You have decided that it is time for you to build a digital onboarding program for your new hires, but how do you go about getting started?
First, you need a platform
First and foremost, you need to check if our company has a digital platform – this will be something HR or management can answer, depending on the size of your company.
If you don’t have a platform already, you may want to check our article on how to pick the right platform, or consult this checklist we made about what to look for.
Before you start exploring content, it is our experience that you need to be extremely specific in your articulation of the intended audience. Depending on the size of your company, you may start by building one universal onboarding program or one specific for each job function or department.
Identify your audience
Before you start exploring content, it is our experience that you need to be extremely specific in your articulation of the intended audience. Depending on the size of your company, you may start by building one universal onboarding program or one specific for each job function or department. When we reached 14 employees, we had 5 different onboarding programs, which turned out to be complete overkill and a lot of work to maintain compared to the size of the company. We recently compiled the best elements from the 5 different programs and made them into one kickass onboarding experience.
Killer content
When creating your onboarding program, keep in mind that the information you decide to include must be relevant for each and every employee who will take the course. Ask yourself this question: “What content is relevant for my new COO and Software Engineer?”. This is a great starting point for beginning to think about the content of your universal onboarding program. For inspiration on what type of content to include, refer to our checklist.
[…] have the CEO create a welcome video where they tell the story of the company and explain the daily life at the office. Include pictures, press releases and social media posts to engage your new employee with your company’s brand. Instead of including 5 pages on how the marketing team works, create an exercise where the new employee schedules a half hour meeting with the head of marketing.
Creating your onboarding program does not end with gathering all that killer content, it is crucial that you think about how you are presenting the content. Use the features in the online platform to create a program with varied and engaging types of media. For instance, have the CEO create a welcome video where they tell the story of the company and explain the daily life at the office. Include pictures, press releases and social media posts to engage your new employee with your company’s brand. Instead of including 5 pages on how the marketing team works, create an exercise where the new employee schedules a half hour meeting with the head of marketing. That way, your new hire will not only meet new people at the office, but will gain valuable insight on how different departments work.
Do not drown your new employees with long pdfs or endless powerpoint slides on the history of your company or description of your product.The possibilities are endless, but once you identify your audience and gather that killer content, including different forms of multimedia and hands-on exercises will help new hires truly engage with the onboarding program.
Deployment & feedback
Your onboarding program doesn’t have to be perfect before you deploy it. It will be better if you work in it in iterations, consult your participants and incorporate their feedback in creating more modules and expanding the scope over time. In fact, you can design a great starting point and deploy it in 2-4 days.
During the month of March, we focus on supporting you in building a great digital onboarding experience for your employees. Please feel free to reach out if you need any assistance.
At CanopyLAB we designed a simple and social platform for digital learning experiences.
Need a platform for hosting your digital onboarding program?
