Employee onboarding is the process of introducing and onboarding a new employee into an organization. Typically, this process involves providing the employee all information about the company, its culture, policies and procedures, as well as training them on their job duties and responsibilities.
A good onboarding process should make the new employee comfortable and supported in their new role, ensuring they receive all the necessary knowledge to be successful in their job. However, this important step into the employee lifecycle can bring a lot of challenges to companies that need to regularly face these repetitive processes.
This article will explain how recent AI technologies can be used to automate new employee onboarding, helping them to become far more productive and efficient.
How to onboard a new employee?
Onboarding is a crucial step in a new employee’s life cycle. It helps them to get used to their role, understand how the company works from the inside and what it has to offer.
Usually, organizations follow these steps when they onboard a new employee:
Before D-Day:
- Make sure that workspace, equipment and any necessary training materials are ready for the newcomer.
D-Day:
- Welcome and introduce them to their team, managers or stakeholders on their first day.
- Give theman overview of the company, including its mission, values, and culture.
- Make sure they understand the company's policies and procedures, including any rules and regulations that they need to follow.
- Give them the training and support they need to learn their job duties and responsibilities. This may involve hands-on training, as well as information about any tools or systems that they will be using.
- Show them how to use any tools or systems that they will be using in their job, and provide them with any necessary login information.
- Share with them the company’s expectations for their new role, including any performance metrics or goals.
After D-Day:
- Check in with them regularly to see how they are doing and offer any support they may need. Make sure they feel supported and happy within their new position.
New employee onboarding is a long and somewhat complicated process to go through, proportional to the size and complexity of a business and challenges HR have to face are numerous…
Four Onboarding Main Challenges:
Onboarding new employees requires a significant investment of time and resources if a company wants to have it done properly. It has the potential to create the following challenges:
- Time constraints: Onboarding often involves a lot of training and information-sharing, which can be time-consuming for both the new employee and the company. Companies that are welcoming and onboarding new hires every day are already familiar with this.
- Lack of standardisation: Departments or teams within a company may have different onboarding processes, which can lead to confusion and inconsistency for new employees.
- Difficulty building relationships: Onboarding is not just about providing information and training, but also about helping new employees feel connected to the organization and their colleagues. This is even more complicated when the position is 100% remote.
- Cost: Onboarding can be expensive, especially if companies need to recruit and dedicate one or several HR employees to the task.
To overcome these challenges, companies need to have a well-planned and structured onboarding process that is efficient, standardized and personalized for each new employee.
Over the last years, more and more of them have invested in conversational AI solutions to help them deal with these different challenges.
What is conversational AI, in short?
Conversational AI is a type of artificial intelligence that is designed to simulate conversation with human users. Basically, it’s a conversational chatbot which is an AI-powered program to perform tasks and provide information and assistance on request.
Check out how some companies are already using conversational AI solutions to support their employees better:
AkerBP
AkerBP's groups have rolled out extensive internal support, offering their staff round-the-clock assistance. This guarantees that their team can tap into immediate help and resources whenever required. Through this effort, the company has boosted employee efficiency, happiness, and welfare, simultaneously streamlining business processes and minimizing delays. Learn more here.
MSU Federal Credit Union
The US Credit Union significantly improved their operational efficiency, time management, and member services by implementing two virtual agents, streamlining various processes for their 260,000 members. These advanced AI-powered agents efficiently resolved numerous member inquiries, effectively reduced wait times, and provided customized financial advice, greatly contributing to the credit union's overall growth and high member satisfaction rates. Check more here.
Using conversational AI for employee onboarding:
Starting a new job can be a stressful time.Every newcomer needs to get used to his new working environment, introducing themselves to new colleagues, discovering new tools to work with and rules to learn. They also need to get used to the company culture, policies and procedures.
Most of the time, an HR manager would spend some time with them - from several hours to several days - to help explore the new environment and be there to answer any questions.
Let’s be frank, the questions are often the same for any newcomer:
- “How is the company VPN working?”
- “How can I print a file?”
- “When will I meet my manager?”
All of these requests could easily be managed and answered by an internal chatbot. That’s why using conversational AI is more and more considered as an employee onboarding best practice for companies of any industry, facing regular recruitments and onboardings.
With such technology, companies can:
- Save Time and Money: answering frequently asked questions and providing information about company policies and procedures without any human support.
- Improve Accessibility: allowing new employees to get the information they need on their own time and preferred device.
- Increase New Employee Engagement and Satisfaction: receiving personalized and timely support during their onboarding process.
Conversational AI can be a great asset to transform and improve your employee onboarding process and opting for an AI employee onboarding software is not that complicated anymore.
Boost.ai, for instance, is helping out more and more companies with itshelpdesk chatbotthat may be used as employee onboarding solution, allowing its clients to save time and money and improve the productivity and efficiency of their internal processes.