Back and forth emails? Candidates ghosting? All that manual paperwork… there has to be a better way to onboard staff to your organisation. Indeed there is. Digital onboarding software, such as Martian Logic, now offers an integrated solution that’s just simply too good to ignore. Here are five ways that digital onboarding software can improve your processes and the bottom line!
Reason 1 – Save 70% on Your Onboarding Costs
How? By reducing manual processes substantially. Traditionally, HR staff have to individually generate all the required onboarding documents and collate them into a pack for the candidate. For example, a typical document required is an employment contract, which has to be highly personalised for the specific candidate. Additional documents may include a personal details form, bank details form, appropriate tax and superannuation forms… the list could go on.
Digital onboarding software has the power to generate this entire pack within seconds. This software saves time and reduces costs immensely. Pre-filling forms with existing details and inputs, as well as eliminating the need to edit, print, scan, collate and email individual documents – the pack can be on its way to the candidate in under a minute!
Reason 2 – Cut Onboarding Time by up to 90%
With traditional onboarding, once the pack is sent to the candidate, a waiting game usually ensues. The days of paper-based documents are primarily gone. However, even when the documents are emailed as PDF attachments, the candidate still has to fill in all the required information – signing where needed, scanning, uploading and sending back to the employer.
As this process requires a printer & scanner, they’ll need to have one or find a scanner somewhere they can use. All this makes the process much more difficult and time-consuming than it needs to be. With modern onboarding software, the candidate can instead complete their entire onboarding pack – including digitally signing their contract and filling out all the required forms – in minutes. They can even do it from their phone while out and about, making it far more convenient and saving a bunch of time.
Reason 3 – Reduce the Drop-off Rate by 50%
Traditional onboarding pack completion typically takes around ten days, on average. That’s a long time. During this period, the candidate is likely still being approached by other employers with offers. It’s not too unlikely that they change their mind (drop-off) and decide to take one of those other offers instead. Incidents of a drop-off will be especially prominent if the other employer has a slick, modern onboarding process that allows them to sign their contract in a matter of seconds. You have to stay up-to-date with your competition at all stages of the recruiting and onboarding process.
By implementing a digital onboarding system yourself, you’re increasing the chances at locking in your top candidate. Chances are, if you value them, other companies will love them too. Do you want to risk them accepting another company’s offer because your process is too slow and inefficient?
Reason 4 – A Better Employee Experience
Improving employee experience should be a key focus for any HR function. While this is an ongoing journey, getting it right from the get-go is essential. First impressions are crucial in any aspect of life, and a new job is no different – for both parties. Candidates are sold the company during the interview process. However, it is not a done deal until the contract is signed. The onboarding pack is the first impression a candidate has of the company’s actual internal processes. A simple, mobile-based onboarding process is what professionals expect – it just can’t be matched – right?
Reason 5 – Attract & Keep Good HR Professionals
Excellent HR professionals in your business should be able to attract and retain exceptional talent, increasing the value of your employee pool. There is, therefore, a clear and obvious case to maximise the quality of the HR professionals you develop over time. How is this done?
By offering a superior work environment, both in their day-to-day function and long term job security. Clogging up days with non-value adding tasks – like manually collating onboarding paperwork, sending and managing archaic processes with new hires – is not something an HR professional would enjoy, or be proud of. Their ability to add value to the business comes from their people and management skills, skills that should be enabled and enhanced. Creating an environment where they can provide and improve on the skills that matter to them will attract and keep better HR staff.
Furthermore, would you think that HR professionals, stuck using the traditional processes, go home and tell their spouse that they’re enjoying their job? That they feel that their employment security is on solid ground? Of course not – they’re not developing skills that matter to them, and they could be considered replaceable at any time. Digital onboarding software empowers HR professionals.
Reason 6 – Ensure the Company is Ready for the New Hire
It’s a common occurrence that new hires effectively ‘sit on the bench’ for days when they first start. You can spin this however way you want, but it’s simply not a good practice for anyone. The employee is ready to go, and the hiring business should be too. Has this happened to you? Excited for your first day you arrive at a chaotic environment. No laptop, or if you are lucky enough to have one waiting, the correct IT access has not been provisioned – leaving you unable to jump right in and hit the ground running.
With a modern, digital onboarding software platform, all required stakeholders in the business can be looped into an efficient onboarding process. They would be automatically notified of the new hire and the relevant start date. In addition, they would be provided all the information they’d need to know about the new employee. Such as their role, their manager, the equipment and IT access they require, their induction contact, as well as anything else they need to do their job.
Why stop at that? Digital onboarding software can also facilitate and supply the correct induction and training materials to the new hire as soon as possible, making starting their new job as smooth and efficient as possible.
Reason 7 – Eliminate Data Entry & Reduce Errors
We know that traditional onboarding processes are primarily manual – what’s another potential consequence of this? Human Error. There are many potential opportunities for such mistakes to happen – and they’re potentially very costly. Personalising all the required documents in the onboarding pack involves sensitive information like contract terms and specific forms for each individual candidate. Mistakes may be made and reducing this risk as much as possible is imperative. Furthermore, transferring all the details from the new hire, particularly if manually written, provides another manual data entry process and in turn, an opportunity for error. Handwriting or incorrect interpretations of text can cause problems down the line, for example, wrong banking or superannuation details – much to the dismay of payroll!
A digital onboarding system eliminates almost all manual data entry and therefore reduces the rate of errors dramatically. The result is an efficient onboarding system, for both the business and the new hire, that is not tedious or prone to mistakes – who wouldn’t want that?
Reason 8 – Provide Automatic Reporting & Audit Trails
It’s also important to consider the ongoing implications of the onboarding process. With traditional onboarding, continuing reporting and data sourcing is also a mostly manual process. As such, it may be too difficult to do, and data, insights and essential reporting information may be missed. Furthermore, audit trail requirements may dictate that records must be obtainable. These information requests are understandably a pain to many. However, they are necessary & inevitable. So why not make it as easy for the business, and the auditor, as possible?
Using a digital onboarding software will allow for integrated, automatic reporting whenever required. The result is on-demand insights allowing for real-time analysis by managers. Also, since all documents and forms are processed and categorised within a single system, audit request are no longer an issue – it’s all right there!
Reason 9 – Make Payroll & Managers Happy
Easier reporting, efficient audit trails, fewer errors, time & cost savings… music to a manager’s ears. A happy workplace is a good workplace. We all want to make improvements, and this is one such way. All managers can benefit from digital onboarding software as new hires are integrated quicker and have a pleasant experience. Payroll will thank you for fewer headaches resulting from cumbersome manual forms and data entry errors. It is a win-win for everyone involved.
Reason 10 – Save Trees & the Environment
Almost every company is looking to reduce their environmental impact and take action on their corporate social responsibility mandate. Sometimes the way to do this is obvious, for example, an office could switch to renewable energy sources. However, continual improvement demands continual innovation. Here we have one such way to go about improving a company’s environmental impact – how many trees are HR sacrificing for traditional onboarding practices?
We estimate 1,000 companies could be consuming the entire tree population of Centennial Park, in just five years! How’s that for an additional motivator? Best of all, you’d be making this difference without even having to do anything extra – it’s merely a by-product of using digital onboarding software. You can read more about this here.
We hope you enjoyed reading these insights and feel empowered to make a difference in your organisation, and perhaps even the environment. Now that you’re armed with ten solid reasons, including productivity increases, cost savings, time savings, reporting and audit efficiencies and an all-round better experience for everyone, it’s clear digital onboarding software is the way to go. If anything, do it for the trees!
COMMENTS