Employees are an indispensable resource – and in this competitive hiring market, companies can’t afford turnover. So now more than ever, businesses must work on retaining their best employees to ensure they’re running as effectively and efficiently as possible.
There are many ways companies can do this, but getting started out of the gate to improve onboarding with a thorough and welcoming onboarding process is one of the best ways to show your employees what they mean to your business. They’ll know that you value them and they’ll be eager to stick around longer.
Of course, onboarding can be time-consuming, but luckily, the latest HR technology can help you establish a systematized approach to onboarding while carefully monitoring all of its important aspects.
Here are five great ways investing in automation can improve onboarding and help you retain your top talent.
Establish a single source of communication
The fast pace of modern tech development has made it difficult for companies to keep track of all the channels where they can find new employees. Oftentimes, candidates will contact businesses through multiple channels when searching for jobs making it challenging to track communication and new applicants throughout all the platforms. Additionally, it’s difficult to assess potential employees and manage them for proper onboarding.
To help with this process, you can use software solutions like assessment software to store and manage applications in a single database. That way, you won’t have to work across multiple platforms.
Automate sourcing and screening tasks
Artificial intelligence is making its way into various software solutions like applicant tracking systems, time clock software, and others. And when it comes to onboarding and hiring new employees, it can help HR pros immensely. Here’s how:
Giving responses to applicants
When there’s a large volume of applicants, like with bulk hiring, onboarding managers may find it a challenge to respond to all of them. In these situations, an AI-powered onboarding software can help generate proper responses and send them automatically.
Performing sourcing and screening
AI software can also help with screening and sourcing. Through its understanding of job requirements, it can look for candidates that meet the criteria, shortlist them and rank them properly. This allows managers to quickly determine which candidates to focus on first.
Getting all relevant information
AI has the power to gather information about candidates and store it in a structured manner. This structure makes it easier for HR reps to assess candidates based on the stored data.
Evaluate candidate qualifications
One of the more tedious tasks for hiring managers is to go through many applications and narrow down the list to people who are qualified to do the job. Modern technology gives HR managers the information they need to evaluate candidates based on knowledge, skills, experience, employment, history, and other relevant information – all displayed on one dashboard. From there, they can take it one candidate at a time.
Sorting applicants
Some HR solutions come with features, functionalities and options that make testing candidates easier, giving objective results that can tell managers whether someone would be a good fit for the company. Instead of just relying on their subjective opinions, managers can use these solutions to give unbiased scores and make better hiring decisions.
Furthermore, these tools allow managers to sort candidates using different criteria such as:
- Career achievements
- Portfolios
- Education level
- Various demographic factors
- Work experience
Selecting top candidates
Even though applicants are already sorted neatly, it’s important to narrow down the list and choose only the candidates who best match your requirements. To do this, you will have to evaluate them in a meaningful way. A software solution can save time at this step by providing personalized aptitude test features and quiz makers you can use for your evaluations.
Improve employee onboarding
Technology can help speed up the onboarding process by automating manual tasks that are time-consuming. Automation allows managers to send out all applications and onboarding forms to new hires as soon as they get the job so that employees get all the paperwork done before coming in to work. At the same time, the software can send onboarding managers notifications about which employees have finished their documentation and which haven’t.
With these more monotonous tasks out of the way, onboarding managers can focus on more important aspects of onboarding: They can engage new hires, tell them about their new workplace and get to know them better.
Follow-up
While it’s important to make the onboarding process smooth, the story of retaining employees doesn’t end there. After someone has joined your team, follow up with proper practices to keep them engaged.
Providing employee development
To most employees, the prospect of growing as professionals and acquiring new skills is just as important as the work they’re doing. With the help of HR training software, or learning management solutions, managers can instantly offer lessons, courses, and training. With training software, it’s easier to create personalized training and adjust it to the employees’ level of knowledge.
Getting feedback from your employees
Listening to your employees is essential as it shows that you value their opinions and promote transparency within your company culture. HR training software can be used to gather feedback about courses and other essential issues. This information is then shared privately with the manager.
Establishing good onboarding practices will not only help your business handle the hiring process more efficiently, but it will also help you choose the right people and retain them. Engaged employees will stay a lot longer because they find their work meaningful in some way – so grabbing their attention right at the onboarding process will go a long way in keeping them satisfied.
In this digital age, using modern software solutions that offer advanced functionalities can advance your business in a lot of ways. While it can be a bit of an investment, training software and onboarding platforms will pay for themselves in the end by freeing up busy HR professionals to focus on the more ‘human’ elements of the job.
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