Innovation: how to improve onboarding in companies

Customized onboarding

Thearrival of a new employee is often accompanied by numerous administrative tasks. Many of these tasks are common to all employees, but each individual is unique. It is then important that the employee feels expected.

According to Human Resources Today (2018), 69% of employees are more likely to stay with the company for more than three years if they have had a positive onboarding experience.

To facilitate staff onboarding and make the recruitment process successful, human resources can implement a customized onboarding program for new talent. Tools like Heyteam allow companies to perform this type ofonboarding.

At HeyTeam, their platform allows you to create sequenced and personalized integration paths including checklists, videos, quizzes, training plans, etc. The employee only has to connect to the platform and access the different supports.

Welcoming new members through a good integration allows the company to share its corporate culture and work environment. Other companies go a step further by allowing virtually immersive integration.

Immersive integration

With the rise of telecommuting, many companies have been forced to consider a remote onboarding process. In person, the new employee can easily meet and discuss with other employees as he or she moves around the premises and immerses himself or herself in the company’s culture. This interaction is important for employees to feel included and considered in the company. So to replicate that sense of belonging, publishers like
Uptale, 360Learning and Webrunner offer their services to virtually reproduce the company’s world.

The ready-to-wear company, Chloé has invested in this type of service to integrate its new employees. It offers 3 courses to its newcomers:

• the first one on the life cycle of the product (designers’ workplaces, ready-to-wear workshop, showrooms);
• the second on the history of the house (the Heritage Department)
• and the third one on the backstage of the house “Behind The Scene”. The experience is available on computers and smartphones.

Other companies go even further by adding fun onboarding experiences to make onboarding a success.

Immersive integration: new talents play the game!

To share the company culture and make the onboarding process more engaging and fun, some companies use gamification techniques. The aim is to include the game’s mechanisms and principles in onboarding processes in order to make them more attractive.

Gamification can therefore be a fun and effective way to support newcomers in their integration, encouraging them to discover the company and its various teams in an interactive way. By using gamification techniques, the company can create a sense of well-being at work from the moment new employees are integrated.

Onboarding & Foresight: involving new employees

According to Michel Godet, economist and member of the Académie des technologies foresight is “the art of enlightening present decisions in the light of future and desirable decisions”. It is about observing the present and detecting weak signals in order to detect potential changes and threats.

In the context of onboarding, the aim is to get new employees to co-construct possible future scenarios together, and to increase their ability to understand the opportunities and threats that exist in the environment.

This can be done through an exercise to identify “black elephants, black jellyfish and black swans”:

• Black elephants are processes at work in the present and known by the company, but not integrated into the company’s strategic thinking, such as global warming.
• The black jellyfish are the processes at work in the company that the company thinks it understands, but ultimately does not control as with the pandemic; some companies have had difficulty understanding the effects and anticipating the consequences of this pandemic.
• Black swans are the processes at work in the company, but unimaginable to the company. This allows new employees to feel invested in the new company by being part of a collective.

Onboarding can therefore be an opportunity to involve new talent in the company’s strategy, offering them an overview of its projects and encouraging them to contribute to their future development. Involving new employees from the beginning of their onboarding process helps reinforce their sense of belonging to the company and helps them understand their role in the team.

Recruitment without a trial period: the contract of trust!

Since March 2021,SAUR a French company in the water sector, has decided to recruit its employees without a trial period. A decision that surprised more than one company, but also more than one candidate.

The trial period is a clause governed by the labor code, but not mandatory. For some employees, immediate employment is a relief, but for others it is a disadvantage, because the rules of separation are not the same during the trial period or afterwards. The trial period allows both the company and the employee to take the time to confirm the decision to collaborate.

Another point is that it requires the company to be more vigilant during the recruitment process to find the right candidate. Managers are then much more quickly integrated into the recruitment process.

To establish a contract of trust as soon as new employees are recruited, the HR department can eliminate the trial period.

Conclusion on improving onboarding with innovation

According to Welcome to the Jungle companies that offer structured HR onboarding retain 90% of their new hires and the probability of retaining new employees for three years increases by 69%! Successful onboarding helps new hires feel welcome, supported and prepared to contribute to their team and organization.

Traditional onboarding processes can be time-consuming and uninviting, yet it is a time to be leveraged for both the new employee and the organization. New onboarding tools help create a more effective experience for new hires, resulting in increased retention, engagement and productivity. It can also help organizations stand out as an employer of choice, attracting top talent in an increasingly competitive job market.

With its experience in onboarding, SQORUS, a firm specialized in digital transformation, knows how to support companies on onboarding and recruitment issues thanks to its LAB, which constantly monitors HR innovations. Contact us to discuss this directly with our experts.