Welcome to the final blog in our three-part employee onboarding series. Last time we discussed how you can get onboarding right and retain those new hires. This week we are going to discuss how HR managers use technology to create great onboarding programmes.
eLearning can play an important role in creating an engaging and smooth onboarding process for new starters to your business. The teaching and learning international survey (TAILS) found onboarding to be a major priority for two-thirds of respondents. Almost that same number use a technology-based solution for onboarding – more than half use eLearning.
Why is this the case and how are they using technology?
The value of Microlearning during onboarding
Microlearning can be an excellent way to introduce employees to your company’s policies and overall culture. For example, training units can cover such diverse topics as proper office behaviour and attire, office equipment use, leave policy, career advancement paths, and organizational structure. Short, bite-sized content, allows for new starters to take the content in digestible chunks that they can re-visit as needs be. Microlearning is an ideal addition to your onboarding online training. It gives employees the opportunity to brush up on skills and explore job-related tasks in a fraction of the time.
Skill-based branching scenarios
Certain skills are difficult to develop by just reading about them or watching a video. We need to practice to complete the learning loop for most skills. But how can we do this via online learning? Branching scenarios are one solution. They use characters, facts and realistic situations that help employees build vital skills. Every choice they make takes them down a different path. As such, they’re able to see how their actions and behaviours affect the outcome.
Mobile Accessible, Updated Content
Online training has evolved over the years, where many organisations are still using content that was developed before the adoption of mobile. Have you made your online training material mobile friendly? Is your content updated anually? Using outdated resources discourages new employees. Millennials especially will fail to connect to your onboarding online training if your methods are not up to date.
Tracking
Any decent Learning Management System will actually get you closer to your business goals by enabling you to track the entire online onboarding training progress. Onboarding is a continuous process, so use this data to continually improve your onboarding process. What worked well? What did not? What competence and confidence levels did new starters have in week two versus week thirty-two?
To Recap
eLearning tools are being used by HR managers to create a successful eLearning process resulting in an engagement strategy that retains new employees. Creating an onboarding programme through eLearning helps:
a) Employees build vital skills.
b) Employers connect with the modern learner.
c) HR managers to track the progress of new hires.
If you would like to have a customised onboarding programme created for your team just contact us here and see how we can help.