How to make digital employee onboarding part of a world-class digital employee experience
How to make digital employee onboarding part of a world-class digital employee experience
The digital employee experience from onboarding through every stage of the talent life cycle can be improved and drive business success. Here’s how.
Digital employee onboarding is the first chance HR gets to show any new joiner what organizational life will be like.
In a world where over 80% of businesses allow some form of hybrid or remote work according to Deloitte research, getting the first digital moments right is critical to showing hired talent the organization is serious about creating a great employee experience.
But digital employee onboarding isn’t simply about adapting in-person onboarding into the virtual realm. Instead, world-class organizations ensure everything from pre-boarding documentation to systems and culture orientation is in shape, but also align these first steps with other efforts to create a great digital employee experience (DEX). All in order to drive well-researched upticks in performance.
What is digital employee onboarding?
Digital employee onboarding, simply put, is about onboarding a new hire or contractor into the organization using digital tools and systems. From pre-employment welcome emails to access to digital communication channels and systems to digital induction meetups with colleagues. It all needs to be accounted for. But this isn’t just for remote or hybrid workers, it’s for any organization that has digital platforms.
This process is also not just about legal and contractual obligations. Great digital employee onboarding is about ensuring incoming employees feel grounded in the digital employee experience and organizational culture as a whole. Even if they’re remote or hybrid.
A typical digital employee onboarding experience will take into account:
● Digital pre-boarding: Typical elements of any onboarding process, inclusive of welcome emails with logins, showcasing policy, employee guides, necessary documentation via digital systems, and a full introduction to culture, values, and organizational mission.
● Platform induction & learning: Access to HRIS and other systems, introduction to learning management systems, and other workflow tools and security protocols they may need. Introduction to necessary training.
● Engagement and experience introduction: Introduction into company culture and teams via the right digital channels, first steps into typical patterns of company life including check-in points and virtual get-togethers and run-throughs of roles, tweaking systems to fit individual needs and goals.
How is the employee experience changing?
With the majority of businesses utilizing some form of digital-first work, employees increasingly expect a world-class digital experience: from digital employee onboarding to performance management and beyond.
Indeed, a great digital employee experience is a way that a given organization can stand out in an increasingly difficult talent marketplace.With only circa half of staff believing that currently digital workplace tools and processes deliver for them, its how organizations can stand out as an employer of choice.
For HR, IT, and leadership teams tasked with improving the employee experience in this digital age ensuring any efforts to boost employee life, it means the pressure is on.
In order to deliver, they might:
● Understand that getting digital employee onboarding right is not a trend and is a strategic business imperative. It means reaching talent anywhere, increasing onboarding efficiency, improving data collection on onboarding methods (to improve processes for the future), and boosting compliance.
● Use onboarding software(s) that take care of paperwork, background checks, pre-recorded culture introductions, and self-paced asynchronous learning.
● Foreground interactivity: whether thats gamified learning, introduction calls with colleagues via video platforms, or AI chatbots that help with onboarding inductions and helping onboarders get up to speed with technology.
● Personalise where possible. Delivering personalized videos from future team members and HR, creating learning tailored to the role, and allowing diary space for in-person catch-ups with the team. These processes also may have in-person elements.
● Measure the experience in onboarding: digital platforms for onboarding allow for measurement of where in the process there is friction or misunderstanding, allowing continuous improvement.
The digital employee experience: making it count
It’s clear that efforts to boost digital employee onboarding can help create digital employee experiences that stand out to top talent. As it stands only a third of employees believe their digital work experience is better than their experience of digital tools in their personal life.
But to create DEX that stands out, there needs to be a focus on more than just the introductory elements. It has to be consistent across the talent life cycle.
Therefore, building a great DEX should include:
● Ensuring everything from digital employee onboarding to performance management and communication channels are aligned. For example: Are the same chat and communication channels used for onboarding introductions in daily team interaction?
● Understanding the core tenets of any great employee experience and using those to measure the digital employee experience. This might include asking: does our digital experience promote transparency, self-ownership, fairness, and two-way communication?
● Understanding how technology choices can create both connection or fiction, support work, or impede it.
● Assess how the DEX drives both individual and organizational goals. For example: Does it help create purposeful, values-driven work that helps innovation and business goals?
Why create a digital employee experience that works?
Building and continuously improving digital life at a business, from onboarding all the way through the employee lifecycle, has the added benefit of driving innovation, engagement, and employee outcomes that can drive future success.
● A great DEX can create new incidental business channels. This is through the innovations digital brings about i.e. digital events, digital learning, and new virtual business channels.
● It can bring the arms of the organization closer together through intentional organizational redesigns, creating new organization matrices that can boost engagement and better business strategy alignment.
● There can be improved go-to-market speed with products with increased organizational revenue and improved productivity and connection by giving employees the digital tools and applications they need to succeed.
● It can enable a great business culture, better-enabling collaboration and data collection on what works helping companies to strategically double down on what works.
● It can also backstop organizational dexterity and adaptability by having continuously updated tools and digital environments that can adapt to tomorrow’s challenges at speed.
How to create a world-class digital employee experience?
From first moments to digital platform-enabled collaboration, improving the digital experience of work has to include understanding the importance of all tools, platforms, and technologies that teams use to perform their jobs and collaborate.
For organizations interested in improving the digital experience they should:
● Assess current technology and understand what the current DEX is.
● Define what an ideal experience should be and how that should support broader strategic goals.
● Select the right tools and train staff effectively.
● Measure with the right tools (which might include real-time feedback tools, the right HR analytics, and data and employee surveys).
Aligning digital employee onboarding to digital experience success
It’s critical that organisations invest in their DEX in order to create an environment that attracts and retains top talent. As laid out, this focus can help the organization boost its productivity, innovation, and revenue gains.
The Top Employers Certification program can help employers ensure that these efforts are aligned and drive toward organizational goals and success.
With over three decades of experience in shaping successful HR strategies, the certification process can help organizations benchmark and assess the digital experience they offer employees and shape them for the better with access to data-driven research and cutting-edge HR trends. Whether thats helping digital employee onboarding feel more personal or understanding how surveys can explore workforce sentiment about the technology you use.
With access to our global community, including a look at the digital experience efforts of Takeda, Lidl, and Mondelēz International, insights can be given into how to improve your own employee experience in this current era of digital work.
How to become an employer of choice is the core of what all HR activity is about.
Any people-focused strategy or scheme — be it a new performance management approach or even investing in new ergonomic office furniture — is always designed with becoming an employer choice in mind, due to the continuous need to attract and retain top talent.
With HR operating in volatile and changeable times — whether that’s Covid impacting work-as-usual, labor market upheavals, or the explosion of AI — it’s a top talent that will underlie future success.
However, attracting and acquiring top talent requires standing out from competitors. As such, for HR functions that want to attract this talent, they will be rightly asking themselves how to become an employer of choice.
This article will:
● Explain the employer of choice definition.
● Dive deeper into the business benefits of becoming an employer of choice.
● Showcase how to become an employer of choice.
What does it mean to be the employer of choice?
Defining the employer of choice is simple:it’s about an organization transforming into a workplace where talent wants to be employed. Of course, it’s also about retaining this talent for the long term.
This not a single strategy for becoming an employer of choice but contributing factors that could help include include:
fostering a positive organizational environment (through skills and career development opportunities, purposeful work, compensation and benefits, on-the-job empowerment, and positive candidate and employee experiences)
having a positive workplace culture (by driving DEI and good communication, well-being, and mental health adaptions, and individualizing work where appropriate, including maintaining a balanced work-life balance).
fostering strong values (aligning with candidate and workforce priorities and wants, driven by purpose outside of profit such as inclusivity and sustainability, and communicating this in the external and internal employer brand)
This is what I want to see: the target keyword right after the title. Although, in this specific case, when the keyword contain the word definition, repeating the exact match keyword is not the best move: Google will pay attention to the definition itself rather than the exact match keyword
How to become an employer of choice means ensuring the people strategy considers all of these critical factors.
The benefits of being an employer of choice
Before understanding what actions are necessary for becoming an employer of choice it’s critical to understand how this drives the organization’s success. Read on below to find out more.
Becoming an employer of choice makes recruitment easier.
HR needs to attract top talent. That much is clear. As per Harvard Business Review reporting, it’s this critical top talent that will have an outsized impact on business performance. Research shows that the top 1% of talent accounts for 10% of organizational output.
But how does becoming an employer of choice benefit this? Well by making the employee experience top tie, having a values-led organization, and focusing on giving your employees a choice and skills, you are likely to have a workforce that advocates for your organization to the wider market i.e. you’ve become the employer of choice.
Indeed, academic research, shared by the CIPD, finds that by becoming an employer that has a good reputation and talent wants to work for firms that outrank competitors.
The benefits of becoming an employer of mean boosted productivity and bottom-line
Employers of choice are where top talent wants to head to. And where top talent also wants to stay. By focusing on becoming an employer of choice — by improving the employee experience, focussing on reward, inclusivity, digital tools, communication, and career progression, to name but a few aspects — organizations will better attract the staff they need and boost productivity. Indeed, keeping top staff around means better knowledge, better skills, and better delivery for clients. The proof is in the stats. Glassdoor research shows companies with satisfied employees experience higher profit growth than competitors.
Improved customer satisfaction linked to being an employer of choice
ASCI found that a boost to a company’s Glassdoor rating results in a direct uptick in customer satisfaction levels. How does this work? Well focussing on improving life for employees, through their work experiences, boosts the employer brand. But the employer and the consumer brand are linked? When customers see employees are engaged, hard-working, and passionate about a product or service they’re more likely to want to inquire about what’s on offer.
Indeed, engaged employees can deliver exceptional client services and are more likely to advocate to customers about the business and what it offers
How to become an employer of choice
Employers have to act quickly on becoming an employer of choice.2024 CIPD data found that over 80% of employers are taking action to improve how desirable are meaning the competition is on
If you want to act, read below to find out more.
1. Developing a people strategy
One of the clear first steps to take to become an employer with a desirable reputation is to develop a people strategy. Why? With the definition of an employer of choice involving the whole breadth of HR’s remit — from reward to how communication channels work at an organization — it’s important to align all HR practice areas strategically and coherently in order to provide deliver for your people, showcasing to outside candidates they need to work for you.
This people strategy needs to align with the business and should also involve reviewing each facet of HR practice (from L&D to leadership impact) to see how this might bring about the employer of choice benefits.
These are strategic-minded questions that can help ensure becoming an employer of choice.
2. Being strategic with employer branding
It’s critical to get branding right when trying to stand out in the recruitment landscape. Career Arc statistics show that 75% of candidates consider branding before applying while LinkedIn figures show that the companies with the best employer brands reduce their cost per hire.
By positioning the organizational brand effectively — communicating why it is an employer of choice, why it’s a great culture, why your EVP works, and how you’re improving the employee experience — you can more effectively access top talent, and get the edge over competitors while enhancing the organizational culture.
3.Improving the employee experience
Focusing on improving the employee experience is critical. But how to do this? There’s a long list of ways to improve the employee experience: from giving employees financial stability for work undertaken, to job security or even meaningful work and appreciation.
It could mean having regular reward strategy reviews, which include the employee voice, considering individualizing jobs and projects and understanding the benefits of performance reviews.
Many employers now try and personalize the experience, critical in a multi-generational, multi-cultural workforce, focus on wellbeing (through flexible work and fair time off) and offer wide professional development opportunities.
Why is this good? It means improving every interaction the individual has with the employer, which is how organizations will get the benefits of being an employer of choice. Examples include improving communication, uprating pay, ensuring diversity and ensuring development opportunities.It could also mean focusing on trying to drive employee engagement benefits.
4. Upskilling, reskilling, focusing on reward
Showcasing you are truly becoming an employer of choice means delivering on the total employee experience once a candidate has chosen you. It means ensuring employees understand you are delivering organizational values, help with career development opportunities, and create reward which is fair for the work undertaken. It could involve bonuses, internal gig opportunities, or even an employer award.
And with so much change – the World Economic Forum found that 85 million jobs will change due to AI by next year – employees want to know that they can grow and adapt as jobs and markets do around them. To do this organizations will provide reskilling or upskilling opportunities. Not forgetting the importance of fair and adequate reward.
The latter is particularly important: Glassdoor stats show money is still the top motivator for over two-thirds of jobseekers. The subtext? How to become an employer of choice will mean investment.
Become an employer of choice with Top Employer Institute
So what next? This article has looked at truly becoming an employer of choice, detailing what is the employer of definition is, the benefits and the important strategic steps.
Indeed, making the leap to standing out to top talent will involve making the employee experience stand out, engaging employees and being strategic with it. HR has to understanding what makes your organization appealing to candidates and turning this into a strategic win.
This will involve measuring, industry and competitor benchmarking, and information gathering in order to drive to become an employer of choice.
Indeed, becoming an employer of choice involves:
● Understanding your employer brand, how this compares to competitors, and what impacts how top talent perceives you.
● Building a brilliant employee experience – from development opportunities to how values impact their work, to reward and awards – drives engagement and resonates inside and outside the organization.
● Learning how all HR initiatives drive business success and how they need to continuously evolve for future success
It’s here that Top Employer’s Certification program, driven by data-led insights and advisory expertise, can improve your people practices by benchmarking your organization’s performance against other Top Employers around the globe through data-driven research and case studies.
The Certification Program also gives dedicated employers a chance to showcase how they deliver for employees and why candidates should consider them an employer of choice, giving them a Certification Seal to stand out against peers in a tough recruitment market.
So if you are ready to learn more about what is an employer of choice and join the likes of PepsiCo, Takeda, and Volkswagen (to name but a few) start on the path of becoming an employer of choice today.
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