Developing In-House Versus Employee Onboarding Outsourcing: What's The Best Solution For Your Business Needs?

Developing In-House Versus Employee Onboarding Outsourcing: What's The Best Solution For Your Business Needs?
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Summary: Should you hire an employee onboarding outsourcing partner or develop in-house? Let's look at some questions to help you decide.

Is Employee Onboarding Outsourcing Right For You?

You’re busy managing employee training, and it’s up to you to determine how to best create effective training. Here are the things to consider when deciding if you should hire a learning supplier:

  1. Do you have the internal expertise required to make the training effective and innovative?
  2. What are the desired outcomes of the effort for you, the business unit, the company, or the audience?
  3. Is the effort highly visible or is it helping support a major change effort?
  4. Is there a tight timeline that needs to be met that your current resources cannot accommodate?
eBook Release: Employee Onboarding: A Process For The Future Of Work
eBook Release
Employee Onboarding: A Process For The Future Of Work
Discover strategies, technologies, and approaches you can use to develop effective employee onboarding programs that leave a lasting impression!

The Impact Of Employee Onboarding On Corporate Training ROI

When done right, employee onboarding is an incredibly impactful process that can improve retention19, shorten time to competency, and increase performance21. As employees become better equipped to excel in their new role through engaging training and internalizing your training narrative, it will show in all their interactions, and not just those directly related to their job. They internalize your narrative and pass it on through social modeling. And, while great corporate training is certainly much more than a Net Promotor Score campaign, the word-of-mouth effect is a notable bonus.

So, how can you redesign an employee onboarding program to have a greater impact? One way is to reframe and expand upon our idea of onboarding. New hire onboarding should start earlier and continue later into the employee experience. For example, our onboarding model describes a phased approach:

  1. Preboarding – Forming Connections
  2. Onboarding – Building Confidence
  3. Continuous – Making Contributions

Instead of focusing solely on the initial training event, start building professional and social connections as soon as an employee accepts their employment offer. Provide continuous support as employees apply training to their new roles. Ultimately, speed to competency, engagement, and employee performance will improve as we provide more effective employee integration and support.

The Kirkpatrick Model

However, learning and development teams often struggle to accurately measure the effectiveness of their onboarding programs. The Kirkpatrick Model describes four levels of measurement:

  1. Participants react favorably to the training
  2. Participants acquire the intended knowledge, skills, attitudes, confidence, and commitment based on their participation in the training
  3. Participants apply what they learned during training when they are back on the job
  4. Targeted outcomes occur as a result of the training event and subsequent reinforcement

Accurately Measuring ROI

The success of corporate training is grounded more so in enjoyment than behavioral change. How can we accurately measure ROI, and are the standard measurements truly informative?

Measurement is difficult, but it’s possible. Measuring the impact of corporate training is much more manageable when:

  • Content management systems (i.e., Learning Portals or LMS) integrate with performance management and business intelligence platforms
  • Knowledge base and behavioral outcomes are tied to well-establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
  • Time and resources dedicated to follow up training with data analysis

If you can manage to design your employee onboarding with those KPIs in mind, then you can begin to address some of these challenges and measure ROI. At the very least, it will be easier to measure performance pre-and post-training.

How We Can Help

Consulting And Analysis

Our training consultants utilize a variety of assessment methodologies to ensure your training initiatives meet your business objectives. The AllenComm Rapid Needs Analysis helps you get to the bottom of your training challenges quickly and effectively. Or we can work with you through an Extensive Needs Analysis to determine the best plan of action based on data we gather together.

Design And Development

The training at your company needs to have an impact. Our approach to building a learning experience starts with a detailed performance mapping process to make sure our design precisely matches your business objectives and fits your learners’ needs. This sets the tone for the entire project and results in an impactful training experience.

Learning Technologies

Your company’s training needs to be innovative. Our focus on using the right technology for your organization’s unique training needs means we will explore the best methods to get the job done. Whether we develop a training solution with gamification and AR/VR, or we combine motion graphics and microlearning in a blended learning solution, the result will be innovative, engaging, and scalable.

Conclusion

Download the eBook Employee Onboarding: A Process For The Future Of Work to launch a top-notch new hire training program that's engaging, inspiring, and employee-centered. You can also join the webinar to learn what it takes to improve your teammates' capabilities and build crucial skills.