At its most basic level, onboarding and workforce deployment is a box-ticking exercise for getting vital compliance tasks done before a worker begins. But savvy HR, Safety and Operations professionals are increasingly recognising that the onboarding and workforce deployment workflow presents an ideal opportunity to reduce time to mobilise, reduce risk, and help new employees hit the ground running.
Why is onboarding and workforce deployment important?
Onboarding and workforce deployment is the first opportunity to introduce a worker to each and every new context of the role such as safety, site rules, location requirements and client requirements.
Done correctly, onboarding and workforce deployment can:
- Reduce risk in new environments
- Reduce time to mobilise
- Boost productivity by over 70% (according to Research by Brandon Hall Group)
- Create loyalty in your workforce
- Be highly cost-effective
- Manage large volumes of people without proportional administrative effort
On the contrary, poor onboarding can leave a negative impression, lengthen time-to-productivity, and could even lead to a worker quitting before or soon after being deployed. Yet 58% of organisations say their onboarding and workforce deployment is focused on processes and paperwork. This isn’t surprising, because there’s a great deal to get done from a compliance and admin perspective – but the experience doesn’t need to be painful.
Importance of user experience
Being deployed to a new location, project, team, client or role is an exciting, exhilarating experience for workers. The aim of any onboarding and deployment process should be to extend this high as long as possible by keeping the worker engaged and enthusiastic about their new job.
A clunky, boring, or difficult onboarding process can put an abrupt end to this high, which is why it’s vital to prioritise UX. More specifically, good onboarding for you, your clients and your workforce means:
- Being easy to use with a focus on simplification
- Deliver the best outcomes for all personnel; contractors, employees etc
- Being accessible from any device (mobile friendly)
- Going paperless
- Automating notifications to prompt candidates to complete tasks.
- Ensuring user support is available.
- All tasks in one interface for the worker
- Engaging and results in sustained learning
- Tracks individual progress
- Be automated and seamlessly integrates with other systems
- The onboarding and workforce deployment should reflect your brand. For example, if your organisation is a cutting-edge digital company, a newly deployed worker would be surprised to receive a pile of printed paperwork to wade through.
When does onboarding start and end?
Traditionally, onboarding starts on day one of a new hire’s employment and lasts for one or two weeks. But some companies are expanding their understanding of the onboarding period to as long as six months with a series of milestones and check-ins.
Some onboarding tasks can even be completed in the period between job offer acceptance and day one of employment. This downtime can be used to keep the new hire engaged, introduce them to the culture and key people such as their manager and colleagues. However, keep in mind that the new hire may be busy finishing up in their previous job, and that this time is technically unpaid.
Automation vs human
Great onboarding gets the balance right between automation and human. Automation can keep the process running smoothly and dramatically reduce the need for human intervention in the onboarding process. But new hires shouldn’t be made to feel they are engaging solely with a machine in this important period. Onboarding software can prompt a new hire’s manager to check in to ask how the experience is going, or prompt the new hire’s colleagues to get in touch to introduce themselves or simply say hello. Highly personalised onboarding processes include career pathing and begin career development discussions from day one.
The compliance aspect
The key to great compliance is visibility. With a centralised dashboard for streamlined workforce compliance management, employers can see at a glance where new hires are in the onboarding process, which tasks they’ve completed, and what they need to do. This enables automated prompts or manual intervention if necessary.
When deploying your workforce, it is necessary to onboard them to each and every new context including:
- Safety
- Site rules
- Location requirements
- Client requirements
Get feedback
Soliciting feedback from recently deployed workers improves your relationship by as much as 91% by making them feel their opinion is valued. It also helps drive continuous improvement by asking them what they thought of the onboarding process, what works well, and what could be improved.
Onboarding and workforce deployment, made easy
Streamline your workforce deployment checklist and mobilisation process with Cited. With powerful compliance and response matrixes, custom templates, automated configurable notifications, and easy response tracking and follow-up, Cited provides HR, Safety and Operations Managers with full control over onboarding and ongoing compliance processes. Learn more here. “