5 Common Obstacles Of Onboarding Training And How To Overcome Them With An LXP

5 Common Obstacles Of Onboarding Training And How To Overome Them With An LXP
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Summary: First impressions count, and never more so when you switch jobs and join a new organisation. The process of onboarding training that inducts new employees into an organisation should be as painless and effective as possible. The arrival of LXPs provides a means to deliver more efficient training, overcome obstacles, and make onboarding a beneficial and memorable experience.

How To Solve Common Employee Onboarding Challenges With An LXP

Are you facing several employee onboarding challenges? We all do. Onboarding training is designed to introduce new employees to the organisation and get them working productively. A key part of that task is orientation, but it comes precisely at the time when employees feel most disoriented. They want to demonstrate their value, but at the same time they’re faced with a lot to learn, not just about their new role, but about their new organisation’s culture and processes too. And, they’re also being asked to integrate into a new team. It’s no wonder that onboarding can feel an overwhelming and isolating experience and that new employees might question whether they’ve made the right move.

eBook Release: Power Employee Onboarding Using A Learning Experience Platform (LXP)
eBook Release
Power Employee Onboarding Using A Learning Experience Platform (LXP)
Bringing the onboarding process into the 21st century with AI-driven LXP technology.

Here Are The Top Employee Onboarding Challenges Businesses Face

The vital questions that onboarding training needs to address are how to engage employees and how to make their onboarding training as relevant and productive as possible. Remember that new employees come with their own unique set of experiences so that you can’t always assume what they know and what they don’t. They also have their own clear expectations of their new environment. And, most of all, they want to demonstrate their value and do their job.

Below we’re going to look at some common obstacles to onboarding training and explore how using an LXP can help mitigate them.

1. Too Much To Process

Onboarding typically involves learning about the new organisation, being introduced to your new team and managers, and getting a sense of the organisation’s culture, as well as starting your new role. Frequently employees are deluged with information and shunted from meeting to meeting. It’s a sink or swim approach.

With such high stakes, an organisation needs to make sure that new hires don’t feel lost. Rather than throw information at them, it makes sense to give them the tools to find out what they need to know for themselves. Remember that they have prior experience and that many things will be familiar to them even in a new environment.

LXPs provide a memorable learning experience that helps employees better retain the information they access. LXPs offer a variety of resources in a variety of formats, which range from basic HR documentation to multimedia learning content. Equipped with a powerful search engine and with the potential to embed a chatbot, the LXP allows users to find the information they need when they want it. In the onboarding context, this allows employees to take charge of their own onboarding.

Also, the LXP comes with a notification system that allows HR or L&D to prompt users automatically when new or relevant information is available in a time-sensitive manner. With an LXP onboarding becomes a two-way street.

And the LXP’s collaborative functions make learning a social experience, meaning that new hires immediately feel part of a team. LXPs’ messaging functions make it easy to turn to colleagues for advice and support. Thus, this tool manages to help you solve one of the most important employee onboarding challenges.

2. Time Management

New employees are faced with conflicting priorities. They want to get to grips with their new role and become integrated into their new teams, but at the same time, they’re faced with the need to complete the onboarding training.

LXPs free up employees' time and allow them to better manage the balance between onboarding and working. LXPs are always accessible and available, not just on desktop PCs but on mobile devices too. The resources they contain are chunked for microlearning so that they’re easily and quickly digestible.

LXPs effectively extend the onboarding process. Instead of onboarding training being a discrete event that has to be completed within a certain time, and then likely forgotten, the LXP allows it to run side by side with starting your new role.

LXPs give you the option to complete onboarding at your own pace. What’s presented during onboarding training may only become relevant long after the training has effectively finished. Treating onboarding as a process both makes it easier to manage in terms of new employees’ time and emphasises its ongoing importance to what they do.

From the organisation’s perspective, the xAPI data recorded by the LXP from user interactions can be fed into a dashboard so that employees’ progress through onboarding can be easily monitored and any remedial action or intervention (reminders, notifications, requests to complete tasks, and so on) swiftly implemented.

3. Meeting The Team

Onboarding is a series of introductions. You meet your manager, HR, and possibly the CEO. But these initial encounters are rarely instantly productive and are more a case of good form than of real substance.

LXPs are social and collaborative platforms that take their lead from experiences with social media. They open up communication between individuals and teams. As you build your profile, you can see those of others. With chatbot and social media features, the LXP facilitates communication between teams and across the organisation. It allows you easy access to both information and people, especially if the organisation makes use of user-generated content to distill useful tips from experienced employees.

An LXP also gives you a graphic sense of the organisation’s structure and hierarchy that allows you to get a better grasp of your new environment.

4. Lack Of Engagement And Motivation

Onboarding training can be onerous and demotivating. It can feel like something that needs to be done and finished with. Worse, it can lead to a sense of isolation at a time when integration is the key goal. This is one of the most important employee onboarding challenges.

To counter that sense of exclusion the LXP provides a support structure that is always accessible to new hires. And the LXP sits within the workflow so that it’s accessible while you’re working. It means helps remove the fear that you’re somehow missing out.

The supportive, collaborative environment offered by an LXP rewards employees who motivate themselves. Instead of being passive recipients of onboarding training, new employees can chart their own paths through the onboarding stage, refreshing what they already know, but critically discovering for themselves what they’ll need to take away for their new roles. This may only become clear to them at a stage in their development where onboarding would typically be a fading memory. But with onboarding resources always there in the LXP, they have continuing support when they most need it. And to further aid motivation, achievement and progress through onboarding can be acknowledged and rewarded with the LXP’s system of digital badges.

5. Getting To Grips With The Culture

Yet another of those persistent employee onboarding challenges. Even an experienced new hire will need to come to terms with the new organisation’s culture. This can be as simple as just recognising the way things are done to becoming familiar with new work processes and business strategies. While onboarding training can provide a quick overview, it’s only the briefest of introductions and is not enough to equip you with all you need to navigate the culture.

LXPs both facilitate that navigation and help introduce new employees to the organisation’s culture. The LXP offers an immersive experience that gives you a view not only of your own role but also those of others and a sense of where you fit in.

LXPs can go further and become the embodiment of an organisation’s culture. Their emphasis on collaborative and social interaction underlines the importance of teamwork. Making the LXP your primary learning tool amounts to a statement that learning and working are interlinked, that the culture of the organisation is one of continuous learning, and that onboarding is just the start and not the end of your inclusion into the organisation.

Removing The Employee Onboarding Challenges

Successful onboarding training can be the difference between retaining and losing new hires. The obstacles are clear, but with an LXP you can tackle them head-on. By prioritising relevance and collaboration, LXPs make the onboarding process more engaging and encompassing.

The self-serve model of presenting information and learning offers support for time-pressed, potentially overwhelmed new hires. Content can be personalised to take account of individual onboarding needs.

For HR, LXPs offer the chance to track what’s working and what isn’t so that they can intervene to keep new employees on track.

In short, the learning experience that LXPs provides ensures that onboarding makes an effective and memorable first impression. Download the eBook Power Employee Onboarding Using A Learning Experience Platform (LXP) to discover more about the topic, and join the webinar for supplementary insights.

Sources:

The Onboarding Process: How To Help New Hires Adapt To A New Environment

Stream LXP

Are you experienced? An insight into Learning Experience Platforms

Re-Think Your Onboarding With Creative eLearning Techniques

The HT2 Labs Guide To Learning Experience Platforms

7 Problems With Your Onboarding Program