Over the last few years, organizations have seen the importance of effective employee onboarding in engaging employees and increasing their productivity from day 1.
However, as the new year kicks in and more changes come to the work landscape, it is time to catch up with employee onboarding trends for 2024.
Top 12 onboarding trends and best practices to watch out for in 2024
A great employee onboarding experience can improve employee retention rates by a whopping 82%. This is why your onboarding strategy should be comprehensive and ensure seamless workplace transitions.
Here are some of the employee onboarding best practices and trends for 2024 you should be aware of.
1. Ensure new employees are not overwhelmed with information
For any employee, the first few months within an organization can be pretty challenging. There is loads of information to consume, processes to acquaint with, new technology to get used to, and more.
In this stage, ensuring that your employees feel safe with information is essential. Typically, organizations try to complete the employee onboarding process within a few days of joining.
However, employee onboarding best practices require that you stretch out the onboarding process over several weeks or at least a month to ensure that employees have sufficient time to grasp and come to terms with new policies, procedures, tasks, benefits, responsibilities, and so on.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #1: Deploy an AI-driven virtual assistant to provide personalized information to new hires without information overload.
2. Set clear objectives and goals for new employees
It is easy for new employees to feel lost when they join an organization. They may not always have a clear idea of your expectations and how they can fulfill them.
One of the critical employee onboarding best practices for 2024 include setting up a detailed action plan for new employees. For instance, setting a 30-60-90 day outline for employees can help them understand what they need to focus on during the first few weeks and what they can do to manage these expectations.
It also helps in frequent check-ins for at least an initial couple of months so that HR managers and new joiners know how things are progressing.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #2: Automate the onboarding workflow to carry out the process in a phased manner. Simultaneously, keep new hires informed for better clarity.
3. Ensure new employees have a great first week
Another employee onboarding best practice is to make sure new joiners have a seamless first week at work. Organizations can facilitate this by including an introduction with their peers and teammates, providing workspace setup, ensuring access to relevant information and systems, and leveraging a virtual assistant for prompt query resolution.
Many companies even gift new employees welcome kits to help them transition to their new work environment. Note that a happy employee is a committed employee.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #3: Create a welcoming environment for new employees. Set up virtual meetings with the team to acclimatize new hires with their fellow team members.
4. Check-in regularly
Frequent check-ins are a mandate for new employees. It is a great way to understand how they have been faring in their role, new workplace environment, and with the team.
Creating a safe space for new employees to talk undeterred and providing the necessary feedback is essential. Checking in is also critical to ensure that employees are not struggling in their new organization. And even if they are grappling with some issues, try addressing them through amicable solutions.
You can start with daily check-ins for the first week and then do a biweekly check-in for the rest of the month. Once the first month is over and you are sure that new employees have settled in, check-ins can be done once every month for the next two to three months.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #4: Roll out onboarding survey to gauge the new hires’ experience. You can use digital onboarding solutions to automate the process of rolling out surveys and evaluating their results.
5. Assess your onboarding programs frequently
To get the best out of your employees, you should ensure that your employee onboarding best practices include the evaluation of your onboarding program regularly.
You can track the effectiveness of your onboarding programs by tracking specific KPIs such as
- Time to reach KPIs: This tells you how quickly a new employee achieves their maximum productivity and the time lapsed between a recruit joining the company and becoming a valuable contributor to its success.
- Retention vs. turnover: This is an essential metric since it gives you a clear picture of the health of your organization from a people perspective.
- Retention rate: This gives you an idea of the percentage of employees your organization has retained over a specific period.
- New hire feedback: Conducting regular feedback surveys will help you track the employee NPS for your company. It will allow you to identify employees most likely to leave the company and take critical measures to stop this.
- Performance assessment: This will give you a clear picture of how a new employee has been performing in the organization. Tracking their progress over a year will help you understand how valuable employees they are and identify their contributions until now.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #5: Evolve your onboarding process constantly to engage employees and enhance their experience.
6. Don’t overlook preboarding
Preboarding is another critical touchpoint in the employee onboarding journey.
Preboarding helps you excite new employees about their job and gives them confidence in joining your organization. It can include sending them their work essentials – laptops, notepads, headphones, and providing access to the HRIS software and virtual assistant to understand the company’s values, mission, and objectives.
You can also send a task checklist they need to have with them on their first day. You can also apprise them of the planned onboarding schedule to reduce their anxieties and first-day jitters.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #6: Assign onboarding buddy during preboarding to help new hires assimilate faster into the organization.
7. Complete paperwork ASAP
No employee wants to be bogged down with paperwork on their first day at work. Instead, they want HRs and managers to help them understand their roles and responsibilities, connect with the team, and learn more about their new organization.
So, HRs should help new employees finish all the necessary paperwork in the first few days without hassle. An excellent way to do this is to encourage employees to submit their paperwork digitally.
You can even do this as part of your preboarding process so that your employees are not overwhelmed with paperwork on the first day at work.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #7: Deploy an AI-driven virtual assistant that can integrate with a document management system for automatic verification and paperwork process.
8. Assign a buddy
It is common for new employees to feel overwhelmed and lost on the first day of work. Assigning them a work buddy can help them navigate company procedures and get them introduced to the rest of the team members.
These buddies should be optimistic and excited about showing around new employees and helping them with any challenges.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #8: Use a digital onboarding solution to automatically assign onboarding buddies to new employees based on their interests, location, job role, etc.
9. Encourage the new employee to shadow their coworkers
An easy way for new employees to get an idea of how the company works is to have them shadow different employees. This way, they can quickly understand how various departments, teams, and roles function to carry out their jobs.
For instance, a new sales executive can shadow sales leaders and join in on product demo calls, client calls, and more to understand how everyone works in the company.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #9: Promote social learning to foster a healthy working environment and facilitate informal learning among new employees.
10. Showcase the company culture throughout your onboarding process
Apart from the pay scale, a company’s culture matters most to the employees. It can make or break your employee experience.
It is essential to reflect on your culture throughout the onboarding journey. Ensure employees feel comfortable asking questions about processes, policies, benefits, responsibilities, etc.
Help new employees understand the vision and mission of your company and show them what makes the organization unique. Introducing some of your longest-serving employees can be a great way to establish what new joiners can expect at their new workplace.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #10: Use a virtual assistant to align new hires with the company’s mission and vision in an interactive manner.
11. Gradually increase the level of responsibilities
As the best onboarding practice, you should not overload new employees with work all at once. Instead, add the tasks gradually to help them get accustomed to the responsibilities and manage their bandwidth efficiently.
You can define goals, objectives, and responsibilities bit by bit to help employees get attuned to the way of work at your company. As aforementioned, a 30-60-90 day plan is fruitful and allows new employees to address any challenges and alter their working style to align with the expectations.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #11: Schedule regular check-in calls to track the progress of new hires. You can send automated reminders to the HRs and managers using a digital onboarding solution.
12. Try to be flexible
With the shift in the workplace models, employees also expect flexibility while blending in with the new work culture.
New hires’ managers should offer them flexibility and offer help wherever needed. For instance, try to provide employees with remote options rather than forcing them to come to work for an entire week. You can also provide ample time between training sessions so new employees can reflect on the learnings so far.
Employee Onboarding 2024 | Trend #12: Use virtual onboarding solutions to align with new hires’ work preferences.
Final thoughts
Onboarding is a critical process in employees’ journey. Its success depends on how seamlessly and efficiently you make their journey memorable.
A great way to achieve this is by making the most of technology to automate the onboarding process and provide them support in real-time.
And this is where Leena AI comes in. Leena AI’s onboarding solution automates and streamlines the entire onboarding process. It encompasses an AI-driven virtual assistant that resolves new hires’ queries autonomously and frees HRs from administrative tasks.
The AI-driven virtual assistant automates all the tasks, from releasing an offer letter to getting documents signed digitally, assigning onboarding buddies, and setting up introductory calls with the manager and team.
If you are curious and want to know more about our onboarding solution, book a demo with our experts today to see how it can redefine your employees’ experience.
