How to Onboard New Employees: Open Platform LMS

Are you using an Open Talent Platform to onboard new employees yet? If not, give it some serious thought.

Onboarding is increasingly being identified as a critical component of strong attraction and retention programs. The first days an employee spends with you can be risky business and many companies don’t get it right. And getting it right from the very beginning is important. Surveys have found that approximately 25 percent of new employees leave within the first year. There’s not a lot of time to get it right. And if you do, maybe they won't leave.

The best onboarding programs make new employees feel welcome, establish clear responsibilities, orient the employee to their new position and immerse them in the company culture. A good onboarding program will up the chances of your great new recruits being there a year later. From the company’s perspective, employees will become useful contributors to the company’s bottom line sooner with an efficient and effective onboarding agenda.

Yet, not enough organizations spend adequate time and attention on an employee’s first few weeks. Many delegate this intensive period of training to multiple busy managers and peers who, at best, deal with face-to-face onboarding sessions off the side of their desk. Think about what you spend on a recruitment campaign. Many organizations shell out above $10,000 per employee—upwards of $30,000 for an executive. Essentially, it’s cheaper to get the onboarding right from the very beginning than to go out and hunt and capture new recruits.

Open-Platform Talent Management to the Rescue

It is possible to use an Open-Platform Talent Management to maximize the impact of your onboarding program. Information about company history and culture, policies and procedures and industry best practices can all be run on your OTP, along with your standard training offerings. With the right solution it’s easy to develop individual learning paths for trainees, map learning to job positions, facilitate team training, and manage individual learning plans. All of this helps human resources streamline onboarding processes so new employees can hit the ground running.

Use Your Open Talent Platform To:

• Say “Welcome.” Having a well-organized program personalized for your new team members makes them feel welcome and confident they’ve arrived at a great place.
• Ensure consistency. Consistent quality in the delivery of training is important. Plus, your new and recent hires will compare notes. Trust me.
• Save time. No more scheduling nightmares waiting for Joe to let you know if and when he can meet with Sue about the corporate bullying policy.
• Assess. Totara allows you to test employee knowledge using questions from banks of questions and track scores and completion rates. You or your managers can monitor the ongoing progress of each individual’s development by building records of learning for each employee and identifying gaps in knowledge.
• Provide an Audit Trail. Using Totara, you can make sure essential courses required by any regulatory agencies are made available to the relevant employees. Reports can easily be run to provide documentation to regulating bodies.
• Go Mobile. Using a system like Totara LMS, whether your employees are on smart phones, tablets or laptops, you will be able to effectively deliver your onboarding program.

Don't forget Lunch

This doesn’t answer all your onboarding problems. The social side of the equation remains important and there’s no app for that; you still have to make sure your recruits meet their new colleagues and feel welcomed on a person to person level. But it will be good to know that the training and information components are well in hand. In all likelihood you’ll see the results in next year’s retention rates.

For more information view our webinar on Improving Employee Engagement and Performance.