Why is onboarding important?

eLearning: how do you use it to welcome new employees? Onboarding and training employees is an important job. Imagine starting a new job without understanding the company culture, core values, and general operational systems. With current employees who have experience working for the company, it’s a good idea to provide a support system for them to fall back on, in case they want to brush up on anything. eLearning is a great way to provide all these services and more.

A great induction program sets the foundation for a new employee’s journey with the company. You want to give them all the skills and tools so that they can hit the ground running. Not only will they be exposed to company culture and values, but understanding the bigger picture of where the company operates and their goals will help them align theirs.

22% companies have no formal onboarding program. Companies that don’t offer onboarding or have a poor induction program for their employees will find a higher risk of decreased productivity, misinformed workforces, and high turnover rates. Consider onboarding as the starting point for the employee's learning and development. More and more companies have chosen the path of e-content to lead the onboarding of new employees and it also acts as a source of information to re-visit for current employees.

Why choose eLearning?

eLearning provides a customized and integrated system that can be designed specifically for each company. It offers a number of benefits during the onboarding process which results in improving organization, boosting productivity, and increasing workforce engagement. A great initiation program considers instructional design, E-content, and selected training materials to provide agile training. This article will be discussing the whys and hows of using eLearning to onboard your employees.

eLearning gives the employees the power to set the pace to reach their learning objectives. Everyone has a different approach to how to consume information and digital content provides many styles in which information can be presented i.e. videos, PowerPoint presentations, charts, and graphs, etc.

Giving control to the employees to accomplish their onboarding will also help distinguish those who are more motivated to learn and give management a good idea of work performance to come as well as work ethic for each individual.

Reduce expenses, increase accessibility

By relying on online learning and its digital content, this means that the learning materials can be accessed readily. The world has entered a digital era and anyone who owns a smartphone or computer will be able to access the information needed.

Having a centralized knowledge base also gives current employees support. A place they can go, to brush up on skills, and find useful information. Overall a digital learning base will improve the productivity of the entire workforce and act as an agile learning center. This especially comes in handy if a company goes through restructuring or re-branding where everyone will need to be re-trained on certain things.

Tips on designing a digital onboarding solution

• Give clear learning objectives. What is the intended final outcome after completion of the onboarding program? How can online learning contribute to their accompishment?
• Create a checklist or assessment tasks to track their progress and test their knowledge application.
• Make sure that the E-content aligns with the goals and uses a variety of styles to help with information consumption. You want the resources to be engaging, not boring.
• Gain feedback on the system as a whole and analyze their progress. Once you have the general onbording system established, there are always improvements that can be made to enhance the learning process, to make it better for the next employee. These onboarding programs can also be altered to fit other positions within the company for more targeted training.