Let’s assume it is Monday morning where you work. Is it fairly safe to assume that you have a group of new employees sitting in a classroom being oriented to your organization? Is your organization still running classroom-based orientation sessions?
I’m not saying you should immediately abandon all classroom-based orientation sessions. However, it’s time to consider whether or not you’re in a rut of doing orientation the same way. For sure, you need to get new employees to sign forms, but even that can be done online before or on their first day.
The challenge with classroom-based orientation is that new employees need to wait until the next in-person session. That session may be weeks from their start date. Also, if they don’t work at your head office, then they are out of luck. No meet and greet over coffee and donuts for them.
Then there’s the challenge of booking the speakers (senior executives) to do their half hour presentations about their areas of responsibility. Once booked they dutifully show up to go through their slides. That’s quite an investment of senior leadership time.
Why not make it easier on everyone by offering your new employees an online orientation and onboarding experience.
Here are 5 reasons why online orientation and onboarding is better than classroom-based:
Reason #1. Online orientation meets the needs of your geographically dispersed new hires
First of all, you already know that it is way too expensive to fly regionally or globally dispersed employees to the ‘corporate’ in-person orientation session. However, you also think they deserve the same great orientation as other new employees at head office.
Online orientation and onboarding solves that problem. Every new employee is treated the same, no matter the location. They participate in a great orientation and onboarding process when they need it.
Reason #2: Online orientation ensures even your less than effective managers will be well prepared for their new employees
Really effective managers will automatically support and deliver well planned orientation and onboarding. What about the other managers who do a poor job of orienting and onboarding your organization’s new employees?
An online orientation and onboarding process solves that problem. All managers are given online notifications of when their new employees are going to start as well as a personalized preparation checklist. Your Human Resources team can monitor, through online reporting, the readiness of the managers for their new hires. Then it’s an automated process for new hires to start their online learning path on their first day. All it takes is a computer and an access code.
Reason #3: Online orientation helps you curate much need content for new hires
It’s mega-information overload for new employees. There’s an abundance of information they could potentially access and browse once they join your organization. In the same way that internet content is curated, you need to curate the organizational content (knowledge) for your new hires.
An online orientation system helps you to effectively organize and point to the most important tools, resources and online materials your new employees should browse during their first weeks and months on the job.
Reason #4: Online orientation makes it easy to update content so it’s ever green
Nothing stays the same. The value of online resources is that they can be and are usually updated regularly by their resource owners. So, all you need to do is point the new hires to the most important areas of your organization’s internet and intranet sites. They get instant access to the most relevant materials, tools and resources. No more running around making copies of materials to hand out to new hires.
Reason #5: Online orientation gives you better tracking and reporting of new hire orientation completion
Compliance is important when it comes to orientation and onboarding. Is safety a big issue for your organization? Or maybe, it is risk and/or security. Whatever the compliance challenge, an online orientation and onboarding process will provide you with the reporting you need to ensure your new employees are getting the training they need.
Online Orientation Software
Orientation and onboarding software already exists to help you customize your organization’s new hire process. So, what are you waiting for? Handing out orientation binders full of soon to be outdated materials is so old school. It’s time to bring your orientation and onboarding process into the computer age.
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