Why integrate an onboarding solution into your SWP
The terms onboarding and offboarding are part of the human resources lexicon. They represent two common but nevertheless important stages in the life of a company: the entry and exit of an employee from the workforce. The quality of an employee’s welcome is a determining factor; it must enable him or her to assimilate the company’s culture and facilitate integration in order to be quickly operational. The importance of the departure should not be underestimated, and not only to ensure the proper transmission of information and files.
Preparing and organizing the arrival of an employee with an onboarding solution
Onboarding includes all the tasks that need to be accomplished when a new employee is hired for a specific position. This process concerns both a new employee and an employee who changes positions within the company. It starts as soon as the candidate accepts the job offer.
Between the time spent carrying out the recruitment process, any services provided by recruitment agencies, the purchase and installation of equipment (computers, furniture, access badges, etc.), integration and training, the cost of hiring is estimated at one year’s gross salary for the new employee. It is easy to imagine why more and more companies have become interested in the subject in recent years, starting with those recruiting in a market under pressure.
The integration of an employee therefore requires a well-oiled process to avoid losing a valuable employee due to a bad first impression. According to Guillaume Allain, an HRIS expert, 3.8% of new employees leave on their first day of work, and according to the consulting firm Deloitte, more than 22% quit in the first few months after being hired.
The impact of these failed recruitments is not to be neglected, whether for reasons linked with brand image, finance or productivity.
The employee will have many challenges to take up on arrival: adaptation to the company’s culture, taking up a new position, meeting new colleagues, integration, sometimes even discovering a new city… Onboarding helps limit the uncertainty he or she may feel and helps him or her project themselves within the company over the long term.
The arrival process in practice
- Before the arrival of the employeeAlthough certain tasks are naturally delegated to the HR Director, such as the creation of the HR file (identity, contact details, social security number, bank details, etc.), its integration is a concern for everyone.
- Le responsable RH takes on the role of leader to mobilise the various departments affected by the arrival of an employee
- The manager: prepares the welcome programme and anticipates the training programme
- The IT department: configures the newcomer’s email accounts and hardware
- The administrative assistant or office manager: hands out the keys, access badge, etc.
- The HR assistant or payroll manager: integrates the employee’s HR data into his or her payroll plan and develops the calculation criteria for the newcomer’s salary
- The coach (an employee): accompanies the integration of the employee, explains the culture and rituals of the company.
- The day of the arrivalFeeling awaited fulfils a need for recognition. It may seem trivial, but a good part of successful integration involves a welcoming by the manager and an introduction to the whole team as well as ready and functional equipment.Ideally, the manager prepares the planning of the new employee in advance and at least for the first day: tour of the teams, discovery of the company’s products and services, presentation of the strategic vision, familiarization with current projects and their importance for the company…
- The following days or weeksIt is important to allow the employee to celebrate his or her first achievements as soon as possible. At Lucca, for example, an editor must quickly publish his first article, a sales person must make his first demo or a consultant must respond to his first support requests.The HRD must play an advisory role in this process and ensure that the integration is personalised. Let’s take the example of a freelancer who joins a company to regain a teamwork atmosphere. The HRD will have to inform the manager not to assign him tasks where he would have no interaction with his colleagues.
Anticipate and manage the departure of an employee with offboarding
Offboarding is the opposite of onboarding and prepares the departure of an employee from his or her position or the company.
If it is badly managed, it will have a negative impact on the teams: loss of knowledge and skills, overloaded teams that have to compensate for the employee’s departure, loss of productivity, data protection…
The offboarding process in practice
- Before the departure of the employeeThe manager must take care to no longer allocate projects whose completion time would go beyond the employee’s departure date and to give priority to missions intended to document his actions (CRM, memos, activity reports…). It also ensures that ongoing projects or client files are passed on to other team members or to a replacement.
- The day of departureThe employee is received by his manager to make an end-of-assignment assessment. All equipment previously allocated is returned. He or she carries out administrative tasks with the HR department (final payment, end-of-contract certificates, etc.). The employee’s access rights and accounts are closed.
- After the departureA few weeks after the employee’s departure, consider contacting him/her again to offer to join the former employees’ club and regularly invite him/her to attend events (formal or informal).
Automating arrival and departure procedures: key features
The multitude of tasks makes these two procedures particularly burdensome for the HR department, which finds itself being:
- The coordinator of the various departments involved,
- The department responsible for the knowledge and correct application of procedures by managers,
- The time keeper to make sure everything is ready on time,
- The person in charge of customizing the process for each employee.
Customize the management of the company’s arrivals and departures
The customization of the different phases of onboarding and offboarding necessarily impacts the collaborator’s experience. Handling each arrival manually is unmanageable in a context of increasing staff numbers. To industrialize your process, you will have to invest in a tool. There are many of them on the market. To choose the right one for your company, make sure that it provides you with at least the following:
- A customizable welcome email template,
- The collection of administrative data via a form that can be exported to the employee’s file,
- The establishment of a list of tasks to be carried out and to assign a person in charge of them,
- The possibility to set up task due date alerts.
Anticipate the tasks to be carried out
The implementation of an onboarding / offboarding solution makes it possible to foresee all the steps to be carried out and to make them evolve through continuous improvement. Therefore, you should take care to analyze the “fresh-eyes reports” of new employees. They are a precious source of information to optimize your processes. Capitalize on best practices, add tasks to make your onboarding and offboarding processes more lively.
Sample to-do list :
| Date | Task Name | Responsable |
|---|---|---|
| Day of onboarding lauch | Notify the team | Initiator of the onboarding |
| 30 days after launch of the onboarding | Retrieve the signed contract | HR Manager |
| 30 days before the start of the contract | Purchase a PC, create and configure IDs for online tools | IT department |
| 30 days before the start of the contract | Send the list of recommended readings before onboarding | Initiator of the onboarding |
| 30 days before the start of the contract | arrange a desk | Manager |
| 3 days before the start of the contract | Add user rights on lucca online services | Initiator of the onboarding |
| 3 days before the start of the contract | Check leave entitlement and expense reports profiles | HR Manager |
| On the first day of work | Give IDs to online tools | Manager |
| On the first day of work | Explain company’s history and current strategic objectives | Manager |
| On the first day of work | Introduce the training program and the coach | Manager |
| 7 days after the start of the contract | Conduct a review after 1 week | Manager |
| 14 days after the start of the contract | Conduct a review after 2 weeks | Manager |
| 30 days after the start of the contract | Ask for a “fresh-eyes” report | HR Manager |
| 30 days after the start of the contract | Conduct a review after 1 month | Manager |
| 60 days after the start of the contract | Assessment of the trial period with the HR department | Manager |
An onboarding management tool is comparable to a conductor’s baton. It indicates to the group the pace and the different tasks to be carried out, whether it is visiting the premises, introducing the new employee to different teams or demonstrating the different internal tools (time tracking software expense reports, leave management…). It allows the new employee to complete his or her HR file even before arrival and thus devote the first day to something other than administrative paperwork.
A solution like Poplee makes it possible to configure the onboarding and offboarding process, and set up reviews down the road to ensure that the employee has had a good experience of his or her arrival.