A Warm Welcome: 5 Tools for a Smooth Onboarding Experience

By Tony Ademi

Promoting an effective onboarding experience is important for the talent acquisition process, ensuring that new hires smoothly integrate into the organization and become as productive as possible. 

The onboarding process sets the employee’s journey tone and is one of the main factors impacting job satisfaction, retention and engagement. Online tools are a great way to help you optimize the onboarding process. 

Statistics claim that employees with a successful onboarding experience are up to 18 times more confident in the workplace. 

Therefore, in this article, we will dive deeper into learning more about the tools you need to use to make your onboarding experience as smooth as ever. 

Use training videos to enhance your onboarding experience

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Before you go any further, there’s one thing you need to know about the onboarding process and that is to use training videos. Training videos are an excellent method of information consumption. 

 

They can help you save time by providing in-person training and ensuring that the same level of information quality is provided. There are three large benefits you receive when creating training videos: 

 

• Higher engagement rates and much easier information consumption: Videos are an excellent way for consuming information and in short, a much more straightforward way to train and retain employees. 

• Cost-efficient: It is a cost-effective method you need for producing the video once and using it for different employees. 

• Simple maintenance: You can use AI video generation platforms to go back and modify your information in the video content. This helps you remain compliant and cuts costs. 

 

Overall, you can use AI technology to create your training video. It’s a much cheaper and faster way for audio recording equipment and filming. 

Top 5 tools you can use for optimizing your onboarding experience 

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You have many other tasks to worry about and the truth is that you never get a second shot to make a good first impression. Therefore, we’ll dive deeper into learning more about which tools we need to use to make it happen. 

• Agendrix- 24-hour shift schedule software 

Businesses that are working 24/7 might face lots of challenges when it comes to employee scheduling. These challenges are faced by many restaurants, stores, pharmacies, hotels and other industries. Sometimes, it might be difficult to maintain employee efficiency and promote job satisfaction at the same time. 

 

When promoting a 24-hour shift business, you need to consider the following factors: 

 

• Employee leave: Your staff members aren’t robots, so don’t think they’ll be available 24/7. A good work-life balance protects employee retention. Time off is a main concern when it comes to many employees. 

• The number of employees you have: Having a few people doesn’t do the trick for working 24/7. Some workers are willing to work more than others, so it’s important to know more about it. 

• Rotating vs fixed schedule: Fixed schedules mean that employees always need to work the same shift, meaning they are never changing shifts, but sticking to one. If they work in the morning, it’ll always be that way. Rotating schedules include changing shifts, one week at night, one in the morning, or however the employer promotes it. It’s always important to communicate with your new hires about this. 

 

Agendrix is a 24/7 shift schedule software that will give you different recommendations for promoting 24-hour shifts, but it’s always important to implement the following practices: 

 

• Balancing business needs with employee ones

• Minimizing employee fatigue and burnout 

• Using employee scheduling software 

 

At the end of the day, the onboarding experience has a better outcome when you directly communicate with newcomers, so they know what to expect when working with you.  

 

• Mentimeter- Interactive presentation software 

The initial phases of onboarding might be quite exhausting. Especially when they are packed with long sessions and demonstrations. We all know how good and boring presentations might be, but they play a crucial role in making your new hires comfortable at the workplace. 

Interactive presentation software like Mentimeter will usually showcase Q&A slides that allow everyone to ask urgent questions and add something they think is interesting. This makes sure that all queries are welcomed and answered. 

Moreover, you have quiz slides that can be used for absorbing important details. Instead of asking people if they understood everything in the end, participants will already know a thing or two through interactions. 

Overall, interactive presentation software gives a warm welcome to users, and what better way to consume information than to interact with it? 

 

• Trello- work management 

A work management tool is an ideal working instrument for managing your workflow, making it beneficial for you and your new hires who are directly engaged in the onboarding process. With this type of tool, you can organize an office tour for new team members. 

Trello, for example, is a work management tool that provides onboarding templates for your new hires that make it easier for them to settle in. You can create individual lists that can be created, edited and relocated, so you’re aware of the remaining and completed tasks. 

New hires can instantly be added to the team board, where they’ll have access to the necessary tasks and links required during the onboarding experience. 

 

• Slack- communication management 

There are plenty of communication tools available on the market. Slack excels in smoothing your onboarding experience. This is because of the smooth experience it offers. Overall, communication management tools can serve as an excellent medium for sharing important messages, links, documents and other worthy items. 

Especially when you are working remotely, it’s an opportunity to meet new colleagues without the need to shake someone’s hand. While using the application, you can encourage newcomers to join Slack channels and explore other ones while they’re at it. 

Slack and all other communication management tools are easy to use, so it doesn’t interfere with the onboarding process. You can create a warm message and each member can include a profile picture along with their given names. 

 

• Remote - Streamlined Global Onboarding

Remote stands as a versatile platform designed to streamline global onboarding and talent management. It offers a centralized solution for the end-to-end onboarding journey, from recruitment to integration. Remote's features include customizable onboarding processes, compliance management, and an intuitive interface that ensures a seamless transition for both employers and new hires.

Remote's focus on global onboarding and talent management makes it an indispensable tool for organizations seeking to enhance the onboarding experience for remote teams across different geographical locations. The platform also facilitates global expansion by offering tools to manage employment contracts, compliance, and payroll processing globally.

 

• Monday- remote onboarding 

Remote onboarding is a fresh trend that many workers have encountered after the COVID-19 pandemic. Conducting onboarding sessions and fulfilling checklists might be challenging in a digital context, but many tools are designed to improve this procedure. 

16% of all organizations worldwide work entirely remotely right now. Remote onboarding tools have lots of customization options that allow easy tracking and updating of team tasks, priorities and schedules. Calendar checklists and views are available that can assist employees in navigating through their onboarding journey. After tasks are completed, the HR team can take care of the rest. 

Common onboarding mistakes you should avoid 

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The employee onboarding process should be exciting and informative. The main objective here is to help new team members learn more about the company's culture and people. However, no matter which tool you use, there are a few things to avoid: 

 

• Failing to communicate expectations: Without any clear expectations, new employees won’t be confident in doing their job. Lack of employee confidence also hurts their performance and productivity in the long term. 

• Not making the onboarding process formal: This can lead to poor information communication and confuse new hires. Once this happens, their new job might not seem as exciting as they thought. 

• Lack of resources and tools for new hires: Failing to have the necessary resources for new employees to use can make them feel unsupported and reduce new job excitement. 

• Not providing enough training: You can’t expect new hires to know everything from the first day. They may have an idea of how the job is done, but every organization has a different set of rules. 

The onboarding process is the first impression you give your new team. Make sure it’s a good one, so they are still motivated to start their new job. 

The perfect onboarding process starts with you 

No matter which tools you are using, it's worthless if you don’t pay close attention to getting rid of your mistakes. The onboarding experience becomes good when employers directly communicate with newcomers from the beginning. 

When newcomer’s expectations aren’t matched as they were stated at the beginning of their job, this will disturb their long-term contribution to the workplace, meaning that over time, you’ll need to hire someone else. Hiring different candidates over time will only cost you money and time. 

Therefore, make the onboarding process quick and simple. The tools we showed you are a golden ticket to helping you do so. 

The Author: 

Tony Ademi is a freelance SEO content and copywriter. For roughly four years, Tony has managed to write more than 500 SEO-optimized articles and most of them have ranked #1 on Google. When writing, Tony’s main focus is to carefully do research and make sure that his content is high-quality.

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