4 Ideas to Automate Employee Onboarding

A recruit’s onboarding experience can set them up for long-term success at your organization. Approaching it proactively can ensure that your new employee feels supported, engaged, and excited from the start.

As anyone in human resources knows, the onboarding process doesn’t start on day one but includes four key phases:

• Preboarding (before your employee starts)
• Onboarding and welcome
• Training and development
• Transition into new role

Onboarding takes time, and many teams subscribe to 30-60-90 day onboarding process to pace out all the new information and training so your new team member can adapt while taking ownership of their new role.

However on the manager or human resource side, procedures can feel bulky and include tons of admin or manual data entry. Thankfully, with the right tech and discretion, HR teams can streamline an onboarding program with the right automation.

We’ll break down four ways you can bring automation into your onboarding strategy and walk you through Cooleaf’s latest feature to make onboarding easy.

Why you should consider automated onboarding (and a warning!)

Along with the administrative steps that come with a new staff member, like inputting employee info into your HRIS or benefits, talent and hiring managers are tasked with creating a holistic experience that feels welcoming and informative.

An automated onboarding process can utilize templates to reduce human error and be less time-consuming for everyone involved. It would ensure that your HR team and hiring managers are using their time and resources more effectively.

Rather than drowning in paperwork or tracking employees for information, your teams can focus on engagement and connection instead.

Just be warned: relying too much on automation can remove some of the connection and warmth. Think about it, if you were only speaking to chatbots on your first day at a new company, you wouldn’t have the best first impression.

And you don’t want to reduce morale and engagement right off the bat. About 57 percent of employees leave an organization because of a lack of respect.

When you look at potential employee onboarding automation, be sure to review your procedure thoroughly so you can determine what needs to stay a manual process or what you can pass along to automation software.

Here are 4 Ideas to Automate Your Employee Onboarding Process

1. Preboarding Checklist

Before your recruit’s first day, your HR team already has administrative tasks like creating a new employee profile in your HRIS, adding the new account to appropriate software channels like Microsoft or Slack, sending out a welcome email, informing the team . . . the list goes on!

Apps like Cooleaf can help create an automated employee preboarding that includes template emails for welcoming a new team member and introducing them to the organization on the Cooleaf feed, which can automate into your Slack or MS Teams channel with our integration.

On the new hire’s side they’ll get a prompt for signing up for their account and also be able to introduce themselves in their own words.

For preboarding, we at Cooleaf also love to send a coffee gift card and swag box to our new hires. It feels more personal, especially since we’re a remote team.

2. Orientation Activities & Training

Effective onboarding should help your new team members feel supported as they learn more about your organization, their team, and their new job. Employee onboarding software can create an automated orientation that walks your people through important information like your company history and policies.

Cooleaf’s onboarding experience allows HR teams to create a virtual tour about their company’s mission and values, and the new hire can learn through a self-guided experience and earn Cooleaf points!

You can also create a checklist for onboarding tasks where new users can take part in onboarding activities like registering their employee information in the management system or reviewing an organization chart. You would simply add what orientation activities you need accomplished to their tasks.

This can work for remote and in-house employees. Plus with apps like Cooleaf, you can add an incentive to gamify the experience and make completing that first week a little more fun and rewarding.

3. Scheduling team time and connecting new hires

Feeling that sense of authentic connection with your new team is so important, and that starts by incorporating check-ins or one-on-ones with relevant stakeholders.

For any new hire, it can be a daunting task to go ahead and schedule time on someone’s calendar, but you can find availability and schedule time with the right automation.

Apps like Donut make it fun to schedule time to connect with new team members on a recurring cadence or services like OneCal sync multiple calendars and offer a booking link. It encourages people to connect, whether they’re on a remote team or in-person.

Many organizations also connecting onboarding cohorts to help recruits feel less alone in the learning process. Set up a cohort Slack or MS Teams channel or you can create a Discussion Group on Cooleaf.

You can also incorporate your new team member into your culture of appreciation by triggering a reminder to issue a recognition, like on Cooleaf. Employee recognition is a tool you can use to empower your people and your new hires, building communication, team work, and company culture.

4. Gather Feedback

Make sure you gather feedback on your onboarding plan by automatically sending out a pulse survey to check on your recruit’s progress.

This helps the HR department track employee sentiment in real time. You can schedule a pulse survey closer to the start of their onboarding, then another survey later as your new employee feels more confident and comfortable in their role.

If you follow a 30-60-90-day plan, you can create a pulse survey after one month before following-up with a survey three months during this timeline. With Cooleaf, you can also create a 30-60-90-day onboarding plan that has new tasks triggered within the timeline, so new employees don’t feel rushed to complete everything all at once.

Be sure to keep a question open where users can input manual feedback too, and follow-up on whatever suggestions or hold-ups they might have had. This will help you refine your own strategy, so you can continuously make your automated process stronger and feel more connected.

Download our remote onboarding checklist

The onboarding process is your first step to creating an engaging employee experience. Onboarding is not only an opportunity for your new team member, but for you to make a first impression. Setting the tone with a thoughtful game plan feeds into your company culture long term. And with the right tools and tech today, HR professionals can cut back on admin time and focus on your organization’s people.

Along with automating your procedure, you can also download Cooleaf’s free Remote Onboarding Checklist to help you create a holistic experience that puts your new team member first.

Or if you’d like to see Cooleaf’s onboarding feature, let us know! We’re here to help make your day-to-day easy with the right tools.