It seems that no matter how organized a company tries to be, recruiting and onboarding new hires can quickly turn into a process nightmare.
It’s natural for new hires to become overwhelmed by things. After all, they are bombarded with a huge amount of paperwork, new people, new tasks, and procedures. It’s common for new employees to be handed a stack of paperwork to fill out, an employee handbook to read, and then be thrown to the wolves in the very first days on the job.
But that doesn't help them get up to speed in an efficient way.
The need for more collaborative work-friendly tools for better retention
It's largely clear to the industry why poor onboarding produces poor employee engagement, which influences retention. A study released by the Aberdeen Group found that a new hire’s decision to stay with a company long-term is made in the first 6 months of employment. Structured onboarding has much to do with retaining new hires far beyond these periods, because employees feel supported and have access to the information and resources they need from day one.
In more recent times, with advances in technology, collaborative tools have enabled HR and recruitment teams to improve onboarding programs. Collaborative tools provide storage solutions for new hire paperwork, documents, files and forms. They can also provide access to training information, company directories, and other helpful information that welcomes new hires, rather than confusing them more. The best part of collaborative tools are that they are intuitive for users, with intelligent searching capabilities and friendly document sharing options.
Best practices for using collaborative platforms for new hires
Favro, an agile based, collaborative and workflow management app developed by Hansoft, is one such tool that HR and recruitment teams can use to facilitate better onboarding processes.
“The faster newly hired talents are onboarded and productive high performing team members, the faster your investment in hiring talents start paying off,” Patric Palm, CEO and co-founder of Favro, told HR Dive. "Our customers use Favro to visualize and manage of all kinds of workflows, and onboarding is no exception."
This process is managed in a three-fold method, Palm says. It looks like this:
- HR professionals and hiring managers can more efficiently collaborate when managing the onboarding process. They will all be on the same page, which prevents anyone from dropping the ball on a task.
- By sharing this workflow with new hires, they can get involved and know where they are in the process.
- Finally, by having all the workflows in Favro, the new hires quickly get an overview of the company’s ways of working and can master their work while also thriving in a complex modern work environment.
How collaborative tools make the onboarding experience more positive for new hires
More workplaces are moving to real-time, agile work task management. This means new hires must be able to find information quickly and be able to hit the ground running in their new roles. A central collaborative tool allows all employees to see where things stand currently and where things are headed.
Managers can use this as a platform for training new hires and communicating with them on a daily basis as they progress. Goals can be set and tracked. Work can be shared across teams. A collaborative tool provides a sense of being part of something bigger and thus increases the likelihood that new hires will feel like they matter to the organization.
