“Good, bad, or indifferent, if you are not investing in technology, you are going to get left behind.” With a skills gap, lack of engagement, and challenging retention throughout the workforce, there has never been a more important time for businesses and HR professionals to understand the necessity and power of effective onboarding. As many companies are working to build full onboarding processes, many are beginning to move away from the old days of pen and paper, and are moving to digital onboarding solutions.
With 64% of companies planning to expand their hiring efforts over the next 12 months, organizations must either be prepared to process mounds of paperwork or implement a digital onboarding process to compensate for the deluge of new talent.
Here are 5 practical components of onboarding in the cloud:
Mobility
Quality cloud-based onboarding solutions provide mobile-first approaches. This allows a company to begin pre-onboarding with a new hire before his or her first day on the job. This mobility allows communication to occur anywhere, via smart phone or tablet. Even sensitive documents can be electronically accessed, and a new employee can begin entering required data while on the move.
Intelligent Automation
Intelligent automation uses artificial intelligence to learn your onboarding processes. Through the use of bots and AI, a cloud-based onboarding program can automate many of your time-consuming processes. For example, there are bots that can automate your I-9/E-verify Verifications or your ACA Compliance processes. These bots integrate compliance and scheduling, removing the stress from us humans, so we can effectively lead as only a human can do.
Paperless
Buy a cloud, save a tree. Beyond the environmental considerations for going paperless, the streamline effect of maintaining everything in the cloud pays for itself in what it saves in time and money. It removes the need to chase paper and forms that have been lost or not yet filled. It also removes the cumbersome need to have to keep up with paper records.
Standardization
Cloud-based onboarding programs provide a standard system that goes across the entire workforce. It provides a consistent process for every new hire, it helps maintain compliance, which is a non-negotiable in today’s business, and it protects future new employees from “falling through the cracks.” A dependable, standardized onboarding program provides a company with its best opportunity to successfully start new hires and bring them to full productivity in the shortest amount of time possible.
Adaptation
Like anything else, if you can’t adapt, you won’t make it. Cloud-based solutions allow for quick adaptation to new processes and technologies that unfold in the human resources world. As new regulatory laws, on both state and federal levels, are passed, good cloud-based onboarding systems can be quickly updated and managed to maintain strict compliance. As new systems are developed for everything from payment to insurance solutions, these components can typically be added to an established cloud-based solution. This means that you don’t have to start over with your onboarding every few months, nor do you have to have numerous separate platforms in place. With the ability to adapt your process to your customized needs, you can have an onboarding solution that has many processes in one platform.
The way of the future is riding high in the clouds. Now is the time to take advantage of the many benefits of a cloud-based onboarding platform. It will improve engagement, productivity, retention, culture, and ultimately, the profitability of your company.
