Employee onboarding is the first step in making a lasting impression on your new hires and setting them up for success within your organization. Yet conventional onboarding processes are often inefficient and lack consistency, causing more confusion for new hires in their initial days within their new role.
The use of AI can revolutionize the way we onboard and engage our new employees. With employee onboarding AI solutions, the most tedious onboarding tasks can be automated, while processes can be standardized and streamlined for consistent and smooth onboarding experiences. This helps organizations onboard new employees more effectively, build impactful teams, and enhance the overall employee experience.
Let’s explore the benefits of employee onboarding AI solutions, the steps required to implement them, and some of the most effective HR software to consider for leveraging employee onboarding AI.
What is Employee Onboarding AI?
Employee onboarding AI uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate and personalize the onboarding process for new employees. You can automate many routine onboarding tasks such as:
- Setting up and managing employee profiles
- Sending welcome emails to new hires
- Providing access to various work tools
- Tracking and analyzing employee training progress
- Generating performance feedback reports
- Providing learning and development resources
Automating these tasks can free HR professionals to focus on more strategic work, such as enhancing employee engagement strategies and mastering performance management, as well as help to provide a comprehensive and standardized onboarding experience, a key driver in employee engagement.
Benefits of Employee Onboarding AI
According to Gallup, 1 in 5 employees either report receiving a poor onboarding experience or no onboarding program at all. Yet the 70% of employees who did have an excellent employee onboarding experience were 2.6x more likely to be satisfied with their workplace. This illustrates the importance of a quality and consistent employee onboarding experience for retaining employees within your organization.
AI-powered employee onboarding solutions can help improve your current onboarding process and retain more employees, while making the creation and execution of your onboarding experience much easier and effective.
Personalized employee experience
AI easily gathers unique information about your employees to help create a highly personalized onboarding process. By personalizing your onboarding experience to include employee’s information and interests, organizations have an opportunity to illustrate their investment in their employees' individual needs, skills, and experience. This helps create a sense of camaraderie, and shows employees your appreciation while offering a warm welcome.
One example of an employee onboarding AI solution in action is the analysis of an employee's skills, job position, and learning style to provide personalized training materials that will get them up to speed on the tools and skills necessary for their new role. As your employees learn in a way that works best for them, they are more likely to reach their full potential and feel well prepared for their role.
Enhanced employee engagement
A poor onboarding experience can make new employees feel unsure and unmotivated in their roles. In fact, a 2023 Global Culture Report showed that only 43% of surveyed employees had an onboarding experience of more than a simple one-day orientation program.
With employee onboarding AI, you can not only tailor the onboarding process to individual preferences, but leverage interactive content such as gamification, utilizing features such as progress bars, checklists, and fun animations to help drive engagement. Interactive content encourages employees to actively participate and feel motivated as they start their new roles, and helps prepare new hires for success.
Employee retention with predictive analytics
Predictive analytics refers to using AI to make predictions about future happenings. With employee onboarding AI, you can predict which employees will likely leave their jobs through identifying patterns and recognizing red flags such as employee burnout or suggesting an employee might be dissatisfied. These indicators include low engagement scores, frequent leave, and declining performance.
Having immediate insight and access to this information equips HR and managers with the resources necessary to help re-engage employees. Scheduling 1-on-1 meetings to offer an opportunity to better understand their concerns and challenges are among the necessary measures to improve job satisfaction. With these actions, you can reduce your employee churn rate and save substantial costs saved in training and additional benefits.
Automate time-consuming tasks
Harnessing the power of AI tools for HR management can help automate many of the time-consuming onboarding tasks HR teams are often burdened with. Instead of spending hours on manual paperwork, AI can now handle tasks such as processing employment agreements, tracking tax forms, and sending out correspondence such as employee onboarding emails to help streamline the onboarding process.
Moreover, AI can help schedule important onboarding activities, such as meetings with colleagues, teams, and regular training sessions. Automating these repetitive tasks will give you more time to focus on other core HR functions such as learning and development initiatives or building company values.
Provide consistent experience
AI-powered onboarding helps companies create consistent and organized ways of welcoming new employees. In fact, a Deloitte survey showed 62% of organizations reported that using AI in their employee onboarding processes improved the overall experience of new hires.
Instead of relying on manual processes, AI ensures that all employees experience the same onboarding regardless of their role, team, or whether they're receiving remote onboarding or an in-person experience. With a continuous increase in remote working, it becomes crucial for a productive onboarding experience without being physically present in the office.
Implementing Employee Onboarding AI in 6 Steps
Implementing an employee onboarding AI solution requires focusing on various aspects, such as your organizational goals, shortcomings in the current onboarding process, and training employees to make the most of the tools. Here we’ve broken the process down into 6 simple steps for a smooth and efficient onboarding experience.
1. Set clear goals
Clearly define your objectives to align your onboarding process with your overall organizational goals. Start by understanding what you want to achieve within your onboarding process. Are you aiming to streamline administrative tasks, increase employee engagement, or provide a consistent employee experience?
Once you cover the broad goals, break them down into small and measurable outcomes, such as SMART goals. For example, instead of setting a vague goal such as, “improve overall onboarding experience” set a specific target, such as “increase employee satisfaction ratings by 20% in the next three months.”
2. Identify pain points
Identifying the shortcomings in your current onboarding process is crucial to make the changes that will boost employee engagement. Here are three ways you can effectively identify what’s not working within your current process:
- Survey new hires
Surveying your new employees allows you to gather feedback directly from the individuals who have recently experienced the onboarding process. Alternatively, you can conduct a one-on-one meeting for detailed discussions. Employee onboarding experience is a crucial and insightful resource for building a strong onboarding process.
- Monitor key employee metrics
Monitor crucial metrics, such as employee engagement, turnover rate, and time to productivity rate. With these metrics, you will get a clear idea of how well your onboarding process functions and the areas of improvement.
- Review your onboarding material
Review your onboarding materials and ensure it’s clear and flexible for different people. Instead of just asking new hires, you can observe them to see where they struggle the most. These challenging areas must be addressed and replaced with more user-friendly material.
The idea is to rely on what new hires say, what the data shows, and what the observation concludes. Based on these three metrics, you’ll be able to identify the areas of improvement in your onboarding process.
3. Choose the right employee onboarding AI solution
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to employee onboarding. Organizations should first determine their specific requirements, explore the available options, and make a selection based on their findings. Here are some points you must keep in mind when selecting the best employee onboarding AI solution:
- Business size
Take into account the size of your business and assess whether the AI solution is appropriate for small businesses or enterprise-level organizations. Some AI tools for HR, such as Omni are great for small to medium sized businesses, whereas other solutions may better suit large corporations.
- Budget
Determine a clear budget before exploring the options. Employee onboarding AI solutions vary in price, so having a defined budget range is essential to understanding what solutions are right for your business.
- Onboarding goals
Refer to the goals established in the previous steps and identify the features in employee onboarding AI solutions that align with those goals. For example, if one of your goals is personalized onboarding materials, look for AI solutions that offer customization features.
- Ease of use and customer support
Prioritize a user-friendly platform to ensure your team can quickly adapt to it. Next, read reviews to understand the level of customer support the AI solution provider provides, ensuring that assistance will be available if any issues arise.
4. Implement
When implementing your employee onboarding AI solution, it's essential to take a gradual approach rather than rushing to automate the entire process. Work on adapting a problem-solving approach to address the issues at hand.
For instance, if you’re struggling to foster a strong sense of welcoming for new hires, you can use employee onboarding AI to add more personalization to their experience. The AI solution can create customized welcome messages or introductions for each new hire, ensuring they feel valued and included from the start.
Similarly, if new hires are overwhelmed, simplify the onboarding process by breaking it down into smaller, manageable steps. With an AI onboarding solution, you can easily personalize the learning material, track progress, and offer feedback, making the process smoother and more effective.
5. Train your employees
Once you begin implementing, you must train your employees to use the AI onboarding solution effectively. You can conduct employee training sessions to introduce employees as well as your HR team to the AI solution. These sessions should cover the basic features, functionalities, and how the AI solution integrates with the employee onboarding process. Keep the training sessions interactive and provide opportunities for employees to ask questions.
6. Evaluate progress
Begin by gathering relevant data to track the effectiveness of your employee onboarding process. Use employee satisfaction surveys, monitor onboarding completion rates, and assess productivity. Once you have the data, identify areas where the onboarding AI solution may be lacking. Based on the results, make the necessary adjustments to enhance its performance.
Suppose you implemented an employee onboarding AI solution to improve completion rates. The goal is to have at least 90% of new hires complete the process within two weeks. Use the AI solution to get insights and analytics on the completion status of different tasks. Moreover, you can survey your new hires to understand their experience and challenges during onboarding.
After collecting the data, analyze it to identify the areas where the AI onboarding solution may fall short. For instance, you may find that specific modules are too complex and lengthy for new hires. In response, you can break down the information into manageable steps.
3 Tools for Employee Onboarding AI
Choosing the right employee onboarding AI solution for your business can be tough with so many options out there. We’ve rounded up and highlighted the key features of the top 3 solutions for growing businesses to help simplify your search.
1. Omni
Omni is an advanced HR platform that automates the entire employee lifecycle to simplify your onboarding process and beyond. Omni offers a wide range of features designed to streamline your onboarding process and provide an engaging and memorable onboarding for new hires. With highly customizable automation, centralized data storage, and a personalized approach to employee onboarding, Omni ensures a seamless and effortless experience. Let's explore some of its key features that simplify your onboarding process.
- Automated onboarding workflow
Omni's user-friendly platform makes onboarding easy by automating repetitive tasks and ensuring a consistent experience for new hires. HR teams can create predefined sequences and tasks that automatically kick in when a new employee joins your company.
Once the employee accepts their job offer, Omni generates and sends important documents like employment contracts and company policies directly to employees. This automation saves time and ensures that new hires receive the necessary information promptly, enabling them to fulfill any legal obligations with ease.
- Efficient document collection
Omni's centralized platform eliminates the need for back-and-forth communications and manual data entries. HR teams can request new hires to upload all essential documents and information directly into the platform for a centralized and secure employee record. This includes personal details, employment history, emergency contacts, and all other relevant information. By consolidating all this data in one place, HR managers can conveniently access and manage it throughout an employee’s tenure.
- Seamless communication and collaboration
Omni excels in providing seamless communication and collaboration throughout the employee onboarding process. Its centralized platform enables HR teams to connect easily with new hires and ensure all necessary resources are accessible immediately upon hire.
Moreover, the platform promotes collaborative communication, allowing new hires to engage with team members, supervisors, and mentors. Such a collaborative environment helps develop connections and promotes a sense of belonging within your organization.
- Automated software integration
Omni saves you from the hassle of manually managing multiple software and email accounts for new hires. With our integration capabilities, Omni enables HR teams to seamlessly integrate with your employee’s favorite apps, such as Google Workspace, Slack, Microsoft 365, and Trello, so employees can easily onboard without missing a beat.
- Personalized experience
One of the standout features of Omni for employee onboarding is our ability to provide customizable onboarding workflows. HR teams can design templates and sequences that reflect your company culture, values, and policies, all under your brand’s logos and persona for a seamless experience. With this level of customization, new hires can experience a personalized onboarding journey tailored to their roles without so much as realizing their using a software outside of your organization’s tools.
2. Greenhouse
Greenhouse streamlines the onboarding process, integrates with various HR systems, and offers automation capabilities to manage new hires efficiently. Let's look at some key features of this employee onboarding AI solution:
- Automates onboarding tasks
Greenhouse automates numerous onboarding tasks, such as sending welcome emails, assigning responsibilities, and tracking progress. HR professionals can then allocate their time to handling other critical responsibilities.
- Seamless integrations
Greenhouse offers seamless integrations with different HR systems, including payroll and learning management systems.
- Personalized onboarding plans
Greenhouse allows you to create personalized onboarding plans for every new hire considering their role, responsibilities, and experience level.
- Simplified collaboration process
Greenhouse simplifies collaboration among all stakeholders involved in onboarding, including HR professionals and mentors.
3. Enboarder
Enboarder offers many different features to streamline the onboarding process and enhance employee engagement. Some of its significant features include:
- Customized onboarding journey
The platform uses segmentation to deliver tailored content to specific employee groups, ensuring a more customized and engaging process.
- Task management
Enboarder helps companies automate onboarding tasks such as scheduling orientation sessions, collecting documentation, assigning training modules, and tracking training progress.
- Track and analyze progress
The platform’s reporting feature allows organizations to track and analyze various metrics, such as the time to complete each onboarding step, employee engagement levels, and feedback from new employees.
Revolutionize Your Onboarding Process With Omni
Omni's fully automated platform is the go-to solution for modern, growing businesses seeking a reliable employee onboarding system. By automating manual onboarding tasks, Omni saves you time and effort, allowing you to focus on more strategic aspects of your business.
With Omni, you can easily collect and manage all the necessary employee documents in one secure location, eliminating the hassle of sifting through paperwork. But it doesn't stop there — Omni goes the extra mile by enabling you to fully personalize the onboarding experience. With our customer care supported implementation process, you can tap into increased engagement levels for your new hires, setting the stage for their long-term success within your organization while receiving world-class support from our attentive support team.
If you're ready to witness the exceptional features of this employee onboarding AI solution firsthand, book a free trial today!
%20(1).avif)
%20(1).avif)
