How‌ ‌we‌ created‌ employee onboarding platform

With profound shifts in technology, the employer-employee relationship is reshaping. What’s more, our workplaces are transforming as well. While the salary still matters, employees expect more from a job and want to stay in organizations that have great workplace cultures. By thoughtfully investing in the onboarding solution can you show your people that you care about them. Not only can you improve employee experience, but it also helps you put your company on a path to creating a great company culture.

According to a recent survey, companies invested in improving the onboarding experience are more likely to see key benefits, such as increased engagement levels, decreased time to proficiency, and decreased turnover. Research by Glassdoor found that organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent. That’s why it’s imperative for companies of all sizes to develop an employee onboarding solution to rely on. Let’s delve into the details below.

What exactly is an employee onboarding platform?

From its name, this type of software is used to handle the onboarding process of the new hires by enabling the transition from candidate to employee. With a digital dashboard included, HR teams can easily track, communicate and monitor the potential employees through the employment stages, including I-9 verification, compliance insight, integrations for payroll and administration tools. Not only can HR managers and leadership address the current needs and concerns of their new hires, but this platform will also minimize the administrative burden on them.

What’s the idea of an employee onboarding platform?

Having a vast experience in delivering a variety of custom solutions for the following business verticals - logistics, e-commerce, e-learning, fintech, recruiting, and CRM, we, at DDI Development, came up with an idea of developing a concept of the employee onboarding platform. From our experience, companies mostly utilize multiple tools to onboard their employee. Only by using a single platform can they provide a smooth and comfortable onboarding experience for the HR department as well as the employee. In addition to that, the platform will include the following features:

• Learning the responsibilities of the position.
• Offering training modules to speed up the onboarding process.
• Instant and detailed HR reports.
• Electronic signatures and paperless tasks.

If implemented successfully, it will guide new hires through the various stages of the onboarding process as fast as possible. Moreover, it ensures that all staff involved in the process are on the same page as well. Sounds impressive, right? So, let’s keep on reading!

User Roles

Here we have provided the information about the user customization. Not only does it help you find out more about the users’ privileges within the employee onboarding platform, but you will also identify the key features and functionality of the system. There are three user roles within the employee onboarding platform - HR Manager, User, and Administrator. Let’s consider in details below:

• HR Managers are users within the employee onboarding system responsible for overseeing the recruiting, interviewing, and hiring of new staff; scheduling new hires' training, creating company policies and processing employment documents, etc.
• Users have basic permissions in the employee onboarding system. Not only can they move through the onboarding process fast and easily, but also they will be able to perform tasks more efficiently.
• The administrator is able to manage every aspect of the employee onboarding system and has visibility to the functionality or configuration and settings.

Project structure

Here we are going to describe technologies that may have been applied when you decide to create an employee onboarding system:

User Dashboard

If you sign in as a User, you will see the main hub of navigation around the employee onboarding platform. Let’s take a closer look below:

• Profile
• Job
• Salary
• Time off
• Documents
• Training
• Benefits
• Onboarding

Profile

In the Profile, you can find all the information such as profile photo, name, birth date, address, education, qualifications, experience, hire and occupation, social status, etc. In addition to that, you are able to see who your manager is, what your hire date is, and who you report directly to. Also, you have access to user-specific settings from a drop-down menu.

Job

By clicking on the Job option in the main menu, you will be redirected to that page. Here you are provided with all the information about your job. Here you can see the following:

• Status of employment
• Information about the job
• Compensation
• Bonus
• Commission

Salary

With the Salary option, a user is able to view his/her salary. All the information is displayed by default in functional currency. Also, you will see the pay date, total growth pay, taxes, deductions, net amount. In addition to that, four tabs are displayed:

• Direct deposits mean that your payroll checks are automatically deposited into your bank account.
• Payroll: the process the company goes through to pay the employees.
• Deductions: used to lower the amount of income subject to tax.
• Paid time off (PTO) policy: means that any employee has a pool of days measured in hours that may be used at his/her discretion and need to be compensated.

Time off

With that option, users are able to see the time-off benefits. They are allowed to take the following categories of time offs: sick time, vacation time, personal leave, bereavement leave, jury duty or family and medical leave acts. What’s more, each category of time off is paid out at a different rate and needs to be tracked independently. In addition to that, an employee can see a well-structured table with the following columns: Date, Status, Type, Duration, Assigned to, Comment.

Documents

Thanks to this feature, all the documents such as wage changes, job titles, benefit selections, wage garnishments, I-9 forms, employee background, completed training, etc. are kept in one place and help support and justify current pay, position and benefit selections. What’s more, they have various uses and may be important either administratively or legally. All the documents are presented in a well-structured table with the following columns: document, status, actions (download).

Training

With the training feature, employees always can learn how to best perform their jobs that contribute to achieving corporate goals and towards more challenging roles. Receiving continuous training also means they’re always on the roll of industry developments. Whether it is an orientation or technical skills training, here the employee is able to see all the courses he/she attends within the organization.

Benefits

With this feature, any user can see that the company cares about them, is interested in their health and future. The benefits package includes overtime, medical insurance, vacation, profit sharing, bonuses and retirement benefits accessible and visible in the main menu. Moreover, employee’s individual needs, interests, and eligibility are taken into account. You can find all the information in a table with the following columns such as Benefit Type, Benefit Plan, Date, Coverage, Employee pays, Company pays, Frequency.

Onboarding

With the Onboarding feature, an employee can see a roadmap that shows the new hire onboarding process with the following steps: pre-onboarding, onboarding and post-onboarding. At each step, an employee should focus on the tasks that need to be done. For example, the pre-onboarding stage includes signing I-9 and W-4 forms, non-disclosure agreement, meeting with HR, etc. Not only does each step drive what a new employee should share with others or sign, but it helps to fully engage a new hire into the company at the very start.

HR Manager Dashboard

After signing in as an HR Manager, you will be redirected to the page with the main menu that includes the following:

• Employees
• Job Offering
• Workflow
• Reports
• Notifications

By clicking on the Dashboard option in the main menu, you will be landed on this page. Here you will find an at-a-glance view of key areas of the employee onboarding platform.

Employees

With the Employees feature, you are able to see all the information about your staff in your company. Such information as full name, position, employment period, email, etc. is presented here and can be reached in one click. Not only does it simplify the process of collaboration, but it also speeds up the completion of the HR-related tasks.

Job Offering

With the Job Offering feature, an HR manager can add and view all the job positions within the company. In addition to that, he/she can see a number of applicants, description, hiring lead, status of the position, actions (view/add/edit/delete). By clicking on the applicant’s field, he/she will be redirected to the Applicants page where he/she can see an applicant’s CV and view the hiring pipeline.

Workflow

With this feature, an HR manager is able to see all the HR-related and recruiting processes within the company. What’s more, he/she can create any workflow based on the company’s needs. In the Workflow tab, you will find out a table that consists of the following steps:

• Before the first day
• Welcome, office tour, company vision
• Paper work - a first week on the job

Each step includes a task name, type, name of the document, employee name, assigned to, due date, actions (view, edit, delete).

Salary

With the Salary feature, an HR manager can view employees’ salaries and payslips in which the details such as the name of employee, department, hire date, salary, bonus, overtime, insurance, total pay, etc. are displayed. Not only can he/she see the number of employees by salary criteria, but he/she can also gain insight into key compensation business processes.

Reports

With the Reports feature, you can ask the right questions about your workforce and turn complex data into clear and direct answers. On this page, the following data are shown: onboarded employees graph, number of the onboarded employees, in progress, overdue employee, open and in-progress tasks, overdue tasks. Also, you can see Open, In Progress, and Overdue tasks graph that gives you a more detailed overview of how effective your HR and recruiting processes are.

Notifications

With the Notification feature, you can keep all the employees up to date. Not only can they be abreast of what is happening in the employee onboarding system, but also it alerts users about recent updates within the system. In addition to that, it disappears when a user responds to a notification.

Chat

With the Chat feature, you can connect to your staff quickly and easily. Not only can you share files and high-resolution images/photos, but you can also see when someone has read or received your message. In addition to that, you are able to see when someone is typing a message.

Admin Dashboard

On the Admin dashboard, there is a list of tabs that enable access to different and important areas of the employee onboarding system. They are the following: Employees, Job Offerings, Workflow, Analytics, and System Settings.

Employees

With this feature, an Administrator is able to see all the information about the new hires and staff as well. Not only does it help to manage the onboarding process, but it also gives the ability to connect with new hires quickly and easily. The table consists of the following columns:

• ID#
• Full name
• Position
• E-mail
• Hiring Lead
• Documents
• Onboarding Workflow
• Actions

Workflow

With the Workflow feature, an Administrator is able to see all the processes related to HR and recruiting departments. Not only does it provide guidance to a process with tasks, checklists, and deadlines, but also he/she can see who has been assigned to the tasks and track the level of completion.

Analytics

With the Analytics feature, an Administrator can align the onboarding strategy with overall business goals in an effective way. The data transformed into rich visuals can help you make informed data-driven decisions when it comes to pre-onboarding, onboarding, hiring, elaborating career development plans, etc. Not only is he/she in the know about the number of offers to send and onboarded people, but he/she also keeps track of the time required to accept an offer or onboard a new hire.

System Settings

From the corresponding option in the main menu of the employee onboarding platform, you can reach the System Settings page. On the Settings page, you’ll find the following widgets: permissions, employee fields, benefits, holidays, job openings, onboarding, time offs, pay, etc. By clicking on any of them you will land on that page to make some changes in configuration quickly and easily.

Key features of the employee onboarding platform

• Document management: with this feature, not only can you create and store documents, but you can also share them among departments.
• E-verification / I-9 forms: only by comparing information from Form I-9 to government records can you be sure that an employee is authorized to work in the U.S.
• Electronic signature: used as a legally-binding option for all the documents that drive your business.
• Assessment tools: with this feature, organizations can easily assess the return on investment of employee onboarding and software more efficiently.
• Job description management: not only can you create job descriptions and keep them stored, but you will also have access to the history of all changes in the job descriptions over time.
• Orientation workflow management: with this feature, you can remove repetitive manual steps and ensure that every step of the onboarding process is carried out accurately and consistently.
• Training management: with this feature, you can efficiently organize, manage, and schedule courses to close the learning gap among your staff.
• Analytics and reporting: with built-in metrics and data collection measures, it helps you to find out the key areas for improvement in their candidate-to-employee transition phase.

Why do you need an employee onboarding platform for your business?

A good employee onboarding platform is an essential tool for any type of business. Not only does it help to better manage new hire paperwork and onboarding scheduling, but it also allows teams of recruiters and HRs to automate tasks and deadlines and assign them to new hires that speeds up the onboarding. With the employee onboarding software, companies can close the gap between people and data to deliver a smooth onboarding experience to the staff. If you are overloaded with paperwork and legal documentation that need to be filled out, wait too long for the document approval and verification or face the endless loop of emails, CVs, and people, employee onboarding platform is a way out. Here we have highlighted some reasons why every business should place importance on the employee onboarding software:

• If they need to eliminate manual errors and miscommunication.
• If they need to schedule and develop a standardized suite of the onboarding procedure.
• If they need to make an onboarding process happen more easily.
• If they need to increase visibility over the onboarding process and drastically reduce time-to-productivity.

However, these are not all the reasons that may take place, but the most essential ones that any business owner or business leader should take into account to keep their new hires highly engaging from the very start.

Benefits of the employee onboarding platform for your business

Below you can find out the key benefits you can derive from. Let’s dive into the details!

• Streamlined recruiting process: with the employee onboarding platform in hand, you can store and sort electronic CVs of potential candidates. Not only can it help you to filter unqualified employees, but you can also share applicant information with all hiring managers and other decision-makers.
• Improved onboarding: with the employee onboarding solution, you are always aware that employees have access to all the information required to do their job correctly; to training courses that they should join in their big day, etc.
• Minimize manual processes: only by going paperless can you save a lot of time and resources. Not only can you digitally and safely store documents, but you can also eliminate tedious manual searches and get everything you need in just one click.
• Bridge the learning gaps: with the onboarding system in hand, you can show new hires that you care about their skills and knowledge. Only by providing them with the necessary training courses can you create an overall skillful staff and keep them engaged during onboarding.
• Sophisticated reporting: with all the metrics, insights and other statistical data related to human resources in the company, it helps HR managers and recruiters improve workforce performance, recruiting procedures, and other relevant HR processes.

Bottom line: Does your company place the emphasis on the employee onboarding software?

Employee onboarding represents a vital component in the company workforce. Many employees refuse to work for an organization that does not focus on the onboarding process. This means implementing an employee onboarding platform is an urgent need. Not only does it help bring together activities, tasks, and team communication into one digital solution, but it will also help onboard new hires in one click. Having that in mind, you can catch up with and streamline your onboarding processes by investing in software solutions. While it may sound like an additional expense, it's definitely worth it in the long run. Want to create a robust employee onboarding platform? Don’t hesitate to contact us to easily attract, onboard, and retain your employees.