The recruitment and sales processes are two of the most time-consuming administrative tasks at any business. One of the biggest contributors to this is the onboarding process. When companies begin to consider how to improve onboarding process tasks, automation most often comes to mind. Automation can help businesses reduce costs, reduce errors and speed up the process, but how exactly does it work?
What To Know About Creating an Onboarding Process
Did you know that 22% of people who quit do so within the first month and a half? By 18 months, 46% of new hires have left the business. This gives companies a narrow window to make a good impression and retain top talent. Unfortunately, many companies do not see it this way.
Instead, managers might view themselves as the ones providing invaluable professional experience to employees. While this can certainly be the case, it’s important to remember that other companies can provide the same and those companies might be trying to hire the same employee.
This is also true of onboarding clients and customers. Even when they are welcomed into the fold, there are other organizations competing for their business. Losing these clients can cost you time, money and other valuable investments.
What Is Onboarding Process Management?
The onboarding process begins the moment an employer selects a worker or a client chooses a business. How things progress thereafter represents the onboarding process. These are some of the common tasks that make up the employee onboarding process:
- Providing contracts for employees to sign and submit
- Creating ID cards for workers to access restricted areas
- Informing workers of the general work process
- Providing orientation and training opportunities
- Providing an avenue for employees to seek answers to pressing questions
Onboarding clients might seem like a drastically different process, but they do share similarities. These are some tasks that make up the client or customer onboarding process:
- Providing or receiving business contracts
- Collecting contact information and other personal data
- Facilitating the creation of log-in details
- Providing tutorials to help clients navigate the products or services
- Providing points of contact for clients to ask questions if issues arise
Sadly, while every business has an onboarding process, not every business takes steps to truly manage that process. Instead, managers might play the onboarding process by ear and take things one step at a time. While this might work for some smaller organizations, it can create complications for larger companies and organizations operating in technical spaces.
How To Do Onboarding Process Management
The play-by-ear approach to the onboarding process never works for long. Employees and customers often feel overwhelmed and confused, which increases the likelihood of calling it quits. Instead, it’s important to create a truly managed process. The good news is that the hard work pays off. Employees that go through structured onboarding processes have a 58% higher likelihood of remaining with the company for three years or more.
Design a General System
Over time, you can create a more detailed process with different steps for various roles. However, if you have no current process in place, start with something general. Consider the steps that all new hires or new clients take to go from prospect to selected candidate or client.
Inform Individuals
When employees or clients know what to expect ahead of time, they can better prepare. For example, consider a management role that involves overseeing a factory. That person might spend some time walking the floors and completing general inspections. Knowing this ahead of time allows the new hire the opportunity to get comfortable shoes and plan for a good night’s rest.
Designate Points of Contact
Always have a few persons the new hire or customer can reach out to with questions. Designating more than one ensures that if one person is unavailable, someone else is available. Sometimes, this is as easy as letting the person know the chain of command.
Schedule Check-Ins
Not all workers are assertive when getting familiar with an organization. In some cases, if managers do not address them directly, they might not know something is amiss until the worker or client leaves. Scheduling one-on-one check-ins can help prevent this.
How To Improve Employee Onboarding Process Management
Knowing how to improve the onboarding process for workers can reduce your turnover rates and increase your return on investment. These tips can get you started:
- Consider Preboarding: Don’t wait until the employee makes it in for the first day of work to start the onboarding process. Start ahead of time to get as much as possible out of the way.
- Integrate Recruiting With Onboarding: One process naturally leads to the next, so integration can reduce inefficiencies from duplicate tasks. It also allows the sharing of information.
- Automate Onboarding Process: Several steps of the onboarding process can be easily automated. This includes transferring data from resumes and completing benefits enrollment.
- Provide Swag: Don’t just hand out a random item because it has the brand name on it. Provide something useful, such as a calculator for an accountant or uniforms for sales workers.
- Engage on the First Day: Employers often treat new hires as oversights on the job. Engage new employees directly to ensure they are being tended to and are learning the necessary tasks.
- Ask for Feedback: The best way to improve your process is to ask for feedback. Remember that improvement won’t take place without applying that feedback.
How To Improve Customer Onboarding Process Management
The better your ability to make the customer onboarding process a hassle-free one, the lower your attrition rates. Just keep in mind that consistency is key. Making a good first impression is not enough.
- Use an App: If customers have to sign onto a desktop device to become onboarded, they could lose interest. Make the process accessible via smart devices, such as phones or tablets.
- Sync Data: Your customer or client might have multiple accounts with your business. Share data between accounts to reduce the need to re-enter information and to eliminate duplication.
- Automate Tutorials: When automating onboarding process management for clients, start with the tutorials. This will save your clients and customer service agents a lot of time.
- Engage Customers: Go beyond automated messages to welcome valued customers. Reach out directly to ensure all is well and to determine if they need more help.
- Provide Swag: Like employees, customers love swag. Choosing something useful might be harder here, so go for generally useful items, such as pens or notepads.
- Ask for Feedback: Ask customers for ongoing feedback. Try to make it anonymous so they feel more encouraged to give honest critiques. You could also consider rewards for completing longer surveys.
How To Automate Onboarding Process Management
Automating your onboarding process might seem like an intimidating task, but there are service providers ready to help. At Fluix, we help clients around the world figure out how to automate client onboarding process management and how to better retain employees. We provide a number of solutions, such as automating data entry and training.
With these and other services, we help clients go paperless and transition into remote work. The best part is you can get it all for a price point that any business can afford from a company that has been rated among the best tech companies, year after year. Get Started with a demo today.
