A digital approach to onboarding to meet the expectations of today

Behaviours that were norms only ten years ago, already seem bizarre.

Did we really go into banks to open an account, when now you just upload your ID on your smartphone or laptop, follow online prompts, sit back and wait for the card to arrive? Background credit and postcode checks take place automatically – and instantaneously.

Recent Deloitte research confirms just how much smartphones and PCs have become our preferred interface with the world. For everything from checking bank balances to news gathering to making purchases securely. Ease of use and user experience are all.

Millennials and Gen Z have never known any other way of ‘accessing life’. Older-fashioned ways of working resonate less well with them. So, while digital solutions are already proven in the workplace, why do companies still risk frustrating new employees with drawn-out, manual, new joiner processes, that risk turning off the very people they want to motivate?

The importance of aligning user experience with today’s norms

Take market leader Capita’s web and app-based background check and onboarding solution, Onboard. In place of the new starter posting or emailing sensitive data to HR, they now upload it effortlessly on their smartphone or PC. Capita promises not just 100% compliant documentation collection, but also levels of GDPR and data security that COOs will welcome in reducing risk.

Onboard’s user experience supports the new employee seamlessly from job offer, through their first day and into their formative months (begging the question why organisations previously treated background checking and onboarding as two separate processes). User experience is driven by highly personalised digital ‘journeys’, tailored to role, responsibilities and seniority.

Its onboarding functionality ensures the new starter is equipped with everything they need for productivity from day one. No coincidence then, that studies reveal 69% of employees are more likely to stay for three years if they experience great onboarding.

In parallel, Onboard lets organisations’ HR functions better play to their strengths. Instead of liaising individually with tens of new starters simultaneously – completing background checks and onboarding them one by one – HR personnel direct, control and monitor progress on a bespoke dashboard. Intervening when necessary, but otherwise exchanging their administrative mountain for the more specialist policy, people development and wider tasks they’ve spent years training for.

Sometimes the past is a bit broken, we just hadn’t seen it.