HR Cloud Blog

Onboarding new employees is arguably the most important part of your business operations. This process sets the stage by introducing new hires to the company and brand vision while arming them with the tools necessary to be successful in their new roles. Yet many companies (especially smaller businesses) lack a streamlined digital onboarding process.

This is a shame considering onboarding is your first (and could very well be your last) impression on new employees. Contrary to what many believe, onboarding doesn’t start on day one.

It starts at the first application (or even an invite to apply), and it should continue seamlessly through the employee’s entire career. The 2019 Jobvite Job Seeker Nation Survey found 24% of candidates give up on an application process because of system issues while 29% of workers left a job within the first 90 days.

We live in an era of mobile connectivity, where prospective job candidates can apply to big businesses like Bank of America or Amazon on a job board, the company’s website, social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, or even text message or chatbot. This is becoming the new norm in a modern society that needs instant gratification.

A recent survey of HR professionals from Paychex Worx reinforces the importance of a solid onboarding experience by pointing out the top three priorities for HR: evaluating workplace productivity, training and developing staff, and driving results through company culture. The seeds for these key ingredients are planted through HR onboarding the day a new hire applies. 

What makes a workplace a place of work? Is it the office premises, the machine equipment or the luxurious facilities? No, it’s the human workers, also known as the human capital, that determine both the quality of the workplace and the future of the organization. 

The more engaged they are, the better it is for the organization.

With the advent and proliferation of the knowledge economy, corporate leaders have come to realize that they must go beyond acquisition and recruitment and focus on the full employee lifecycle. They recognize the importance of discovering viable employee engagement strategies to maximize their human capital investment and turn them into high-ROI assets for the business.

With effective employee engagement ideas, employees will not only have the ability to improve their performance but will also bring unique benefits to the organization in the form of higher profitability, better customer retention, better talent acquisition and retention, lower employee turnover, and a safer work environment. This adds to the bottom line quarter over quarter and ensures long-term prosperity for the organization.

Time off management got you down? Without a proper system in place, employee time off requests can quickly become a burden. Mismanagement of them may even be detrimental to your business.

In this blog post we'll cover why employee time off management is important and three tips you can use to become a time off management superstar. Let's get started!

Think quick: How are your organization’s managers currently tracking paid time off?
If you answered spreadsheets, paper requests, or calendars (or some combination of the three), you are not alone. Many organizations have yet to adopt an efficient paid time-off tracking system, a position that may lead to real concerns.

For example, your managers may want to stay organized, but simply don’t have an effective way of managing employees’ time-off requests, leave balances, and other details. Unfortunately it becomes a struggle that affects accuracy and productivity and can lead to real headaches—for both HR and employees—whenever a team member wants to take a day off.

It’s no wonder that 20% of managers admit to feeling overwhelmed by the high volume of vacation requests, and 96% of professionals report that employees make mistakes when it comes to time tracking. Fortunately, there are options with paid time-off tracking software that can address these challenges for both your managers and HR and payroll professionals.

The first day at a new job. We’ve all been there, but it’s easy to forget. So let’s practice a little radical empathy and put ourselves in our new hire’s penny loafers. What was that first day like? If you’re like me, you’ve probably repressed some memories of the event, so things are a bit fuzzy. But I’ll attempt to relive some of the horrors of a particularly bad first 8 hours in hopes it’ll help end awkward first days forever.

I showed up eager with a trapper keeper full of pencils and a head full of ideas. The interview process was rigorous and the position seemed challenging, but I was ready to live up to my resume. So it came as a surprise when my boss and the rest of the team seemed a little less than prepared for my arrival. They didn’t know who I was, why I was there, or what I needed to do, and I felt the same way.

There just has to be a better way to onboard new hires, right?