As with any other facet of recruitment and hiring, onboarding evolves over time. By understanding the new onboarding trends for 2023, you can update processes to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and boost candidate engagement, yielding better results. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, here are the onboarding trends to embrace in 2023.
The Ongoing Rise of Preboarding
One of the biggest engagement challenges of traditional onboarding is the vast amount of paperwork new hires typically need to complete during their first days on the job. Completing forms is tedious and dull, harming their initial experience with the company.
In an era where the candidate experience is increasingly critical for hiring success, preboarding continues to work its way into more onboarding processes. With the right onboarding technology systems, paperwork completion remotely through features like e-signatures and document uploading is possible. Plus, introductory handbooks and similar content are deliverable in advance, including through mobile-friendly designs.
Ultimately, preboarding allows new hires to complete the more tedious parts of the process on their own time. In turn, their first days on the job can focus on something other than paperwork, making them more engaging.
Higher Degrees of Personalization
With conventional onboarding, the bulk of the process isn’t position-specific. As a result, it lacks a sense of individualization, which harms the new hire experience.
One of the major onboarding trends that work to address this issue is increasing personalization. Incorporating video tours of their work areas, facilitating team member introductions during preboarding, outlining workflows, showcasing initial goals, and similar steps help add that extra touch. In turn, the new hire feels that the onboarding process is designed explicitly for them, boosting engagement, comfort, and enthusiasm.
Adding Social Aspects Throughout
When a new hire feels connected to their team, they often reach full productivity faster. Plus, teamwork and collaboration flourish when there’s a sense of comradery and support from those they’ll work with directly on a daily basis.
As a result, onboarding processes are including more social aspects to create opportunities for team bonding. Buddy programs give them a guide to answering common questions, leading to a sense of safety. Purely social gatherings – like a series of introductory lunches with team members during their first week at work – are another part of the equation, letting them speak with colleagues one-on-one soon after starting.
Socialization is even becoming part of traditional onboarding gatherings, such as required safety training. By adding group assignments into the mix, incorporating roleplay scenarios, and using similar strategies, new hires aren’t just subjected to lectures; they get to participate alongside other new hires. As a result, they have an easier time forming connections quickly after their arrival, leading to a more positive experience.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, understanding the 2023 onboarding trends empowers you to succeed. It allows you to update and simplify your hiring process while boosting new hire engagement, leading to a better experience across the board.
If you want to improve your onboarding process quickly and efficiently by implementing the right onboarding technology, Essium can help. Contact us to learn more about our modern onboarding solutions and how they can benefit your staffing agency today.
