Onboarding Case Studies & Best Practices

Successful new starter onboarding programs begin by engaging new hires before the first day of work. Care Agency Services shifted from its “involved” onboarding process to a digital alternative which helped reduce the time taken from 30 minutes to 2 minutes. Other case studies have been provided for BaptistCare, Mailigen, ServiceNow, and Vodafone.

Case Study #1: Care Agency Services

• Initially, the Care Agency Services ran an “involved” onboarding process consisting of the following steps:
  • Sending the necessary forms and documents (like the tax file declaration) through the post
  • New starters filling the forms and sending them back through the post 
  •  Manually entering employee details into the company database
  • Filling out tax information at the ATO 
• The third and fourth steps usually took approximately 30 minutes.
• The HR and Recruitment Manager, Chris Gleadhill, already knew Tanda solutions to be “functional and easy-to-use”.
• Therefore, the company engaged Tanda for its onboarding, rostering, and payroll processes.
• Tanda provided the following features for Care Agency:
  • Tanda’s digital onboarding sends new starters an online form that can be completed in a few minutes. This functionality supports concerned team managers with comprehensive details such as birth dates, bank details, and ATO-approved tax declaration.
  • An employee profile is automatically created in Tanda and its payroll service from the form contents. Tanda integrates payroll with already existing company payroll and POS services.
  • An online ATO-approved tax declaration form is provided and gets sent directly to the ATO.
• The results were significant:
  • Tanda’s digital onboarding features reduced the new employee onboarding time from 30 minutes to just 2 minutes (a 94% reduction).
  • Care Agency saved two salaried positions and increased carers and thereby clients.

Case Study #2: BaptistCare

• After extensive research, BaptistCare identified the need for a learning management system that could handle “multiple needs” including employee and volunteer onboarding, system security, and integrations as one of their major challenges.
• The care provider was confronted with the unsustainability of fragmented data across multiple systems and needed an LMS that offered “flexibility in course setup and design”.
• To cap it all, the care provider sought a “trusted learning expert with a track record in the Aged Care and Community Services Industries”.
• Working with Kineo, the provider organized a BaptistCare working group “across all business streams”.
• The team chose the Totara Learn Kineo edition that incorporated a modern library of e-learning to suit the company’s current and future learning needs.
• Notable features of this learning service are the “custom look and feel”, fresh content, frequently updated existing content, and microlearning.
• The LMS has enabled BaptistCare to unite their “webinar, elearning and seminar (face to face) programs – ranging from onboarding, team and personal development, management and leadership”.

Case Study #3: Vodafone

• Pre-COVID, Vodafone’s onboarding processes were condensed into a one-day in-person induction that happened at physical offices.
• Although the process involved several best practices (such as involving employees and managers from a range of leadership levels and sharing “key beacons”), the HR team sought to improve the onboarding journey and offer more support to managers.
• The process involved several stakeholders, began to feel fragmented.
• Vodafone leveraged the work-from-home requirements caused by the pandemic scare to revolutionalize its new starters’ onboarding journey.
• To begin, the HR staff divided onboarding into “digestible pieces” — for example, by substituting a series of leadership-led webinars for induction-day speaking slots.
• The onboarding process was expanded into a 90-day intensive experience beginning 28 days prior to the first day of work.
• The teams decentralized the program by creating workflows tailored for different new hires – for example, specialized guidance for graduates.
• Vodafone not only tailored the onboarding for different types of hires, but also did the same for each individual. The customized onboarding process enabled new employees to get more information on subjects of interest to them.
• Vodafone tried to make sure the “remote onboarding didn’t feel remote“.
• The company used Enboarder’s workflows for a buddy system and Jamboard’s digital communities for new starters.
• Finally, active feedback (from surveys to check-ins) was used to monitor the progress and discover new paths for onboarding.
• As a result, the starters, managers, and senior leadership reported being happier with the onboarding process.
• The brand’s new digital-first onboarding journey also helps reflect its “forward-thinking” nature. “While we hope to reintroduce some face-to-face interaction in the future, the principles of making onboarding simple, digital, relevant, and personal are definitely something we’re going to keep – and evolve further with Enboarder,” explains Ellie Oretti, Vodafone’s Digital Designer – Learning & Development.

Case Study #4: Mailigen

• The business had significant turnover, and Janis, the company’s founder and CEO, subsequently learned that workers were recruited as a fast fix to fill a void on the project.
• According to Janis, the onboarding process is critical; the first day in the office should be a celebration complete with balloons attached to the chair, lunch complete with a cake and signed card, and, of course, a present for the new employee and their spouse.
• Beginning the renovation of its employee onboarding, Mailigen created a handy checklist for the onboarding process via HR management software, CakeHR.
• The template details each manager and employee’s task in new starters’ onboarding.
• These responsibilities include those performed before to the employee’s arrival, as well as those performed on the employee’s first day, first week, and first month.
• According to Janis, an extensive, comprehensive onboarding process would result in happier and more productive workers, since people are more productive when they are involved long before they are at their desk.
• CakeHR provided an integrated onboarding package covering customization of Tasks scheduling and Workflow, forms and documents sharing, continuity, automation, and ease of the process.

• The business has welcomed up to ten new workers since implementing its new onboarding procedure, and Janis has observed how much more quickly and efficiently new employees take on their duties independently.

Case Study #5: ServiceNow

• ServiceNow has transitioned from its new employee training virtual tools to a fully remote onboarding process amid COVID-19.
• The remote onboarding process began with an onboarding mobile app, enabling new hires to complete all “required paperwork as well as requisition equipment digitally”.
• A “completely digital orientation” six-hour program on Zoom’s videoconferencing platform was used to connect new hires with many guest speakers and company leaders and representatives from the product, talent, finance, IT, and sales teams.
• Next, employees were permitted to ask related questions during a 90-minute session on the second day of onboarding.
• For some departments, new hires were virtually engaged in training sessions or meetings with their new managers and onboarding buddies.
• The sessions also included a virtual happy hour.
• Apart from the company’s self-proclaimed success with its revised remote onboarding program, the company’s recent fast growth in headcount (8.2 percent in the last six months, 17% in the last year, and 34% in the last two years) is a testimony to the effectiveness of its virtual training strategy. Additionally, the business has seen an increase in favorable evaluations from both workers and consumers since then.

Onboarding Best Practices

• “New hires are 54% more productive and 69% more likely to stay with an organization for up to 3 years if they have had an effective onboarding experience.”
• New hires should be engaged during onboarding to avoid giving the impression that they are not expected to be productive immediately. Involve other employees, teams, and departments in the onboarding process. Around 61% of top onboarding companies provide managers with insight into the progress of new employees.
• Typical onboarding activities should be completed in advance. These include making provisions for:
  •  Security logins, access keys, logins for hardware, password management tools, role-specific software and apps
  •  Desk and workspaces 
  •  Technology devices including computers, tablets, monitors, cables, adaptors (where required)
  • Specialized tools and equipment
  • Uniforms and customized name tags 
• Crucial aspects of paperwork that should be completed before day one include:
  •  Employment contract 
  • Acknowledgement policies Payroll
  •   Payroll forms 
  • VISA and Work requirements 
  • Police and Working with Children checks 
• In the Aged Care industry, care providers are equipping new graduates and experienced new hires alike with onboarding “in-house and online training“.
• New hires are also being connected to learn from veteran employees.

Key Takeaways

•  Digitalizing the onboarding process is very important in all industries.
• Although employing digital onboarding solutions might result in extra expenses, brands can use them to improve productivity, save time and cost on related salaried positions.
• Firms are actively seeking onboarding systems that will handle multiple needs, thereby eliminating fragmented data.
• Aged Care providers prefer expert onboarding solutions with a track record in the Aged Care and Community Services Industries.
•  Completely remote onboarding programs are feasible and have been shown to be superior than conventional approaches.