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Embracing Onboarding 2.0 for IT New Hires

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Embracing onboarding 2.0 for IT new hires helps provide the foundation needed to be successful within your organization. For instance, an effective onboarding program helps new hires blend with your company’s culture. Also, onboarding helps increase engagement, productivity, and retention rates. These results strengthen your bottom line.

According to Bamboo HR’s report, The Definitive Guide to Onboarding, an effective onboarding program helps new hires feel 18 times more committed to their employer. Also, 89% of respondents said an effective onboarding process helped them feel very engaged at work. Additionally, these employees were 30 times more likely to experience overall job satisfaction than employees who felt their onboarding process was lacking.

As a result, you should embrace onboarding 2.0 for IT new hires. These suggestions can help.

Discover why and how to embrace onboarding 2.0 for your IT new hires.

Importance of Gamification in Onboarding 2.0

Gamification in onboarding 2.0 for IT new hires helps create a positive impression of your organization. Providing fun, engaging activities to learn about your company helps new hires retain and apply the information.

For instance, gamification provides instant feedback for learning. Also, the feel-good hormone dopamine is released when being rewarded for a specific action. As a result, new hires seek additional onboarding activities so they can be rewarded for learning.

Benefits of Gamification in Onboarding 2.0

Gamification provides a range of benefits for IT new hires:

  • Because gamification provides learning in a challenge-based format, new hires can chunk the information into smaller pieces that are easier to retain and apply.
  • The brain’s hippocampus, which controls knowledge recall, is strongly stimulated during gameplay, leading to better recall and implementation of onboarding activities.
  • Gamification forms an emotional connection between the activity and its relevance, resulting in a strong focus on the activity and implementing what is learned.

Tips to Gamify Your Onboarding 2.0 Process

You can gamify your onboarding 2.0 process with these methods:

  • Determine which elements can be delivered through a learning management system. Examples include what to expect on Day 1, education on the company’s products and services, and explanations of the job tasks and challenges.
  • Work with a design team to create the learning modules. Include the goals of each lesson, the tone, the look, and the use of live videos or animations.
  • Include in your learning modules knowledge checks, templates, handbooks, training manuals, and a directory of managers and support staff.
  • Use personalized avatars, points, and progress bars to create a sense of ownership of the activities.
  • Implement badges to demonstrate advancement in your onboarding process to peers and management.
  • Allow new hires to provide constructive feedback on the learning modules.

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How to Streamline Your Onboarding Process

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As hiring managers, you know your onboarding process is instrumental in every new worker’s success. Finding ways to improve it not only lowers the cost but improves the value of every new hire.

At the same time, streamlining your onboarding process isn’t solely reliant on technology – though, technology does play a role.

Instead, you can make your onboarding program more effective by addressing the most common problems with the process and measuring your results.

Make the Process Digestible

Too often, onboarding is a combination of orientation, on-the-job training, and diving right into work. New employees and existing teams benefit most when you define the process and its parts and break each piece down into manageable portions. This becomes increasingly important as you recruit new Gen Z talent, who have short attention spans but great recall.

Breaking the onboarding process down into something easier to digest doesn’t streamline the process in the sense that it makes it immediately faster. Rather, it shortens the time it takes to produce effective, confident employees, and that’s the goal of onboarding.

First, pull out the parts that are company orientation, onboarding, and practical experience. Define them, separate them, and organize them in a way that tells a story without becoming long-winded.

Second, break down each process into bitesize pieces. No one benefits from spending all day in a conference room. Use categories to help the pieces fit together like a puzzle. Technology does a great job of helping you deliver paperwork and core, standardized training.

Finally, use a realistic timeline. It takes six months for new workers to feel they have enough information to feel useful in their organization. So don’t feel the need to have new hires onboarded in two weeks or less.

Use Mentorship

Your new team members won’t transition from onboarding to an employee ready-to-charge, no matter how comprehensive your program is. One way to help that transition along is to build mentoring into your onboarding program.

Mentorship creates a positive experience for new hires, which helps engage them sooner. Their mentor also lives the company values and expectations, so new candidates have a better idea of what to expect when their training period ends.

Finally, mentors serve as an easy, comfortable reference point for new candidates. New employees will always have questions: they won’t always know who to ask or feel it’s appropriate to reach out. Mentors give them a specific point of reference and a bridge to other employees or departments who can also provide answers.

Measure Your Success

What’s working in your onboarding program? What isn’t working? If you don’t measure your new hire experience, then you have no idea how it works. And having no idea means your onboarding program will never be as streamlined.

You measure your onboarding success throughout the first year of the candidate’s work. Some of the key metrics include:

  • Employee happiness
  • Turnover
  • Job satisfaction

Make the Onboarding Experience Human

While technology can help you streamline the onboarding process, your first goal is to make it more human. By adapting onboarding to employees’ modes of learning, acknowledging that learning continues over months, and measuring your success across the first year, you’ll find it easier to refine your process and impress new hires.

Are you looking to hire in 2021? RightStone’s 360 quality process can help you land qualified candidates who are ready to dive in. Get in touch to learn more.