Incorporating online learning into your new hire onboarding program is a way to quickly engage your newest team member from the first day within your organization.
An effective new hire onboarding program helps people:
- Feel welcome and valued
- Feel prepared to do their jobs effectively
- Become productive and contribute in a meaningful way at an accelerated rate
A warm welcome on day one from the supervisor and the team goes a long way towards making the new hire feel valued and welcome.
But how do you get people up to speed quickly so that they can hit the ground running?
An onboarding process that consists purely of face to face interactions leads to inconsistent communication.
Remember the broken telephone game? How Bob teaches a new hire is going to be completely different from how Jane teaches a new hire. Everyone has their own style and approach. Information can be interpreted differently and some things could be left out.
Another issue with a primary offline approach to onboarding is that it drains the resources of your existing workforce. Someone has to stop doing their job to train the new guy.
Incorporating online learning components into your new hire onboarding process enables you to provide a consistent training experience that allows everyone on your team to stay productive.
Another benefit is that eLearning can be done anytime, anywhere so it allows your new hire to feel like they are in control of their learning experience.
But we also don’t want to make our new hires feel like they are isolated. I can remember starting so many jobs where someone dumped me in a corner with the “Company Manual” (worst invention ever) because my new desk and computer weren’t ready yet.
A blended approach to your onboarding is best. Use a combination of online learning and face to face interactions to give the new hire the full picture.
Online learning modules should be super short (microlearning) and should be organized in a way that people can access the information that they need when they need it (Just-in-Time training).
The online portion of the onboarding experience can include:
- Culture, mission and values
- Product and service information
- Job role and responsibilities
- Behavioral and soft skills training such as customer service training
- Expectations and policies
- Training on how to use programs and applications
- Health, safety and security and other compliance training
Here’s an example of an end to end new hire curriculum that we created for social enterprise cuddle+kind.
cuddle + kind learning map
Each module within the curriculum is short, less than 15 minutes in length. The entire curriculum covers everything from culture, to role expectations, to tools and procedures.
The curriculum engages new hires with video and interactive eLearning scenarios that introduce them to real situations that they will encounter on the job.
In the Role of the CS Team module, new hires get a taste of the organizational culture and their roles and responsibilities through a day in the life video.
This is just one of the many fun and engaging ways that you can be using video in your employee training programs!
For more information on incorporating microlearning and just-in-time training into your strategy, check out our resource https://www.learntoflourish.com/teach/
For more information on employee onboarding, check out our article
https://www.learntoflourish.com/what-is-onboarding-how-new-hires-feel-about-it/
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