For human resource managers, onboarding is the process of welcoming new employees into an organization.

What is onboarding?

For human resources managers, onboarding is the process of welcoming new employees into an organization. The goal is to facilitate the rapid integration of a talent into the company by means of integration measures adapted to the company. It is not only about training and seminars. There are also special employees who take care of the new colleague during the first months and introduce him or her to the company. Like a mentor of sorts.

Providing lists, links and guides in an appropriate system is also a great help for the induction. New employees can find the information they need themselves. This makes a lot of things more efficient and reduces the workload for colleagues.

Onboarding: the benefits

A structured onboarding process has many benefits:

New talent orientation: the new employee quickly gets to know his or her colleagues, the company’s structures and processes.
New talent is integrated into the team more quickly.
The new employee is introduced to his or her tasks in a targeted manner and quickly becomes productive.
The newcomer feels at home in the company more quickly.
This strengthens loyalty and reduces the risk of churn during the trial period.

Onboarding: the status quo

The importance of onboarding that works is currently on the rise in many industries. Indeed, the staffing situation is tight in virtually all areas. This makes it all the more important that newly hired employees are ready to work as soon as possible.

The reason: the endemic shortage of skilled workers. Although this does not seem to be increasing in Switzerland, it remains at a consistently high level in all sectors, as shown by the Scientific Labor Market Monitor of Adecco Switzerland in collaboration with the University of Zurich. In most occupational groups, the annual variation in the number of job offers is between plus and minus 5%.

The exceptions: Healthcare and Construction & Finishing. These industries experienced significantly higher rates of job growth in 2019. According to the report, “companies continued to search for healthcare personnel at an increased rate in the fourth quarter of 2019, both year-over-year, with a significant 17 percent increase, and quarter-over-quarter, with a slight increase of 6 percent.” At the same time, construction and remodeling job openings increased 12 percent year-over-year.

Onboarding: the challenges

In some areas, however, onboarding is a difficult proposition. In some occupations, for example, employees working in the field are often out of the office. In other areas, they don’t work at a fixed desk, but move freely around the house. In still other cases, employees work in shifts and may not be on site at the time of the hospitality training. In this case, it is useful that information can be exchanged regardless of location and time.

This is made possible by the digital device that employees always carry with them anyway: Their own smartphone. The content of the integration can be easily shared in an employee app for the work environment. They can then be called up at any time when the employee needs them – wherever they are.

Onboarding: the requirements

In many work environments, it is essential to share knowledge in a very targeted and tailored way with the employees for whom it is relevant, as part of the onboarding process. The context: Job profiles are increasingly specialized, are often very narrow in terms of subject matter, and require an equally narrow transfer of knowledge upon onboarding.

As a result, one-size-fits-all solutions no longer work in the area of new hire onboarding. Instead, it is essential to provide employees with exactly the information they need. Whenever they need it. Often, very specific questions arise “on the job”. So much the better if the employee then has the right knowledge solution at hand.

The following conditions must be met:

The company should have optimal technology, such as an employee app that allows targeted information sharing.
It should also be possible to quickly design and make available specific learning units that deepen prior knowledge within the application.

Onboarding: Risks

For example, if you can’t immediately reach your onboarding partner because he or she can’t be found at the moment, you quickly reach for your smartphone to contact them or other colleagues. Often, employees then use common messaging systems such as WhatsApp. Often they even create a chat group directly. I hope to get a response faster this way.

A study by Brabbler AG shows how widespread messaging applications are in the business environment. Nearly one in two study participants (41%) said they use WhatsApp for business purposes. That’s the same number as last year. However, the number of employees who have WhatsApp installed on their work smartphones has increased from 49 to 53 percent.

This puts employees at significant risk to their employers. The Messenger reads employees’ address books and sends them to parent company Facebook, which stores the data in the United States. This is a clear violation of current European legislation.

According to Europe’s basic data protection regulation (GDPR), a company would need the written consent of all individuals whose data is used and processed. However, the messenger is accessing information from people who have never authorized it – something that is not guaranteed in the case of WhatsApp. The use of WhatsApp in the business sector is therefore completely prohibited.

The solution: onboarding via an application

Internal employee apps are the ideal solution for easy onboarding and privacy. With them, up-to-date knowledge can be shared reliably and securely.

Features:

Dialogue for direct exchange between two employees
Relevant topics can be discussed in real time between two employees in a protected private message.

Chat for secure group exchanges
In secure virtual rooms, multiple employees or entire teams can chat and share knowledge.

Quizzes for fun learning
Employee applications can be loaded with a wide variety of learning content. For example, with a quiz on a new regulation, through which employees can gain new knowledge in a fun way. This is a simple way for employers to contribute to the continuous training and integration of employees.

News feed
In the news feed, new ideas and professional updates can be shared with the relevant target group in a timely manner. A comment function allows the content to be discussed together.

As far as data protection is concerned, users are safe with an employee application for professional use: sensitive internal information can be exchanged securely via this application. This is because the data transfer is done through end-to-end encryption, whether hosted or on-premises, in accordance with the ISO 27001 standard that has been proven around the world. With an intranet application, data protection in the company is guaranteed. Business critical data is stored and protected securely.