With the average UK staff turnover of approximately 15% a year, a fast, efficient onboarding and induction process can make all the difference to employee productivity and happiness. And with the average cost of replacing an employee now around £30,000, there is real value to getting staff up to speed as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, with the right technology, you can accelerate your onboarding and induction process and keep your IT budget in check. In turn, you’ll build a competitive advantage over companies that still reply on manual and unengaging procedures to initiate their employees.
While there are host of onboarding tools you can use, here are three ways using technology to take your onboarding and induction to the next level.
1. Manage user licenses with innovative software tools
It’s complex and time-consuming to manage user-based licenses. Setting up user subscriptions for tools like Office 365 is a headache and slows down onboarding. So, why not let software do the legwork? With licence management tools you can:
- Automate licence provisioning so your IT team can focus elsewhere.
- Achieve compliance with cloud licensing.
- Accelerate systems by integrating HR and payroll.
Empower employees to hit the ground running and use automated tools to avoid delays to resource access.
2. Use communication tools to accelerate networking and culture adoption
Only 12 percent of employees say their organisation does a great job of onboarding.
This is not surprising as 30 percent of new-hires leave a job within 90 days, with a failure to connect with the culture and build social ties are among the top contributing factors
Below are some options for using communication software to solve this problem and accelerate onboarding and induction:
- Instant messaging – tools like Microsoft Teams enable integration with colleagues and encourage a virtual water-cooler for your staff.
- Online meetings – quickly set up and hold meetings in any location. New hires in retail stores across the country can now meet key members of your head office in their first week, without prohibitive travel costs. Microsoft Teams also provides this functionality.
- Project management – manage projects and provide instant visibility for all new staff members. New supervisor required to roll out this season’s sale at the weekend? They can now follow task checklists, without needing the store manager to be there.
Communication tools like these provides a secure, seamless way for new-hires to build colleague relationships, engage with your culture and immediately understand their workloads.
3. Embrace virtual desktops for new-hire integration, education and engagement
Conventionally, new hires receive a paper dossier on their first day – an ‘information pack’ that’s full of educational materials and company policies. But what if new-hires could receive this information as soon as they’re hired, in a more compelling way, and at a lower cost?
That’s exactly what virtual desktops can help you deliver. Benefits of virtual desktops include:
- Reduced cost – only one system needs updates and patches, compared to the costly alternative of updating many individual devices.
- Easily updatable – new insights and best-practices are immediately distributed.
- No hardware purchases – new-hires can work from their own devices, saving you money.
With VDI (Virtual desktop infrastructure), new hires can now log in to your online portal immediately and access all the resources they’ll need.
Accelerate onboarding and induction with innovative technology
Accelerating onboarding and induction reduces costs and improves productivity, with technology the key catalyst for this change. The HR community shares this consensus, with 36 percent of HR professionals citing inadequate technology as the main obstacle for automating and improving their onboarding processes.
While it can take time to identify and implement the right onboarding technology into your business, making small changes can have a huge impact. Starting out with something as simple as automated license management will accelerate your onboarding and induction process and make it easier to integrate retail staff into working life.
To learn more about the ways Redcentric can help you deliver a profitable and efficient onboarding process, contact us today.
