Once candidates complete the selection process, a new challenge presents itself for HR teams within companies: the onboarding process for new employees.

In today's digital era, designing an onboarding program for new hires can make a significant difference in an employee's productivity and performance. More importantly, its impact is reflected in their well-being, which is closely linked to your team's talent retention rate.

Below, we discuss the most important points about the onboarding process, the use of immersive platforms in human resources, and examples.

What is the Onboarding Process?

The onboarding process is a strategically designed welcome that a company extends when a new member joins its organization. This process goes beyond a simple welcome package that includes a notebook, a mug, and a corporate pen. This journey ensures that new talents incorporated into your company have the necessary tools, knowledge, and connections to perform their duties and develop their soft skills.

An onboarding program is crucial not only for the employee's success but also for their personal and professional satisfaction, and thereby, to ensure their commitment to the company's mission.

What the Onboarding Process Entails

When designing the onboarding program, it's essential to understand that it begins before the first day of work and extends over several weeks or even months.

The onboarding process ensures a smooth transition into a new position, whether the person has changed companies or is joining the workforce for the first time.

Broadly speaking, this welcoming process for new employees is about facilitating the new talent's integration within the company; from imparting its values, global tasks, and practices, to introducing them to other team members.

Phases of the Onboarding Process

Understanding the features of the onboarding process and the stages of the onboarding process is crucial to designing an effective onboarding plan that supports both the company and the employee.

• Pre-onboarding: Focuses on administrative preparation and the initial welcome; from signing documents to setting up digital tools like corporate email and access to necessary systems.

• Orientation: This stage represents the employee's first formal contact with the company, either in person or remotely, depending on the position. It focuses on introducing procedures and the overall operation within the organization.

• Training and Development: After the Orientation phase, we move to a specific training phase for the new team member's role. This stage is crucial for developing the necessary skills for the position, understanding the projects, and meeting the rest of the team.

• Integration: Integration is the phase where the new employee begins to add value within each project and team after catching up during their training phase. Assigning a mentor during this phase is highly recommended to act as a facilitator and guide.

• Evaluation and Feedback: Finally, we come to a phase that is unfortunately often overlooked. This phase focuses on two points: receiving feedback from the new employee and providing the new member with guidance on their evolution within the new position.

Benefits of the Onboarding Process

The benefits of having an onboarding plan extend beyond creating a satisfying experience for new employees as they join. 10 main benefits stand out from having a proper onboarding plan:

• Clarity in expectations and objectives

• Promoting a positive corporate culture

• Development of strong relationships

• Improving talent retention within your company

• Talent attraction

• Reduction of stress and anxiety

• Building a sense of belonging

• Increase in job satisfaction

• Improved operational efficiency

• Promotion of diversity and inclusion in the workplace

Objectives of the Onboarding Process

The objectives of an onboarding plan can vary greatly, whether by industry, company type or size, the position in question, or even if it's a hybrid, remote, or in-person job.

All objectives must follow the SMART principle: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Some examples include:

• Ensuring that each new employee understands their role and responsibilities by the end of their first week, through orientation sessions and individual meetings with their direct supervisors.

• Developing basic competencies in specific tools and systems of the company, achieving that 100% of new employees reach a basic level of competence by the end of their first month.

• Reducing the time to full productivity of new employees to three months, providing a structured training plan and regular progress monitoring.

• Fostering a meaningful connection between new employees and the company culture, organizing at least three cultural integration events in the first 90 days to promote belonging and commitment. For example, virtual events or team-building activities.

Risks of Neglecting the Onboarding Process

Neglecting the onboarding process can have negative consequences for both the employee and the company. Among the most significant dangers are:

• Dissatisfaction and Demotivation: The absence of a careful onboarding process can lead employees to question their decision to join the company, negatively affecting their motivation and job satisfaction.

• High Staff Turnover: One of the most direct consequences is increased turnover, which entails high costs in terms of recruitment, selection, and training of replacements.

• Impact on Customer Satisfaction: Employee effectiveness and satisfaction are directly related to the quality of customer service. Poorly integrated staff can compromise the customer experience.

The costs of neglecting the onboarding process are substantial. According to industry studies, the cost of replacing an employee can range from 50% to 200% of their annual salary, depending on the level of the position. This includes direct costs such as recruitment, selection, and training, as well as indirect costs related to lost productivity and the impact on team morale.

In summary, an effective onboarding process is a critical investment in a company's human capital, with far-reaching impacts on productivity, retention, and corporate culture. Ignoring its importance can have costly and long-lasting consequences for the organization and its employees.

Onboarding Tools for Companies

Today, we have many work tools for teams, from digital tools to virtual workspaces.

Below, we list the most popular tools for recruitment and onboarding processes for new employees:

• SesameHR: is a tool focused on HR departments where you can manage and organize your team, as well as design personalized onboarding plans through guides, tasks, comments, and digital accompaniment.

• FactorialHR: is an integrated tool that offers different tools for designing an employee welcome plan.

But beyond these digital platforms, other solutions approach a gamified experience, which is very useful for companies with a modern corporate culture that wishes to attract new talent from the most recent generations, like Gen Z.

These solutions are known as virtual workspaces that can be adapted and customized to design an unforgettable experience in onboarding processes.

Virtual Spaces as an Onboarding Platform for Human Resources

Creating an onboarding process is a very important task for all companies, especially those with teams distributed around the world.

Using virtual space tools as an onboarding tool, whether for new members joining to work remotely or in person, is a natural and innovative evolution within the processes of HR departments.

For example, with Spacecreator, you can now create a virtual work office for your team, customize it, have virtual meeting rooms, and virtual conference rooms, and use remote collaborative tools like interactive whiteboards.

The use of virtual spaces as a tool represents a paradigm shift and advancement in how companies integrate new generations into their work teams. Thanks to the technology of Spacecreator as a virtual space tool, we can gamify remote selection processes, create team-building activities, and foster an inclusive corporate culture.

Case Study: Onboarding Process in Virtual Spaces

This is the story of how the human resources department of the pharmaceutical company Janssen uses Spacecreator to carry out its onboarding and training processes for new employees.