I’ve just recently joined the marketing team here at My Recruitment Plus. They’ve asked me to describe my first digital onboarding experience here. Today I’ll be walking you through my past onboarding experiences. To begin, let me take you to the beginning of my working journey, to my first job.
I was walking home one day from school, past my favourite frozen yogurt store when I saw a paper tacked on the door, advertising a “café all-rounder” position.
I emailed them and sat on my hands for two weeks until I went in for an interview. They got back to me after a week and asked me to go in for a trial … unpaid I might add. After almost a month of back and forth with a dash of borderline free child labour they announced that I got the job.
This would be my very first onboarding experience.
I remember staring at the pile of paper my employer handed to me to take home. At this point I didn’t even bring pens to school as I used an iPad. The closest form I had completed to this was probably an excursion slip for school. It was safe to say I needed a lot of hand holding the first time around. Without guidance from my new workplace, I dragged my poor parents over. It took a team to then painstakingly fill out every square.
My manager had to be at the workplace in order for me to return the paperwork. I patiently waited for the following days as the onboarding paper trail slogged along. From the acceptance then compliance, into payroll. It took another week until I was able to happily swirl frozen yogurt into cups, which really feels like a month when you’re fourteen.
As the years went on, I enjoyed the advancements of technologies in both my social and university life. However, at each new workplace I found myself repeating the same monotonous procedures of onboarding weighed down by the limitations of hard copy paper, until..
My onboarding experience at My Recruitment Plus took me by such a swift surprise, I thought I was involved in some kind of prank
I was amazed that the timeline between the first interview and signing the contract be a span of less than a week. After a verbal acceptance I was immediately sent the digital onboarding pack via email. They verified my identity through a text automation and displayed the simple 4 steps to be completed.
The first thing that caught my attention was the ticking time counter. I felt valued as a new employee. They didn’t want to waste my time and I didn’t want to waste theirs.
The segmented steps could be completed in stages. Saving my progress along the way. Allowing me to complete it in easily digestible chunks, perfect for my train station transfers as I completed my onboarding on a train home from work.
The CEO Anwar himself consistently shot at me with text updates and even called me asking if I needed any assistance whatsoever. I felt support every step of the way, even when I was on the go.
I realised that paper-based onboarding creates a bottleneck in HR processes.
It’s one of the last processes to remain paper based due to inertia. Almost every other business process has been digitised and automated.
The method of processing hardcopies in traditional onboarding has significantly higher time, risk and cost commitments compared to digital onboarding. In digital onboarding the need to manually create offers, send mail to candidates, and re-enter data into payroll systems are removed. Studies show that strong onboarding improves new hire retention by 82% as new hires feel more supported to be productive sooner (HR on Board 2020).
Digital onboarding technologies are available to provide efficiencies in every possible way. Employees feel more valued, and display more motivation in the workplace when onboarded most effectively as they understand their exact role in the greater purpose. The wave of automation is taking over and it’s up to us to jump on it and enjoy the ride.
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