Improving Employee Onboarding for Retail and Beyond

Employee onboarding is a common frustration we've heard from HR professionals, especially in the Canadian retail industry. Here are some tips on how technology can help with the employee onboarding process for retail and beyond.

Benefits of Using Technology to Help Onboard Your New Employees

• By providing new employees with information in advance, you reduce a common source of new hire stress, allowing them to be more at ease and engaged on their first day.
• If your company has locations spread across many regions technology allows you to onboard new employees quickly and efficiently even when your HR team can’t be there in person.
• It allows for a consistent experience for all new employees.
• It provides the advantage of collecting all employee related documents and electronic signatures from one place.
• It is paperless, allowing you to meet any green initiatives your company has in place.

Let’s take a look at how the technology will work in the onboarding process from an employee’s perspective:

1. New employee receives an automated e-mail that launches an onboarding wizard.
2. The employee is greeted with a letter or video welcoming them to the company and their new role.
3. The employee reviews and signs off on all policy and other required documents electronically.
4. The employee registers a user name and password so they have access to the employee self-service portal right from the beginning.
5. The employee reviews, edits and adds to the personal details in their profile.
6. The employee completes emergency contact details.
7. The employee enters their banking details as well as a photo of a void cheque for direct deposit.
8. The employee completes and electronically signs their TD1 forms.
9. They are done – it’s that easy!

Let’s take a look at how the technology will work in the onboarding process from HR’s perspective:

1. A hiring manager launches a New Hire Request task through Manager Self-Service indicating the successful candidate they have selected to fill a vacant position.
2. HR is automatically notified and is required to review and approve or reject the new hire request.
3. The manager is automatically notified as to whether their request was approved or rejected, and if rejected what changes are required.
4. If approved an automated e-mail with a unique access link will be sent to the successful candidate to begin their onboarding process.

What's the best way to bring your new employee on board? Check out this article from Harvard Business Review.

Keys to Onboarding Success

• The onboarding technology has to be simple for the employee – a friendly, easy to understand user interface is very important.
• It works best when onboarding is integrated with your people management solution ensuring that the information they entered as an applicant moves seamlessly into their onboarding profile and that all of the data collected at onboarding flawlessly populates all required HR and Payroll fields.
• Your solution includes workflows so that new hire tasks can be automatically be sent to HR, Payroll and Managers – that way the whole team is in the loop and knows what their responsibilities are. It should also be able to notify other internal stakeholders like IT and Facilities to smoothly and effectively complete required tasks so the employee’s access and / or workstation are ready to go when they arrive.
• Your technology solution will allow you to set up your company’s onboarding tasks once, and then automatically send them to your team each time you hire a new employee.

Engage Your Employees Right From the Start

Providing easy to use onboarding technology for your new employees allows your team to have everything in place to get them ready for their first day and engages them right from the start. It also ensures that your HR and Payroll teams have all the information they need accurately and on-time without spending valuable time on manual processes.

About the Author

Marlo Hertling has worked with leading HCM organizations and has been helping Canadian companies implement HCM solutions for more than 15 years. She is the Vice President of People & Culture at Avanti Software Inc and serves as Avanti's HCM subject matter expert.