How to Automate New Employee Onboarding

Have you ever had to send notifications about training manually? Or struggled to count the exact number of participants during a month? Or maybe you’ve gotten lost in the lists of interns and forgotten who attended what training?

Things would be much easier if you automate such routine tasks, and that’s when a learning management system (LMS) comes in.  

This is a platform where you enroll learners, upload courses and other training materials, and then the system will assign courses to learners and automatically track results.

This article will talk about how to use an LMS for the onboarding process and put new hire training on autopilot, so make sure you keep reading.

How Can an LMS Automate Employee Onboarding?

Corporate training with an LMS is a consistent, efficient, and flexible way to deliver knowledge company-wide. Learners can access materials anytime and on any device, and you don’t have to book venues, search for instructors, or think about how to get this all done. 

A proper LMS can facilitate training in each employee’s life cycle stage, and onboarding is no exception. More precisely, LMS features that empower employee onboarding automation can include:

• Enrollment rules (i.e., you can set a rule that sends all new hires to the “interns” group and enrolls them into an onboarding course immediately)
• Notifications (the system will promptly remind candidates and new hires about enrollments, assignments, deadlines, etc.)
• Automated tracking (the system collects training data into easy-to-navigate reports so you can see how learners perform in real-time)
• Integration with HR systems (you can sync data with your HR system and move all new hires to your learning platform automatically)

Next, we’ll show you why onboarding automation is so important and what it can do for your company. 

Why Automate Onboarding with an LMS?

• Speed up induction. You can assign new hires with courses before day one, so they can start working right away and don’t need much assistance.   
• Scale training. You can enroll as many learners as you need to and offer them the same unified training on compliance, safety, product knowledge, sales techniques, etc.
• Reduce costs. As training won’t need a venue or a trainer’s presence and doesn’t take employees away from their work tasks, you can replicate it anytime without additional costs. 
• Increase retention. Well-devised onboarding and training immerse employees in the learning process and improve retention by 82%. 
• Eliminate paperwork. Onboarding automation helps the HR department eliminate tedious, repetitive tasks and lightens the department’s workload. 
• Onboard remote employees. Using an LMS, you can ensure that remote teams have the same learning experience in different locations and time zones.

A study from Brandon Hall Group also showed that proper onboarding makes new hires 70% more productive. If you move onboarding to an LMS and automate it, you can get new hires to become productive sooner. Here are some tips to support you on the way. 

5 Tips to Automate Employee Onboarding

1. Create Induction Courses

Fast induction is significant for frontline workers or non-qualified professionals that need to be prepared for work as quickly as possible. Courses that explain how to use some equipment or perform specific procedures can help to reduce induction time significantly. 

For example, you need to prepare new cashiers to begin working, but inviting a fellow worker for assistance every time is certainly not efficient. But if you upload an online course on how to use a cash register into an LMS, your new cashiers can complete it on their smartphones and learn everything they need for work before day one. 

2. Run Compliance Training Online

Every field has its regulations, and compliance topics are essential in onboarding. You can move compliance training online and assign it as mandatory courses for all new hires.

Upload workplace safety rules, company policies, or work instructions into your LMS and reuse them repeatedly. Support compliance courses with quizzes to assess how well learners retain essential information on fire safety, cybersecurity, anti-harassment, etc. 

3. Introduce Your Company Culture Broadly

Your candidates or new hires will welcome the opportunity to learn more about its history, mission, and corporate culture and understand if they are a good fit. Create a consistent onboarding course with articles, links, and videos about your company, and assign it to each new hire.  

For example, your onboarding course may contain:

• Company overview and history 
• Workplace environment 
• Products and key differences 
• Meeting with the team
• A quiz about the company

4. Assign Regular Job-Specific Courses

You can assign all new employees with the same beginning training and offer more adjusted courses to their job roles after that. These can be online courses on sales techniques, marketing trends, customer service skills, or regular product knowledge training.

Your LMS can automatically enroll groups or entire departments of learners into such courses. Job-specific courses and quizzes help identify and close employee skill gaps and train new hires to the acceptable standards in your company. 

5. Create Learning Tracks

Put induction, compliance, company culture, communication etiquette, and other onboarding courses and quizzes into a well-organized learning track. Assign a learning track to individual learners or a group of hires, and the system will drip-feed new material to them. Smart learning tracks will guide new hires and map their development.

Start Onboarding New Hires Today

How you plan to onboard new hires and integrate them into your team requires thorough consideration.

Getting onboarding automated with an LMS is a wise way to prepare new hires for working in your company.

Automation will allow you to systemize and simplify the training process, speed up induction, and keep your finger on the pulse of your team.  

Helen Colman is an editor and content strategist at iSpring eLearning Software.

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