3 Onboarding Mistakes that Companies Make and How To Combat Them
The primary goal for onboarding programs in most companies is to get employees assimilated quickly into the company, to get them to perform at a substantial level of productivity in the shortest amount of time. This is essentially taking a new hire from zero to hero amidst the pressures created by limited resources, deadlines and KPIs.It’s a daunting task, which is difficult to execute effectively. This is evident by the many onboarding mistakes that happen sometimes even to the best companies.Allow me to present to you 3 big mistakes that companies commit with their onboarding programs.
Mistake #1 – Overloading
Trying to cover an extensive amount of company information in a day is not only ambitious but it’s also not very effective. When new employees are bombarded with information spanning from HR policies, to roles and responsibilities and to details of the company’s mission and vision on top of orientation information, there’s a lot of pressure placed on these new employees. And it’s most likely, that by the end of the day, they would have failed to retain most of the information.
Mistake #2 – Onboarding in a day
Programs that fail to extend the onboarding training beyond a couple of workshops might hurt the employees’ chances of assimilating properly into the company. An employee might not be able to retain everything he’s learnt in the workshops, and if there isn’t much support after the workshops have ended, then it could lead to more errors on the job and a longer time to productivity.
Mistake #3 – One-size-fits-all approach
Having a one-size-fits-all learning approach might seem to be the most cost-efficient way of transferring knowledge to new employees, however, it’s a critical mistake when the diversity of new hires are not taken into account. Different people learn differently, and ensuring that critical job-related information is imparted to them according to their needs at the start of their employment, will yield a greater return in the future.
The Online Onboarding Solution
The 3 mistakes that I have mentioned can be tackled head on with online onboarding solutions
- Having all onboarding materials online
Simply having a digital equivalent for all onboarding content helps to overcome Mistakes #1 and #2. Firstly, online content can be assigned as a pre-reading before workshops. In this way, only the most critical points need to be covered in the face-to-face workshops. New employees get to digest the material better in workshops having accessed it before.Secondly, having online content that is always accessible means employees can go through content they may have missed out earlier on. Having an online guide provides constant support to new employees and helps to remove the need for holding additional workshops. Not only that, this brings a component of e-learning called Just In Time (JIT) Learning, where content can be accessed easily (usually via mobile devices) as and when it is needed. Employees get to revisit the content when it is required of them. - Online onboarding for diverse learners
Online onboarding activities can be flexibly designed to take into account the needs of individual learners. For instance, new employees could take an online assessment before the workshops, and with the results instructors can pinpoint areas within the content that people struggle with and address these issues during the workshop. In this way, workshops can be more customized to the needs of the new employees. Additionally, there’s the potential for online content to be delivered in a more engaging manner and that takes into account the different ways that people process information. Online content creators have a rich variety of different forms of media that can be incorporated at their disposal, such as video demonstrations or re-enactments, scenario-based games, sound clips, interactive quizzes, animations and illustrations.
Can you think of other onboarding mistakes? Thought of a solution for them? Share them with us in the comments below.
