Onboarding Software for Businesses Big and Small

You’ve heard of digital employee onboarding software, but what’s the big deal? Why are so many businesses in a variety of industries standardizing their onboarding processes with software? It comes down to the massive job that all companies have today: attract, recruit, and retain the most talented and dedicated workers.  

While the attracting and recruiting part may seem like the biggest battle, it’s just the first step. Once you find the right talent and agree on everything from pay to work hours and location, the second step is to integrate that talent into your existing team. If you do this right, you will have a great start to retaining your employees long term.

When you think about the turnover rates in your company and for your industry in general, you may find that the real battle isn’t in finding great employees. Getting them up to speed quickly so that they can deliver real value to your company while earning their loyalty is the hardest part of the process. 

Thankfully, you have onboarding software to make welcoming new talent to the team faster, easier, and far more efficient. 

Well-developed onboarding systems are critical for a few reasons: 

• Studies have shown that well-developed onboarding processes increase employee retention by more than 80%. When you consider the cost of talent retention, it’s clear that improving retention is a money-saving matter as well as an operational matter. 
• Research has also shown that employee productivity increases by more than 70% when onboarding processes are standardized. New hires absorb an extraordinary amount of information in little time and move on from orientation to productive work rapidly. 
• The right onboarding strategy will remove stress from newly hired talent as well as existing team members at all levels. Remote onboarding software gives new talent the resources they need to integrate and grow without interrupting the flow of work already taking place. 

Bringing in much-needed talent shouldn’t disrupt or distract your existing team. Instead of requiring other employees to drop what they’re doing to socialize and integrate new hires, you can use online employee onboarding systems to do the job faster and more efficiently. Let’s look at how it all works.

SaaS Onboarding Software

‍We’ve established that you need an efficient digital onboarding system. The next question is how you set that up quickly and ensure that your new talent has a rewarding experience that serves as a memorable first impression for your company. SaaS onboarding software is the answer. 

SaaS stands for Software as a Service. It’s a general category that includes a wide variety of software programs designed to consolidate apps and services into one user-friendly, comprehensive system that operates virtually. When applied to the onboarding process, it allows you to take all of the resources that you might otherwise and combine them into one software. 

Instead of presenting a slideshow in one program, videos in another program, and written material in yet another, you can combine all of that content into one portal. There are many benefits to doing that: 

• It’s faster and easier. You will spend less time creating and organizing content. More importantly, you won’t have to do that work for every new hire. Put together an efficient system and launch it for every employee onboarded in the future. 
• It’s more organized, which means less confusing. Your new employees don’t have to jump between Zoom calls, Slack threads, calendars, websites, and emailed materials. That disorganization leaves many overwhelmed and increases the number of tasks that some will miss entirely. Putting everything in one place improves productivity and ensures no one misses information or required training. 
• It improves productivity right from the start. Employees can work through onboarding faster when everything is organized and easy to access. They’re also less likely to bother other employees with questions about what they need to do and when. 
  

Finding the right B2B SaaS onboarding software is the first step to simplifying and organizing your onboarding process. Customizing that software to ensure it follows all recommended software onboarding best practices and meets your unique needs is the next step. 

The following SaaS onboarding checklist will give you a general idea of what it takes to create a systemized onboarding process that works: 

• Break processes into short steps that are easy to complete. 
• Simplify language so that even those with zero experience can understand every step of the process. 
• Use progress bars to give a fast, fun report on where employees are in the process. 
• Make it clear what type of support is available plus how and when new hires may utilize it. 
• Link out to secondary resources as needed but try to incorporate as much of the training into your software as possible. 
• Use tracking to quickly assess what information and skills a new hire has and has not mastered. 
• Make sure users can save progress when exiting the platform. You don’t want them to start a task over if they’re interrupted by a required break or meeting. 
  

Best Onboarding Software

At this point, it’s clear that SaaS digital onboarding software has many benefits. You even have at least a beginner’s understanding of what features you should include when setting up an employee onboarding application. Simple things like completion bars and saved progress can make or break the experience for your new hires. 

That means you need to select the best employee onboarding software to ensure you have the features you need to create a stellar onboarding process. Take the following steps to size up your options and make an informed decision. 

Identify Essential Features 

What features do you absolutely need to properly onboard new talent? Think about the type of information you need to present and the interactive processes that are essential to your training. Don’t stop at the first day or week of an employee’s experience. What features will you need to make ongoing training efficient as well? You can then narrow your options by eliminating those unable to meet all of your needs. 

Ask for a Demo 

Reputable SaaS employee onboarding programs will allow you to test drive the system before buying into it fully. If a demo isn’t easily offered online, ask for that experience. Before you take that step, make sure you understand what experience you want your new employees to have from start to finish. 

Consider the Learning Curve

The best onboarding software is simple and easy to learn. You want your employees to move through the process as quickly as possible. They can’t do that if it takes time just to figure out the onboarding program. 

HR Onboarding Software

Remote workers have become a permanent part of the workforce, and many companies are benefiting from that transition. One of the biggest obstacles for many is transitioning from in-person onboarding procedures to virtual employee onboarding solutions. Consolidating everything into one HR onboarding software makes that process easier and significantly faster. 

Remote workers should feel just as connected to your company culture and social lines as those reporting to the office daily. They should have all the resources needed to do their jobs well while feeling like valuable assets to your business. If you don’t have the right onboarding software, you can’t create that sense of connection and unity effectively. 

In addition to investing in top quality onboarding software for small businesses, there are some extra steps you can take to get your new hires in the fold despite the distance:

• Send company swag to new hires. You can use small items like customized ink pens and t-shirts as rewards for hitting training milestones. That motivates them to continue with the process while connecting them to your brand more intimately. It also just makes training more fun. 
• Make communication with other members of the team fast and easy. They aren’t in the office, but they should have a way to easily reach those who are in-office. 
• Put faces to names. Use your employee onboarding software for small businesses to present pictures and short bios for key members of the team. Your new hires may not pass them in the hallway, but they should feel that members of management are familiar faces. 
  

Interactive Onboarding Software

If you have never used interactive onboarding software, it’s not as intimidating as it may seem right now. If you have, there are likely many features that you have yet to explore. Technology in this sphere continues to expand, giving businesses of all sizes more options to onboard new employees with less stress and greater organization. 

The first step to getting started is to brainstorm what you expect from employee onboarding services. Go through the user experience that you want each of your new hires to enjoy. Identify features that you must have to make onboarding and training software effective for your company. 

Once you have that information, you’re ready to contact us to discuss your onboarding software needs and options. We work hard to improve the onboarding process for each of our clients, allowing them to enjoy more productive, motivated, and loyal employees.