A strong and proactive onboarding process ensures that; your employees engage with their role right from the start, keeps employee retention high, and increases productivity from the beginning. As onboarding is a vital stage in the employee lifecycle and can be time-consuming and resource-intensive if the steps are structured inefficiently. It is important to find the right onboarding structure for your company, involve the right people, and implement the right tools and software.
HR softwares help HR professionals automate onboarding, collect and store important employee data, and scale onboarding content.
Choosing the right onboarding tools can make or break if you want to provide your new hires with a smooth entry to the company.
At Audvice, we work with different tools that help our HR team to focus on the right things at the right time while still engaging with new talent.
In this blog post, we want to share some insights on the tools we use, including our app audvice, to foster an efficient, fast, and highly personalized onboarding experience for our new hires.
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#1 Hiring
When hiring, the most vital tool is an Applicant Tracking Software (ATS). It helps companies organize candidates for hiring and recruiting purposes by collecting information, filtering applicants, and facilitating communication. For example, at audvice, we use Personio as our ATS as it helps us to automize communication with candidates, but the right choice here heavily depends on your company size and recruiting purposes.
It is important to make sure that your candidates have a positive recruitment experience, even if they don’t end up in your company.
You want all candidates to receive the right messages at the right time. You also want to be transparent, setting expectations as to when they will receive information from you and on what basis you make decisions so that they view you as an employer they can trust and for whom they want to work. At the same time, our ATS also enhances transparency internally, as all of the team members who are involved in the hiring process of a candidate get access to their hiring data. Ensuring, however, only those who need access can see which actions are being taken and at which stage of the hiring process the candidate currently is.
We have found that Audvice is the perfect tool to make the hiring process even more efficient. If
you apply for a position at audvice, you will be asked to create a case study on a specific subject. Our candidates record these case studies in the form of a well-structured playlist. What we love about this is that it saves us time and meetings. We send out a briefing to the candidate, they record the playlist at the best time for them, send us the link, and our whole team can listen to the case study individually when it suits us.
That way, we can get to know the candidate and their problem-solving approach and learn more about their skill set in a personal yet time- and resource-efficient manner.
Another benefit: We can listen to these case studies while commuting, doing laundry, or taking a walk.
#2 Preboarding
Following the successful recruiting phase, let’s take a look at the next stage, the so-called preboarding process. The process can be split into two aspects: The internal preparation for the talent and the external communication with the talent.
Internal preparation means preparing all the onboarding material for your new hire and defining their onboarding schedule and tasks so that everything is set on their first day to focus on the person instead of technical tasks. During this stage, it is also important to communicate with your new hires, setting the right expectations and further exciting them to join your team.
As an HR professional, a Human Resources Management Tool (HRMS) or a Project Management Tool will provide you with the needed support during this phase. Our HR team uses automated workflows directly in Personio, which also functions as our HRMS. These workflows include checklists for all stakeholders to ensure everything is well-prepared, and all stakeholders are automatically assigned their individual tasks for each new hire.
For example, who takes care of equipment, prepares access to tools and software, and performs department-specific onboarding tasks.
We also ensure that we get our new hires excited to join the team during the preboarding stage by using audvice to communicate with them. First, we ask the new hires to record a playlist with a little introduction to themselves, which we then share with our team, so everyone can get to know the new hires better before the first meeting. Additionally, we prepare a playlist for them, outlining their first day. As you probably know, the first day in a new company is something you look forward to, but everyone gets a little nervous about it too.
That is why in these playlists, we give them a clear idea of what will happen on their first day, which meetings they will have and with whom, and what they can do to prepare. Ensuring that we reduce any first-day nerves the best we can and provide a smooth start.
Depending on your new hires' country location and notice period, the time between hiring and the actual onboarding may be extended. If that is the case, you need to ensure that you stay in contact with your new hires so that they don’t feel out of touch with the company and, in the worst-case scenario, decide to reject your job offer. One welcome email won't be enough to bridge the gap between signing and starting with the onboarding process.
We use Audvice to record personal updates from the company, which we then send to new hires with a longer preboarding phase. This makes them feel as if they are already part of the team, shows them that you value them, and keeps them up to speed, so they are aware of the status quo on their first day. Sending updates via a playlist, you record with your voice helps you address them more personally and provides the right context. Our favorite feature: new hires don’t have to register for audvice; they can simply receive this playlist via public weblink from the audvice app.
#3 Onboarding
Now it is finally time to actually onboard your new joiners. At audvice, we use two tools to onboard team members fast, quickly, structured, organized, and efficiently. The first step is a knowledge base, where we store all the important information a new joiner needs to have access to, and the second one is a project management tool for the new hires, which enables us to build onboarding ‘boards’, providing them with a structured overview of all of their onboarding tasks.
We use Audvice as our knowledge base, in combination with Notion as a project management tool, to share the onboarding tasks with our new joiners. The big advantage is that we can link a notion page in a playlist description or a playlist in a notion page. Combined, both tools offer exactly what we need to scale our onboarding process without PowerPoint and excessive meetings. Each new hire has their own onboarding board in Notion, including onboarding tasks that support them through their first weeks in their new role. Our HR Department has created a scalable onboarding template that can be adapted to the specific roles and responsibilities of the new joiners during the preboarding phase.
Another thing to consider when it comes to onboarding your new joiners is how they can meet and get to know their new colleagues. Forming personal connections with team members immediately makes new joiners feel safer and more guided and gives them a sense of belonging right from the start.
Of course, they will have personal intros to the team members they work with closely during their onboarding, but you won’t have time to schedule personal introductions with all employees.
This is where Audvice comes in again. We use our app to help our new joiners get to know our whole team. We do that by sharing a “Meet the Team” playlist with them that includes one short introduction track from every team member.
Depending on your company size, you could also introduce “Meet the Department” playlists for every department in your company. What we love most about these intro playlists is that the short tracks can be a great conversation starter when your new joiners actually meet each other and other colleagues.
The right onboarding tools will help you to track, automate and optimize all aspects of your onboarding process. However, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution, as the choice of tool to use within your company depends on your resources, goals, and size. Whatever tool you choose for these purposes, audvice will help you to ensure a smooth, personal and individualized onboarding experience for your new joiner while supporting you during the different stages of the onboarding process.
If you want to learn more about our app and how to create onboarding material that is personal yet scalable, make sure to get started for free today!