experience.

a. Using pre-entry onboarding software, get new hires set up with pre-hire paperwork.

b. Utilize software integrations to communicate instructions and mandatory tasks with new hires.

c. Automatically track completion of tasks by new hires and onboarding stakeholders.

2. Be crystal clear with new employees in terms of objectives, timelines, roles, and responsibilities to leverage Clarification. Clear expectations for new hires of their roles and performance expectations are key in feeling confident and enthusiastic about their first days and weeks on the job as opposed to stressed and apprehensive.

a. A personalized onboarding access portal with

information, forms, activities, to-do lists, maps, and photos of team members goes a long way toward helping with onboarding success.

b. Information can be efficiently and conveniently stored and accessed for new employees using onboarding software.

3. Make the first day on the job special to leverage Connection. Research shows that the first day on the job is critical. If you help new employees feel valued and special, they will be relieved and happy that they made the right choice to join your organization. If you treat them like just another number, employee retention will diminish over time. We all remember our first day: “How hard is it to get a laptop organized and an email set up? I have a temporary desk for three months! Really?” This, versus the experience of connecting with a new friend on day one and shown to a desk with a fresh, hard-bound notebook and a welcome gift.

a. The right technology can seamlessly facilitate welcome messages, having managers assign mentors and buddies to new employees, and making introductions.

b. Everyone is busy, making it challenging to engage with stakeholders in the planning for onboarding of new employees. Technology makes engaging with stakeholders less tedious as it can be done for individual employees and then scaled as needed.

c. Onboarding software can assign, facilitate, and track key stakeholder meetings with new employees for specific time guidelines (e.g., Meet with Barbara in Finance within your first 30 days on the job).

4. Take an employee-centric approach in onboarding to leverage Confidence.

The more consistent you are with your onboarding process, the more effective you will be and the more secure new hires will feel. Research shows that key milestones are important for new employees. Check-ins are an important part of instilling confidence in employee performance by sharing feedback and expectations.

a. Setting up check-ins at these key points using technology will keep your program on track.

Check-ins at 30, 60, 90, and 120 days on the job, and up to one year, post-organizational entry are good guides.

b. This strategy can be effective at resolving little issues before they become big problems that can often lead to quality employees leaving.

c. Onboarding software reminds stakeholders to complete these steps and can provide other resources to employees in preparation for check-ins such as surveys, messaging, and task lists.

5. Engage stakeholders in planning to leverage Culture.

The time between signing the offer letter and starting the new job is a golden opportunity for new employees to start initiating the employee into the company culture.

a. Pre-entry onboarding technology is a great way to align new employees with the culture through messaging and resources delivered through integrated communication channels.

b. Share about the company history, major employee events, and company “wins”.

c. The use of technology itself during the onboarding process reflects that the company culture is employee-centric and expects high-quality results. After all, the decision-makers value employees enough to invest in them. They care so much about the employee experience that they have mapped out a detailed onboarding plan and leverage technology to fully implement it.

6. Use milestones to check in on employee progress to leverage Checkback’s Many organizations miss the opportunity to learn from new hires. If you don’t ask what works for them or how they are doing, the potential for improvement is hindered. Checkbacks provide valuable information that can help existing and future new hires.

a. Onboarding technology provides the communication medium to leverage these opportunities.

7. Ensure that the program is monitored over time to ensure that all 6 of the onboarding C’s are covered.

a. Use technology to aid in the monitoring of programs over time. b. Are new employees using the system? c. Are they accessing information? d. Are they being assigned buddies? e. Are team members welcoming them to the organization using the system? f. Onboarding dashboards can be a great tool for keeping up with utilization.

A tale of two onboarding experiences We met Patrick in chapter one as he was starting his first day on the job and then again in chapter five when he was left wondering about the lackluster pre-boarding experience. Patrick decided to take another job offer and is now in his second week on the job. He felt such little connection with the first company he accepted employment from that he neglected to inform them of his decision and was a no-show on his first scheduled day of work. The experience with the new company has been very different. On the day that he signed the offer letter he received a warm welcome email. In the month that elapsed between the job offer and first day of work he received emails, texts, and messages that not only provided a visualization of what was to come, but connected him with a buddy, provided pre-employment paperwork to complete in advance. Before his first day he already felt like a valued member of the team and couldn’t wait to get started. He was so impressed that he filled out a Glassdoor review about the interviewing process and posted about his experience on Linkedin and Facebook.

Technology drives onboarding ROI

We discussed the costs of bad onboarding in chapter three and laid out a roadmap to onboarding strategy in chapter five that results in a return on investment. Now it’s time to connect how onboarding technology directly mitigates the costs of bad onboarding and drives the ROI of a successful onboarding plan.

ROI: Employee retention Remember the example of the airline company, in chapter two, that reduced no-shows of employees from 200 to 50 in one year? After conducting surveys, the airline business in question realized that while they had a highly sophisticated system of automating communication, tasks, and training to the new hires, they had forgotten about the employee experience. Their process did not drive engagement and connection. In response, they changed the onboarding process slightly by automating two messages instructing HR to call the new hire to congratulate them on the new job. This new practice created a sense of belonging to the company and made it real that there is actually a human being, perhaps even a team, waiting for the new hire’s arrival. This is a great example of automation humanizing the onboarding experience.

Source: Aberdeen Group survey 2013

In the airline example, the technology reduced turnover even before the first day of work. Pre-boarding is an onboarding opportunity that your onboarding technology should be leveraging through reminders and automated messaging that welcomes new hires before their first day.

ROI: Time to productivity on target

This area represents one of the most tangible and immediate costs to organizations that have bad onboarding processes. A lengthier timeline to productivity translates to higher direct costs associated with labor and errors. Indirect costs include a backlog of work for salaried employees, less than excellent customer service, inefficiencies, and more. With a clear onboarding plan that clearly identifies target dates and corresponding benchmarks, your onboarding software should drive stakeholders to meet these pre-determined goals.

The fast pace of change and mobility Never has the pace of change been faster or the level of job mobility been so high - both within and across organizations. This translates to more new hires and more onboarding time which means it’s more important than ever to reduce the time to productivity.

The median job tenure by age now ranges from around 1½ years for those 25 to 35 years old to 2½ for those 55 to 65 years old.2 The sophistication of technology means employers can leverage their existing systems to help new employees have a fast and productive start, as well as cross-boarding and off-boarding.

2 Dana Wilkie, “Who’s job-hopping now?’ 2017; Society for Human Resource Management’s HR Magazine- https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/job-hopping-.aspx

ROI: Engaged employees If engagement is the linchpin to facilitate potential, then technology is the axle upon which it is riding. When these two ingredients come together, whole organizations are coherent - and success on both the individual and corporate levels - becomes attainable. We have discussed engagement throughout this book because it is one of the core drivers of employee and organizational success. We have learned that engagement begins in the pre-boarding phase to make employees feel like part of the company early. Therefore, the likelihood of them losing interest is drastically reduced. Following pre-boarding, it is up to the company to manage changing engagement levels and to monitor and check-in with the new hire. At all times, it’s crucial that new hires are central to the onboarding process. Their experience must be a finely tuned balancing act that works for both sides. The illustration below serves as a reminder of the difference between high and low levels of employee engagement. Your onboarding software should support a high engagement track with reminders, nudges, and opportunities for connection along the onboarding journey that integrate the 6 C’s along the way.

By leveraging technology, companies can exceed the expectations of new hires and give them a memorable experience that makes them feel seen, valued, and connected at scale.

ROI: Fully engaged management Remember the cost of strained management resources discussed in the costs of bad onboarding section in chapter three? When onboarding is done correctly, it makes the manager’s job easier. The same automation that leads to an easier job for managers also allows for greater consistency in onboarding new employees over time. This is a significant key to world-class onboarding and excellent onboarding outcomes. If we are to shift the employee experience to benefit individuals and companies in a radical way, it is essential to recognize the importance of supporting managers in this process. When HR educates, coaches, and supports managers in order to build positive and lasting relationships with their teams, then we see and feel real change. When we consider that 70% of an employee’s experience is related to their direct manager this expectation has weight.3

Remember the scenario in chapter two with the new hire not having their computer set up? Now imagine this: Due to a structured onboarding process aided with onboarding technology, all of the stakeholders are notified of the new hire’s start date and what is required of them to have complete. They are provided with reminders and prompted to confirm that these tasks have been completed. As a result, the new hire is met with a fully functional and tested computer on their first day and their itinerary goes as planned. The stakeholders stay focused on their planned tasks for the day and are not distracted by a last-minute crisis. The new hire has the impression that this team communicates well and expects excellence. This can be facilitated with ease using the right onboarding software, which saves manager’s time, increases employee productivity, and speeds the onboarding process.

3 State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders – https://bit.ly/2Ua6Oh3

ROI: Optimum performance

Poor employee performance is a common risk associated with bad onboarding programs. Onboarding software in tandem with a structured onboarding plan supports all the elements that sets up new hires for success and thus optimum performance for the organization. Good onboarding software supports every step of the onboarding timeline that ultimately services as the foundation for optimum employee performance. Most importantly, it reminds stakeholders of important deadlines and benchmarks to gauge progress along the onboarding journey to make adjustments as needed. When Google sent a simple email reminder to hiring managers containing tips in the form of a new hire checklist the day before orientation, they were able to jump-start new employee productivity by a month.4 Technology can also help facilitate and support early connectivity and virtual onboarding. Organizations cannot afford to ignore the role of technology in helping to create efficient and effective onboarding programs for new employees.

Onboarding software and functionality

As we discussed in chapter five, an onboarding plan must be functional to be successful. Your onboarding stakeholders and new hires will find workarounds to the system if it is not functional, which defeats the purpose of the onboarding plan. Managers are notoriously hard to persuade to adopt new software. There are already too many apps and logins for employees to remember. Additionally, the onboarding software needs to be easy to set up, stress-free to make changes, and easy for everyone to use. As technology alone will only get you so far, don’t get bogged down with the features. The technology needs to be paired with content to build a system (or strategy) of engagement that suits your company and is based on data that has been proven to work. For example, what

4John Sullivan, 2015 Laszlo Bock-‘Work rules!: Insights from inside Google that will transform how you live and lead; “WOW, Google’s simple just-in-time checklist improves onboarding results by 25%- [https://www.ere.net/wow-googles-simple-just-in-time-checklist-improves-onboarding-results-by-25/

time of day and how many days before a new hire starts should you send a message to a manager asking them to call their new hire? Or, at what time should the new employee receive more information about the mission of the company – on the first day or ten days before joining? A great onboarding software vendor should not only meet these needs, but it also should offer customer service to provide you with the help needed to build your onboarding process and the content suited to your needs. Often when companies are left to build content without external help, it can end up being very business-centric and often poorly designed. Onboarding software should support you by aligning the technology with your onboarding plan for full functionality. Automation Management time and strain have been a recurrent theme throughout this book for good reason. Hiring and onboarding are time-con suming and can feel like a burden to managers with demanding responsibilities. Your onboarding software should relieve the burden of repetitive onboarding tasks and allow managers to connect with new hires on a deeper level in alignment with a more mature onboarding model. We’ve found that when using Preppio to orchestrate the employee onboarding process for our customers, HR and hiring managers save an average of four hours on manual and repetitive tasks assisted by automation. The new hire can save up to 20 hours with a faster ramp-up time simply by being prepared for day one. Say goodbye to idle and unmotivating first days. Onboarding software should free managers up to actually manage those very important first few weeks and automate important tasks to new hires allowing them the autonomy to settle into their new workplace with confidence and clarity. Of course, these numbers are dependent on the type of employee and the onboarding program implemented, but streamlining this process guarantees that onboarding is standardized rather than left to chance. We have seen companies bypass an integrated onboarding solution year after year. Managers and HR have always turned to people to solve staff-related problems and overlooked technology as a means to activate the changes successfully. An onboarding platform that offers a process of checks and balances tailored to meet the needs of both employee and employer is, in fact, a strategic business tool. Technology can make life easier if used wisely. It has the power to make companies more efficient and to make employees’ work much more engaging. Managers can use their time to

create tasks and activities, build employee-focused content, and invest energy in output that has higher strategic value for the organization.

On a day-to-day level, automation takes care of the repetitive and low-value executions of your role, freeing you and your new hires to do the interesting parts of your jobs. With more time, HR and managers can build stronger relationships and a more meaningful culture while also tapping into the insights from onboarding analytics to deliver an improved and iterative onboarding process, thereby creating better and highly satisfying employee experiences over time.

Final thoughts

Without onboarding software, your managers are less likely to be able to remember what, when, and how to deliver the onboarding experience. Put simply - great onboarding software ensures that all employees get a personal andconsistently good onboarding experience at scale. However, onboarding software is only asgood as the content and the process. Software vendors cannot help with implementing ascience-based onboarding program for their customers.

Put it into practice:

1. Download this employee onboarding software worksheetand answer 10 questions to determine how well youronboarding technology is performing.

2. Schedule a demo of Preppio’s onboarding software byclicking on the link in the worksheet or here.

Excerpt from Preppio’s upcoming onboarding book written by Amin Fard, founder and CEO of Preppio, and Dr. Talya Bauer, Chief Scientific Officer at Preppio. The book is designed to help HR professionals and company stakeholders to understand the science behind onboarding and to develop an onboarding program that fuels employee and business success.

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