Starting a job can be very intimidating for new hires. There are lots of people they have never met before, there is a new company culture to get to grips with, and there is a whole load of internal knowledge that has been missed out on. This is why onboarding is a mission-critical process that must be taken seriously — delivering a comfortable onboarding experience eases the transition for new hires and is more likely to ensure new hires don’t get scared off.
However, the modern onboarding process can be long-winded and frustrating, particularly for new hires. Many companies find it difficult to conduct and strike the right balance, and some companies can take weeks to onboard their new employees.
Why Employee Onboarding Matters
A solid onboarding process is important to avoid compliance problems and last-minute problems with new hires. A thorough onboarding process, backed up by onboarding tools, provides a long list of benefits, some of which include:
- Reducing the chaos and mess made by paperwork.
- Shortening the onboarding procedure.
- Reducing manual intervention required by team members.
- Reducing the workload of your HR teams.
- Providing a consistent experience to your new hires.
- Offering new hires a positive experience.
Using Tools to Streamline the Onboarding Process
To make the process easier for both the company and your new hires, it is important to use the right tools. While smaller businesses may find that paper-based processes work well for them, these old systems become inefficient as companies grow. Even in small businesses, paper and template-based processes can be detrimental.
On the other hand, modern employee onboarding tools can help companies organize and automate certain onboarding processes.
Here are five of the top employee onboarding tools that we recommend to all companies.
1. Trello
Trello is a web-based Kanban-style list-making application. The app makes it easy to create a successive pipeline of onboarding materials for your new hire, allowing them to take in information in the right order, if necessary. Due to its Kanban format, Trello is a great visual tool for your new hires who will be able to view and easily digest their onboarding tasks.
Trello can be used for free and the company has made its own template for new employee onboarding. The whole app works like an interactive to-do list where you can add tasks, assign them to team members, and add due dates.
2. Slack
You may know Slack for what it is, a cloud-based instant messaging platform that is used by companies for internal communications. However, Slack is so much more than this.
One of Slack’s best features is that it can be expanded with a whole range of add-ons such as bots, and one of these bots is an onboarding tool known as ChiefOnboarding, a super simple slack bot that onboards new hires automatically for you. It can send new tasks to your new hires, provide access to resources, and suggest people to whom new hires should report and provide their contact details.
3. Organimi
This list wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of our own tool. Organimi is an essential tool for a streamlined onboarding process. It enables your employees to quickly get to grips with one of the most crucial pieces of information — your company’s internal structure. It gives them an org chart they can use as and when necessary to find out who’s who.
When your new hires know who they need to go to with specific questions, who their team members are, who their line manager is, etc., they are set up for success and are more likely to hit the ground running and assimilate more easily with your company.
Organimi is not just a tool for mapping an organization’s internal structure, though. It is a powerful tool that simplifies the process of creating and sharing org charts that can be used for a variety of purposes, such as project planning, workforce monitoring, and skills gap analysis. Using it, you can create org charts in a matter of minutes with a drag-and-drop interface, and several integrations allow you to import data from external sources.
4. Scoro
Scoro is a comprehensive solution for not just onboarding remote teams but managing them, too. It provides onboarding tools, project management, collaboration, billing, and more in one easy-to-use package.
It also includes in-depth analysis tools that you can use for an instant and up-to-date view of your entire team, track projects and how they are progressing, and access real-time reports of the work that has been completed. It can be integrated with a variety of popular applications to ensure that companies don’t need to do away with their current solutions.
5. Zenefits
Zenefits is used by some of the world’s biggest corporations, however, it is a tool that is suitable for businesses of any size. It is a management platform that makes it easy for internal teams to manage employee benefits. The cloud-based software focuses particularly on insurance coverage, something which many companies are known to struggle with, particularly newer ones.
Features of the software include payroll, benefits management, and compliance. It integrates with G Suite, Office 365, Slack, and more to bring everything HR into one, easy-to-use app.
Improve the Onboarding Experience with Organimi
Employee onboarding tools help you to provide a positive and consistent experience to your new hires, improve retention, and reduce the workload faced by yourself and members of your HR team. The tools mentioned in these articles and others can be used to streamline specific onboarding processes or handle the entire operation. The choice is yours.
Why not try out Organimi, our intuitive org chart creation tool, and see how it can transform your own onboarding process? Contact a member of the team to get access to a free 30-day trial today!