Employee Onboarding is one of the critical elements of any Company’s success. And considering the changing scenario of the work environment and L&D department, its importance has only intensified over the past few years, especially during the pandemic. As a result, it has become a necessity to strategically plan employee onboarding programs with a blend of inspiration, engagement, and knowledge. A well-equipped LMS is an ideal tool for creating and managing a thorough onboarding program that welcomes recruits and hastens their integration into the company. With the correct employee training tracking software like LMS, businesses can import, build, assign, deliver, and track end-to-end training as the basis for a formal onboarding plan.
A survey by Gallup suggests that merely 12% of the employees are satisfied with the company’s onboarding programs, another research suggests that an effective and well-planned onboarding improves employee turnover by 82%. The difference in these two digits indicates how casually this crucial stage of a company’s growth is considered.
The advantages of using an LMS for onboarding are as follows:
- It offers a single platform source for every piece of information regarding the training and the company.
- HR sets up training digitally, and team leads can monitor the development of new workers.
- New hires can monitor their development too.
Now, as we are well aware of the advantages of the right LMS and, what are the capabilities of effective onboarding, let’s dive into some features that make LMS a great tool for onboarding.
LMS features:
- Flexible platform: Inconsistent training, inaccessible sections, or training videos or materials, that are not accessible in the application are unlikely to be effective. Hence, flexibility is essential in an LMS when it is about employee onboarding, as it establishes the tone for the future of the overall corporate experience. A responsive design, which allows access to online courses on any device and platform without sacrificing navigability or aesthetic appeal, has become a requirement considering the rising popularity of mobile-learning. Flexibility in training has multiple advantages, but the most important is improved training efficiency.
- User-friendly interface: Onboarding programs ensure that the new hires fully understand the working style of the business. Therefore, an LMS with an intuitive user interface and excellent usability guarantees easy usage right from the go. Moreover, LMS is a new hire’s first introduction to the company, its procedures, its solutions, and its personnel, as a result, they must be provided with a glimpse of the company’s future and their role within the company.
- Use of varied mediums for training: Videos, interactive virtual classes, papers, presentations, etc. are essential components of an immersive online training experience, and this is especially true for an onboarding program. Learning should be blended and self-paced to keep learners engaged. And to achieve that, use as many multiple mediums as you can think of to make the classes more engaging.
- Informal learning: The value of informal learning through social media and knowledge collaboration tools cannot be ignored, even though formal training is essential for an onboarding program to be successful. Social learning delivers the much-needed informal learning environment where students may connect, work together, trade knowledge, and solve problems without being constrained by job titles, responsibilities, or formal training courses.
- An engaging interface: The adjustable interface of LMS, which is simple to configure and modify, provides access to every function. Using LMS, new information can be presented quickly, creating a dynamic learning environment. By employing the interface design options to create an appealing front end, you can encourage recruits to view the LMS as their go-to spot for onboarding and updated information about the company.
- This platform adopts microlearning: You can keep a collection of microlearning resources in your LMS. The classroom-based course occurs just once before quickly losing its impact on memory because it is not manageable, enduring, and motivating. You can develop your onboarding microlearning resources by using the content builder option in the LMS. That may be an infographic with crucial details or a blog post from another employee sharing their onboarding experience. LMS gives you the flexibility and scope to use any digital content and display it in a way that is appropriate for people who have become accustomed to getting the information they require directly from the source whenever they want. Since it is simple to update digital content, data is always up to date and consistent.
- Automated notifications: The LMS’s automated notification system enables you to control the progress. You can send direct notifications to new hires and their managers regarding completion dates for stages or pieces of work, as well as when they have expired. A system of recommendations allows recruits to be guided along their learning path and the automated system of alerts, notifications, and recommendations encourage mentoring and keeps recruits engaged.
- Provide certification: After completion of several aspects of onboarding, such as reading policy paperwork or receiving training, recruits are provided with course completion certificates. By doing so managers and HR are relieved of some of the administrative duties, and employees going through the onboarding process are given ownership. Additionally, LMSs offer a system of badges that new hires can own as they reach certain milestones during the process.
- Reporting: The reporting feature of an LMS enables proper monitoring of the training process and keeps you updated on what you can do to improve results.
- Enrolling students and creating a welcome pack: You can enroll new hires individually or in groups using an LMS. Managers, team leads, and mentors can be assigned once they have been set up in the system. Even before they start working for the company, you can enroll new hires so they can acquaint themselves with the knowledge they will require. Utilize the LMSs auto-enrolment tools to have the new hires’ LMS accounts automatically filled with registration data. Your HR systems can communicate with an LMS, enabling a seamless two-way flow of data. You can get a welcome video created with all the necessary information any recruit might require, using an LMS. This may include a welcome-to-the-company presentation that is constantly accessible and that the recruit can view whenever they choose.
- Choose individual learning programs wisely: An LMS that can regulate the visibility of the curriculum itself and sequence the training materials according to trainee priorities. Setting clear guidelines for finishing a set of goals following a distinctive path enables students to understand the material in tiny doses, thereby improving the training’s personalization and effectiveness.
Conclusion: It is a requirement to train every employee your company has be it a recruit or an experienced employee, as this will help in bridging the skill gap. The employee onboarding programs serve as a significant first impression and set the tone for new workers’ involvement with the company. The above-mentioned features of an LMS might assist in experiencing seamless onboarding.