Companies everywhere invest heavily in hiring and recruitment. But the difference between a successful recruitment and that investment going down the drain has nothing to do with hiring. 

That’s because your onboarding process will decide whether your new hires are set up for immediate and long-term success or decide to leave and go elsewhere within a few months. 

In this blog, we’ll go over everything you need to know to turn onboarding from weakness to strength and how solutions like Hire2Retire can help you automate your onboarding process.

With the strategies you learn today, you’ll be able to provide a consistent and effective onboarding experience that improves productivity, drives retention, and saves money, providing ROI for every new hire your organization makes.

What Happens When a New Hire is Onboarded?

Onboarding is a long-term endeavor that can take months after a new hire starts working at their new job and requires HR and IT involvement. 

However, onboarding processes can be split into two core sections: the tasks that happen between offer acceptance and the new hire’s first day, and the tasks that happen after the first day is over.

Before the Employee’s First Day of Work (Preboarding)

A new hire’s first day of work is full of excitement, but also uncertainty. Will their new manager and team get along with them? When can they start contributing?

The last thing they need to be focused on is filling out new hire paperwork or making sure their equipment is properly set up.

As such, HR and IT teams should perform the following tasks before the new hire’s first day.

HR Onboarding Tasks

• Create the new hire’s HRIS and/or HCM profile.
• Fill out tax documents (W-4) and other paperwork.
• Send welcome emails to the new employee and their team.

IT Onboarding Tasks

• Create the new hire’s Identity Provider (IdP) profile
• Set up the new hire’s email address and inbox
• Provision group memberships and system access privileges
• Assign a laptop and other IT resources or equipment

This process is sometimes referred to as “preboarding”.

After the Employee’s First Day of Work

Once preboarding is completed, employees can begin taking training programs, building rapport with their new coworkers, and familiarizing themselves with their new working environment.

Across their first 90+ days, employees should be given regular feedback to make sure they are properly transitioning into their new job.

These processes typically involve softer people skills, are led by HR, and aren’t as suited to automation.

That’s why completing preboarding on time is the most important part of the overall onboarding process, as any delays cut into an employee’s first few days of work.

Why Is Automating Employee Onboarding Important?

At most companies, these onboarding tasks are performed manually by HR employees and IT sysadmins.

Automating them not only provides a faster, smoother experience to new hires but also reduces the overall HR and IT workload.

Make New Hires Productive Faster

Research has found that an automated onboarding process can reduce overall onboarding times by multiple days.

When onboarding hundreds or thousands of new hires, that can equal millions of dollars in lost productivity saved.

Provide a Consistent, Streamlined Experience to New Hires

An employee’s first impression of a company makes or breaks their overall working experience.

By providing a structured, streamlined experience, you’ll make it much more likely that your employees stay for more than three years.

Eliminate Manual HR and IT Work

Automating tedious and repetitive onboarding tasks can give HR and IT teams hours of work back every week.

That means HR can fully focus on helping new hires fit into the company culture, and IT can fully focus on high-priority service requests.

How To Use HR Tools To Automate Onboarding

Use Candidate Information from Applicant Tracking Systems

Almost every major company uses an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) like Greenhouse or Lever. These systems capture candidate information during the hiring process.

Integrating your ATS with your HR system can sync this data when a hiring is triggered and automatically create a new hire’s HR profile minutes after an offer is accepted.

Integrate and Sync Your HRIS to Your IdP

Creating a new hire’s IdP profile in a directory service like AD, Entra ID, or Okta is one of the most tedious workforce lifecycle management processes.

IGA products like Hire2Retire connect these systems and trigger automated workflows that perform IT onboarding tasks like user access provisioning and group membership assignments.

Create Automated ITSM Workflows

New hires need to have laptops, computers, or other equipment provisioned and shipped if they’re remote.

IT Service Management (ITSM) software like ServiceNow and Freshservice can run automated onboarding checklists to assign resources and workspaces before the new hire’s start date.

A fully integrated and automated onboarding process through a product like Hire2Retire can transform onboarding into a core strength that makes employees more productive in less time, and for longer.