There are a couple of truths about why employee onboarding in the enterprise is broken and why HR Tech is the only solution
- There are multiple Systems of Records that a new hire has to deal with — Recruitment software, HRMS, payroll, LMS etc.
- Too many processes are manually driven that do not scale well — as result of point #1.
Employee Experience & Culture has been receiving a lot of interest lately. The fact that we are talking about the employee “experience” means that there is something fundamentally lacking in it currently. Let’s take a closer look at new hire experience and the two reasons stated above.
REASON 1: Multiple Systems of Records (SoR) & Processes
If you were to do a post-mortem study of how enterprise architectures are created — you would find the reason why…
Year 1 — Bought ERP & Payroll software — cause business cannot be done with them
Year 2 — Bought HRMS software
Year 3 — Bought Sales Software
Year 4 — Bought Learning Software
Year 5 — Bought Code Management Software
Year 6 — Bought Recruitment Software
And it goes on and on… the single truth is that, more often than not, these are all disparate systems that find it hard to talk to each other. The products were never built to seamlessly talk to each other. There are no sophisticated APIs and the data dictionaries are completely different. One calls it “first name” and the other one calls it “name 1”.
The tragedy of multiple systems is that it requires a level above it to orchestrate the whole circus going on behind the scenes.
New hires are expected to complete some of their details in the recruitment software, then, once offered a job — complete data capture in another system or on paper, get content as PDFs and notifications on email, receive phone calls from the HR team and try and self-assimilate all of this together to get a perspective of the company. It’s hard enough joining a new company and stressing about the first few months — but given the current state of onboarding — one must acknowledge the challenge that onboarding is for the employee.
REASON 2: Manual processes
Processes that depend on humans are always more susceptible to failure. In most organizations, employee onboarding relies a great deal on human intervention. However, due to the disparities in delivery of the same function over and over again, every new hire receives a different experience.
For a very few number, everything works perfectly as they are welcomed to the organization. For most, manual HR coordination result in delays, incomplete information or complete failures in processes.
HR tech solutions allow for automation of most of these mundane and historically manual processes. Apart from the significant cost & time savings, the advantage of automation also results in providing the best experience for each new hire — at any scale.
So, what’s next?
Technology can help make the onboarding process easier and a better employee experience. Here are a few things you could consider when looking at more technology lest it not add to another disconnected system of record 🙂
- First and foremost, adopt HR Tech that can automate & improve the employee onboarding experience!
- Make sure the technology chosen to automate can also orchestrate processes across the other existing systems in your enterprise
As an aside, the advantage of having a completely integrated infrastructure is the result of having data. Data is the most valuable asset you have. A single view of the employee data can lead to insights that help in making leadership, training and investment decisions.
I would love to know what your thoughts are on the multiple systems that drive the HR process today and the lack of a single view point on the entire employee onboarding process? Do you think new-age HR Tech is the answer? How do you manage at your organization?
Photo Credit: nikosandriotis Flickr via Compfight cc
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