How to Successfully Automate the Onboarding Process Leveraging Office 365 and a Digital Workplace

4/3/2017

Hiring new employees can be a long, complicated, and tedious process. Department managers and staff in charge with selecting and hiring an employee must weed through hundreds of resumes, spend hours interviewing candidates, and finally select the candidate who is not only right for the business but also for the position.

Once an employment position is filled, it might seem as though the hard work is over. On the contrary, the hard work is just beginning. Employee success often begins with how quickly and how effortlessly they can get up to speed at the business, within the role they will play, and the duties they will perform.

Additionally, onboarding new employees involve tasks not just related to the human resources department but the department for which they will work, and possibly others. This can lead to complications for HR because now they must cross-functionally track and manage tasks. Not only must HR staff track and manage the tasks that are related directly to HR, but they must stay in step with tasks associated with other departments that are in line with current rules and regulations.

With so many tasks to fulfill, it’s crucial to have a structured onboarding process in place that gets the employee up to speed quickly to ensure his or her long-term success. These tasks that are essential for the new employee's first couple of weeks include filling out paperwork, familiarizing the new employee with company policies, offering any available training, allocating the employee with the appropriate technology to perform the job, setting up login information, providing access to online tools and services, introducing them to other employees with whom they will be working and forging strong team relationships that leads to increased efficiency.

They might seem like standard tasks but they are essential to a strong, successful employee who is loyal to the business and puts forth his or her best work.

From an HR Manager's perspective, the onboarding process can be truly challenging to track, which impacts the ability of the new employee to work and complete tasks beyond just paperwork. The entire process can be chaotic considering what is involved.

Empowering new employees with a MyHR Portal and the ability to complete, manage, and track tasks at their own pace sets up a path for what to expect in being an integral part of the business and sets them up for future success.

For HR staff, an inadequate onboarding process creates chaos in its own regard through redundant tasks, missed items on an onboarding checklist, or time wasted fixing or resolving issues with the onboarding process.

Another challenge with a poorly structured onboarding process is the ability to track and manage tasks, what the new employee has completed and what needs to be completed. If the employee is working remotely or is located at another facility, onboarding can be doubly challenging.

It might seem like an unfixable problem, but setting up a successful onboarding program is easier than you think. Office 365 provides the foundation to begin revitalizing a business’ onboarding process. But, add an operational portal for HR that allows staff and departments to work together, track and manage tasks across departments, and provides a New Hire portal for the new employee eliminates the chaos and promotes efficiency and calm.

With SP Onboarding Application, part of an HR Operational Portal, human resources staff can create an onboarding checklist and share it with others involved with the process. When the employee starts, they can immediately log in to the New Hire portal, receive a customized Welcome message along with relevant information and documents that gets them comfortable on the first day.

With this self-service function in SP Onboarding Application, the new employee can see assigned tasks, allowing management and other department staff to track progress through their own department portals. When a task is completed, an automatic alert previously set up goes out to all relevant parties. Onboarding reports keep HR staff updated on the entire process.

If the employee needs to reference a document or policy, everything is centrally located in the New Hire portal, eliminating the need to search for the right person to retrieve a copy of the document, which saves time.

Additionally, with an onboarding application like this that leverages Office 365 and a Digital Workplace, HR staff not only can manage the onboarding process but also offboarding, when an employee leaves, is transferred, laid off or terminated. It allows department staff and management to see what needs to be completed or retrieved, such as the employee’s computer, login information, or files.

To learn more about how your business can automate the onboarding process with an application integrated with Office 365, visit us online at www.spmarketplace.com.

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