Onboarding administration: is yours an active or passive onboarding experience?

Hardly anyone looks forward to it. Paperwork, form-filling and HR processes that just don’t seem as straight forward as they should be. It’s enrolment and HR administration, the foundation of the onboarding experience.

Continuing our blog series on the 4 elements to successful onboarding, we’ll take a closer look at enrolment, which requires new hires to fill in all the right documentation in their first few days, and administration, which requires that they understand and are able to navigate HR and security processes.

To get a handle on the challenges enrolment and administration can present, let’s look at a real-world scenario we were presented with by a client.

Client case study

A client recounted how she was recruited into a highly successful, world-renowned consultancy firm. Her role involved engaging with multinational corporations on exciting and challenging assignments. It was a dream job.

Three months in, after completing an arduous week of on-site work, she was sitting in an airport lounge with a pile of expense claims that needed to be submitted in the next few hours. The problem was that she had no idea how to do this or what the claim rates were.

Her perception of the prestige and professionalism of the organization was compromised by their laissez-faire attitude to this simple aspect of onboarding and orientation. The end result was frustration in the very people they’d invested time and money in recruiting and training.

Now, we’re not saying a single missed expenses’ deadline will irretrievably leave your new hires with a bad impression of your company, but details do matter.

The hard facts

Repeated incidences of frustration resulting from poor enrolment and administration can contribute to an impression that your organization does not care enough. And that comes with a high price.

66% of employees would quit if they feel underappreciated, jumping to 76% among millenials

If you appear to be  unwilling to make the day-to-day working lives of your employees easier where possible, demotivation and feelings of underappreciation will become commonplace.

On a practical basis, it comes down to this:

• Completing enrolment documentation can be tedious but it is necessary, and without clear visibility of all that is required, new hires can feel as if it is a never-ending sequence of form filling.
• HR procedures (such as booking vacation time, submitting expenses, and taking sick leave) are not always assimilated amongst all the information new hires typically receive.  But if they can’t recall or access them when needed, frustration and annoyance at having to rely on others for help with such apparently simple procedures can result.

 

How to do enrolment and administration the right way

Let’s start with enrolment:

1. Empower your new hires by providing a brilliant onboarding checklist of all the enrolment documentation required and by whom. This ensures visibility on all requirements and helps new hires be proactive, engendering a sense of control over the process.
2. Start the process before your new hires join, but instead of sending multiple emails from multiple sources, consider establishing a web portal where new hires can find all the relevant documentation to complete.

You can also use your web portal to provide welcome videos, ‘Help’ files and information about the organization, creating a more welcoming, positive onboarding experience, as well as making it all much easier to administer.

Now, to your HR processes.

Remember, learning tends to be needs’ driven, so explaining HR processes and documentation requirements in the first few days is unlikely to meet with a reciprocal hunger to understand, except possibly when it relates to remuneration. So, consider the following:

1. Provide your new hire with a convenient list of the most commonly used HR procedures and key policies and where they can be found.
2. Make a local leader accountable for verifying that each new hire has demonstrated their understanding of the HR procedures and knows their location.

Alternatively, go one step further and get interactive:

1. Encourage new hires to engage in a scavenger hunt to locate HR documentation and procedures.
2. Confirm their understanding by inviting them to complete a quiz with some fun recognition activities. People learn and remember best by ‘doing’.

Whichever approach you take, always ensure there is clear accountability for checking in on the new hire. Choose someone with a coaching mindset who has defined check-in points to review progress with the new hire, as well as being available when help is required — even if that is on a Friday evening for a call from the airport, enquiring about the expenses policy!

Take home message

When it comes to enrolment and HR processes, provide an onboarding experience that:

• engages new hires in driving their own learning
• provides a ‘map’ of what is required and by whom
• ensures access to someone who will assist when they need it.

These approaches encourage new hires to take personal responsibility for their actions and solve problems for themselves, all within the context of a supportive environment.

Want to improve your onboarding experience?

If you would like to discuss your onboarding requirements and how our mobile learning and coaching app On.Board can highlight accountabilities, track completion of all onboarding components and provide a cohesive onboarding journey for your new hires, please do get in touch by visiting prosell.com/onboard.