How do you achieve a successful digital onboarding?

The importance of good onboarding for new employees to learn how to work with the digital workplace and associated applications cannot be overstated. This is because a good onboarding program helps new employees become productive quickly, feel involved in the organization and reduces the risk of errors. Many organizations recognize this importance, yet many onboarding programs fall short and often fail to meet the needs of new employees. In this blog, we emphasize the importance of successful onboarding and discuss how to achieve an effective approach that seamlessly meets both the needs of the organization and those of new employees.

Standard digital onboarding programs often fall short 

Many standard digital onboarding programs do not meet the needs of new employees, so they have difficulty mastering digital processes and software applications. Often, the information they receive is too generic or too general for the employee's role. This leads to unnecessary confusion and a slower start, with the possible result that new employees are not easily productive and/or experience a difficult and frustrating first period with their new employer. Of course, this is not an ideal situation for both the employer and the employee.

Digital onboarding challenges 

However, achieving successful digital onboarding is not easy and involves several challenges. Let's name a few:

• The presence of many different tools and applications: Many organizations use a wide range of digital tools and applications, each with their own functions and interfaces. It is a challenge to create instructions that cover all necessary tools and applications in a way that is understandable to all employees.
• Time investment: Developing comprehensive and effective onboarding takes time and resources. This can mean a significant investment for an organization, both in terms of staff and financial resources.
• Continuous maintenance: In addition to the initial development of an onboarding program, ongoing maintenance and updating of the material is necessary to ensure that it remains relevant. This requires an ongoing commitment of resources.

Software instructions as a basis for digital onboarding

To overcome these challenges, it is therefore important to achieve digital onboarding that does not take an unnecessary amount of time to develop, covers the content, but is also flexible and adaptive. That sounds like a big challenge, but a tool for creating software instructions can offer a solution. Creating software instructions for onboarding has the following benefits:

• Time savings and efficiency: A new employee must learn how to use the company's CRM system. With detailed video instructions, the employee can independently learn how to enter customer data and generate reports. This reduces the need for a mentor or trainer and speeds up the learning process.
• Easy access to knowledge: Employees have access to instructional material at existing locations within the organization at any time. This is useful for immediate support, for example when an employee is about to perform a new task and wants to quickly find out how a specific job works.
• Faster integration into the work environment: With clear and well-organized instructions, new employees can work independently and contribute to the team more quickly. For example, a new project manager can quickly learn how to use project management software to plan, track, and report projects using a detailed onboarding tool.

SelfGuide for creating software instructions

With SelfGuide, organizations can easily and quickly create and update software instructions, guides, and training materials. The tool provides an intuitive and user-friendly way to record, edit, and share step-by-step instructions. This allows new employees to work independently more quickly and learn the necessary software. SelfGuide supports a uniform approach for all applications, improving consistency in training and accelerating the adoption of new software.

Want to know more about how SelfGuide's instructions help to onboarding new colleagues? Then check out this page.