THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON EMPLOYEE ONBOARDING

WHAT IS ONBOARDING?

The process of acqainting your newly hired employees with your company's standards,procedures and culture.

 Effective employee onboarding will positively influence your bottom line with the correct onboarding software sinceit creates employee loyalty.The stronger that loyalty, the longer the individual will stay with the company.

Figure 1: Onboarding (flimp.net)

WHAT ARE THE FOUR PHACES OF ONBOARDING?

1. Preboarding

During this phace,the employees goes through a checklist of things that introduce them to their role within the company. This will include things like corporate overview, employee handbook, compliance policy, social media and blogging policy, benefits package information, dress code information, and a list of resources to help the employee be succesful in the position.

2. Onboarding and welcoming new employees

This is the orientation or the time when new employees first arrive at the organization. In this period they will be introduced to senior management and other key people in the company.

3. Training

This is the most important step of the onboarding process. In this phace three employers give new employees a clear picture of what they should expect from this job.

4. Transition to the new role

Recently hired employees need to be slowly integrated in to the team and office culture during this phace.Here, the employee will transition from an individual contributor with limited responsibility to a full-fledged team member.

FIVE C'S OF ONBOARDING

In 2010, after years and years of research, consulting and observation, Dr.Taylor Baure has been able to invent these 5 c's of onboarding.These 5 c's are as following.

1. Compliance

2. Clarification

3. Confidence

4. Connection

5. Culture

Figure 2: 6 c's of onboarding
( preppio.com)

While each of the original 5 c's is an important component of onboarding, the higher up the scale from compliance to connection and culture that the oraganization is able to go, the more effective the onboarding programbecomes.

HOW THE PANDEMIC CHANGED ONBOARDING

Back in february 2020, no one could have imagined how COVID-19 would drastically changed how we existed in our world. To be pragmetic, we all experienced  how this effected us, our lives and jobs.

Employee onboarding over these past few months has been riddled with challenges that were all but foreign to us,pre-pandemic.

Fortunately, many organizations had the agile ability to shift,pivot and eventually transition to remote working environments.

 

Figure 3: Structured employee onboarding
( eLearningindustry.com)

NEW CHANGES IN ONBOARDING AFTER PANDEMIC

• Remote or hybrid onboarding 

Remote or hybrid onboarding  means, the process of transitioning new hires in hybrid roles to the company. Since hybrid employees are working remotely and onsite, the hybrid onboarding process adresses new challenges whic are not familar with traditional onboarding process of the company.

• Re-boarding employees post-pandemic

Re-boarding or re-onboarding means re-familiarizing emoyees with the oraganizational culture and team.

This is done by taking the employees through an altered onboarding plan-one that is designed for a remote work model.

• Focusing on inclusive onboarding programs

while time- to-productivity is a metric most HR professionals measure because it is efficient, onboarding should be about life time productivity. 

• Appearance of five new rules for onboarding in post-pandemic workplace 

1. Start early

2. Mirror the work place model

3. Learn in to digital

4. Culture is king

5. Allow ample time 

TRADITIONAL ONBOARDING VS DIGITAL ONBOARDING AFTER PADEMIC

• Cost

Traditional onboarding : Adittional expences include paperwork and trained staff to verify identity and documents.

Digital onboarding : With digital onboarding it saves money, through digital ID verification and OCR document verification.

• Information security 

Traditional onboarding : Since all documents are tangible files, onboarding is difficult and might have to go through several data checkpoints.

Digital onboarding : Data is kept secure in cloudand complaiance.

• Digital onboarding is, efficient, Less expensive, accurate, increase productivity, continuoud round-the-clock assistance.

Figure 4: How to change
( Technologyadvice.com, February 26,2019)



CONCLUSION

While the fundamentals of onboarding new employees will reamain the same after the epidemic, the specifics may vary dramatically. As the business landscape changes, savvy corporate leaders should learn from their COVID-19 experiences and modify the process.As a result, the company will have a solid pipeline for candidate to adopt and start making an effect.

Figure 5 : Edunet.com

REFERENCES

• How employee onboarding changed post-pandemic |Available at: https://www.loopinhq.com/resources/employee-onboarding-in-a-post-pandemic-hybrid-workplace [ Accessed 2023 April 29 ]

• Employee onboarding trends | Available at: https://www.zavvy.io/blog/employee-onboarding-trends [ Accessed 2023 April 29]

• Impact of covid19 on employee onboarding | Available at : https://www.clickboarding.com/impact-of-covid-on-employee-onboarding/ [ Accessed 2023 April 29]

• Employee onboardingis essential, Available at: https://www.preppio.com/blog/microsofts-future-of-work-6-cs-of-employee-onboarding-is-essential?hs_amp=true [ Accessed 2023 April 29]

• Available at : https://gradecrest.com/latest-human-resources-research-topics/ [ Accessed 2023 April 29]

Written by : Himani