Onboarding is not simply
the latest business jargon
for orientation — here is the bathroom,
here is the break room, sign these
forms — and it’s not a static activity
done for a day or a week. It is the
process of welcoming, training and
acculturating a new hire. Onboarding
can be ongoing, for a month or a year
or as long as the position or person
requires. Showing new hires the ropes
can be a formalized and structured
process, with milestones and accountability,
or a casual and occasional
check-in with the boss.
Whatever an organization’s
onboarding process looks like, it can
have a profound and lasting effect.
A 2010 Aberdeen Group research
report, Onboarding: The First Line of
Engagement, found that organizations
with a formal onboarding process had a 60 percent greater year-over-year
improvement in revenue per full-time
employee, and 63 percent experienced
improvements in employee performance
within the first year. For companies
Aberdeen identified as best-in-class
regarding onboarding, 87 percent of
new hires achieve their first agreed-upon
performance milestone on time;
89 percent of new hires identified
themselves as “highly engaged” in
their last engagement survey.
First impressions are important and
become lodged in an employee’s mind,
so anything an organization can do to
enhance the “first day” experience will
serve it and the employee long-term.
Some talent management systems
today offer employee-friendly functionality,
such as online forms signing
and automatic e-mail reminders,
notifications and appointment scheduling.
In fact, 65 percent of Aberdeen’s
best-in-class organizations said their
onboarding process is at least partially
automated. Such functionality can
streamline compliance and ensure that
nothing gets overlooked. Employees
can be directed via automated notices
to an onboarding portal where they
can access online orientation videos
and policy manuals, receive benefits
information, see profiles of their
future co-workers and more. All of
these automated processes work
together to make the first day a
pleasant experience instead of a
lonely, hand-cramping chore.
Welcome to the 21st Century
St. Mary’s Medical Center in
Huntington, W. Va., is one of the largest
medical facilities in the tristate region
of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky,
with more than 2,400 employees.
The medical center is also a teaching
facility and home to a regional heart
institute, cancer center and neuroscience
center.
Prior to automating its talent acquisition
process, St. Mary’s Medical Center
required all applicants to fill out paper
applications and either mail them in
or apply in person. Applications were
frequently lost, and sometimes qualified
candidates wouldn’t hear from
St. Mary’s. The medical center found it
difficult to recruit beyond the local area
and risked losing integrity among its
applicants due to poor communication.
Dan Weaver, St. Mary’s HR director,
knew the hospital would benefit from
an upgrade — a talent management
system. Most of the systems Weaver
examined were focused on medical
positions (doctors, nurses) and didn’t
allow for flexibility with nonmedical
personnel (sanitation and administrative
workers). St. Mary’s didn’t need a
different hiring process, it needed a way
to update and streamline its existing
methods. St. Mary’s also needed to
automate its background check process
and potentially automate its new hire
onboarding activities — something that
many talent management system (TMS)
vendors have trouble delivering. Weaver
ultimately chose a system that could be
configured around St. Mary’s current
workflow process.
Prospects now fill out job applications
directly at the career site and can attach
a résumé if they desire. The application
is configured so that internal
candidates have to answer fewer questions,
as managers can review their
work files. All prospects also complete
an online assessment that tests for
substance abuse, emotional maturity,
long-term job commitment and other
factors that measure integrity and
professionalism. From this pool of
applicants, suitable candidates are
chosen and interviewed by peers.
The new paperless hiring process
increased time-to-hire, overall efficiency
and the onboarding process. Before,
new hires would occasionally show up
for the first day of work, but no trace
of them could be found in the HRIS;
the paperwork had not been submitted
correctly. Since the implementation of
the talent management system, no one
slips through the cracks. New hires are
seamlessly processed in the system and
automatically uploaded into the HRIS.
Managers are prepared to welcome and
onboard them from day one.
Efficiency is the Mother of Invention
Pep Boys is an automotive aftermarket
retail and service chain. The company
had left its all-paper application process
behind in 2003 in favor of a Web-based talent management system. Even
though the applicant process had been
streamlined, that didn’t eliminate the
physical signatures required by law on
many documents in the application
process. Forms completed online had
to be printed out, signed and mailed to
the corporate office, where they were
scanned into the system. In addition
to the time spent going from computer
to paper to computer again, soft costs
of paper, postage and administrative
time accrued.
Karen Bryson, assistant vice president
of organizational development for Pep
Boys, worked with a vendor to create a
customized talent management system
that integrated all of their processes
into a single solution with multiple
recruitment processes and user
workflows. Based on that success, she
approached her vendor with the idea of
digitally capturing the physical signatures
of applicants in a way that would
meet legal requirements and further
streamline the application process.
The vendor developed a digital signature
capture pad that integrates with the
company’s existing TMS for a completely
paperless process. Applicants’ signatures
are captured, then vaulted and stored
on secure servers. The vendor uses
ongoing monitoring of all firewalls and
Web servers, hardware and software
intrusion detection, restricted access
to management functions on production
servers, and 24/7 monitoring of
the entire network by an IT security
management company to ensure the
safety of the stored signatures.
Bryson quickly realized that this
technology had value beyond the application
process: New hires used to get an
inch-thick binder with all the necessary
forms, depending on their position and
state requirements. Now the signature
technology is used in place of hardcopy
new hire documentation.
The tool is currently deployed at all
Pep Boys Auto store locations in the
United States and Puerto Rico, the
corporate headquarters, service bays
and distribution centers. Bryson anticipates
using the technology for other
business functions, such as the yearly
employee reviews that must be signed.
The technology has also provided
financial benefits. Hard-cost savings
include the elimination of mailing,
storage, imaging, paper and printing
costs for all applicants and new hires.
Soft costs include the reduction of
administrative work by store managers.
The ROI of Good Onboarding
Onboarding is a complex, multilayered
process. Employees need to fill out all
the forms and learn about the organization’s
policies, but they also need to
feel welcomed and valued. It’s critical
to get onboarding right. Done well,
onboarding creates a positive first
impression and increases time-to-productivity
while ensuring compliance
with local, state and federal laws. Using
a talent-management system that works
can not only save costs and streamline
processes, it may also foster such goodwill
among employees that retention
and engagement levels increase.