13 Jan
How modern intranets are improving the onboarding experience for remote employees
New normal and hiring
The pandemic has forced businesses across the globe that earlier never usually operated from home to accept and adapt to the new normal of working remotely.
Organizations that were all well equipped with modern tools to work remotely had managed to continue all business operations successfully. However, others are still facing difficulties and challenges in certain areas that are yet to be unleashed. Considering this as the new normal, with all uncertainties around, companies simply cannot continue their operations on pause for any amount of time. Because with competitive business environments, top businesses will take it as an opportunity and find ways to move forward with a prolific approach.
Moving forward also means about new employee needs, and currently hiring new employees was a daunting task. With not working in a physical office to connect and welcome new onboards and managing all other formalities and processes of onboarding, organizations are skeptical about this process. Especially imbibing the organization culture in the new joiners remotely can be a challenging task.
Learn more: HR Intranet: Ideas, Best Practices and Examples
Challenges of Onboarding in the remote work setup and how it is different in new normal
Gallup finds that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees.
Currently, businesses are facing decentralization in the process to operate. Navigating remote, flexible working, inadequate technology to work in office less workplace, globalization, and the gig economy brings an unprecedented challenge for onboarding employees.
Welcoming new employees in the organization was easy when it was done by HR and managers in person face to face. The current scenario is different. With work from home and social distancing and lockdown, it is obvious that the strategy towards induction and onboarding there is a paradigm shift of going everything virtual.
Read more: Remote Work during Uncertain Times – How a Modern Intranet can Help
The role of the intranet to improve onboarding experience for remote employees
1. Automate the onboarding process
An automated onboarding platform can assure that the onboarding process is consistent for each new employee that joins the organization.
It speeds up the process and makes it better, eliminates the repetitive amount of paperwork for the onboarding process, due to this a new employee can start working on their assignments.
An essential part of onboarding employees is being facilitated with the right information at the right time. The automated intranet standardizes all processes and gives a positive experience by understanding their needs and keeping them engaged.
2. Deliver a personalized experience
Every new employee is different and belongs to various departments, and will have distinct policies, purposes, and profiles. So, here the intranet will be essential to personalize the onboarding process for new hires tailored based on the role, profiles, departments, and team. In this way, all will receive boarding material and information specific to their needs and location. It will also improve job productivity and employee satisfaction in the organization.
3. Communication Is the Key to Successful Onboarding
Communication is one of the important aspects of onboarding new employees in the workplace. Building and sustaining a positive work atmosphere is about efficient workplace communication.
An intranet is an effective tool for communication in every department in your organization. Right from the start while onboarding employees, especially currently when employees are working remotely.
The HR team can use the intranet to give information to employees in real-time with updated news, policies, health, and wellness initiatives, and many such. In the age of remote working, good communication among employees can have a huge effect on employee experience, engagement, retention, and tight-knit organization culture.
4. Virtual social experience
One of the biggest challenges for new onboards is having difficulty connecting to people of their team. Social experience eases the process of connecting to co-workers while working remotely and makes the onboarding experience more effective.
Intranet features accommodate new hires to socialize with the dispersed team members, share their ideas freely making them comfortable towards working better.
Instant messaging tools, sharing knowledge and information, social features like tagging liking, sharing, and commenting ease the process to connect people and strengthen team building and boost collaboration between team members. This also helps to imbibe the organization culture with the new joiners.
5. Centralized resources
Adjusting to a new work environment can take time for new employees. Without having a co-worker around to turn to, the environment can seem to be overwhelming for new employees while working in a dispersed workplace. Searching for relevant information without wasting much of their time can be a tedious task to handle. The centralized location for accessing essential resources and documents with a single point of access will reduce their stress and make them more engaging.
It will be easy for new onboarding remote workers to find all company-related announcements, news, updates, holiday calendar, policy information, and training material, etc. It encourages the new employees to get familiarized with the company mission and vision and make them a part of this effectively.
6. Online learning
Currently, when there are uncertainties all around onboarding, all employees on the same day might be difficult. New employees would be hired for different departments and not under the same manager. Here, a modern intranet provides a more satisfying onboarding experience. HR and managers can share training documents, self-learning presentations, and videos on the intranet platform according to the convenience of employees. Without wasting much of their time waiting for orientation programs, it lessens dependency on trainer availability. It facilitates employees to have easy access to all knowledge resources, making the learning process smooth and useful.
Read more: 6 Reasons why your HR department needs an intranet
Conclusion
Modern intranet features come with the best features to reshape the employee onboarding process in this difficult time. The traditional method of onboarding employees does not work anymore for any developing organization.
For organizations who are planning to transform the onboarding experience of employees in their organization, these tips will enhance the outdated onboarding process into a more productive and positive experience.
Thus, with the strategic approach and advanced digital tools, simplified remote onboarding can be simpler than ever and turn into a reality. With an innovative platform to influence remote onboarding programs within the organization, the top experts will help you through this journey.
To know more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with our digital workplace experts for a personalized consultation.
Poonam Chug is AVP - SaaS Strategy & Business. She has worked in various areas, right from designing and executing sales & account management strategies to reengineering digital workplace solutions. With her determined focus on our mission and progressive approach, she has achieved customer delight in the space of AI, Knowledge Mining, Content & Collaboration, Virtual Assistants, RPA and more. Backed with a deep understanding of customer needs and technology, she leads the SaaS business unit with an upshot of maximizing revenue while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Poonam Chug