For Startups, Here Are 5 Tools That Will Facilitate Onboarding

Startups are built around great ideas, and you need smart people to bring them to fruition. Since its growth depends on external capital, they run on a tight budget. As a result, some startups do not prioritize an onboarding structure, leading to a poor new hire experience. That explains why startup attrition rates may reach 25%, almost double the industry average (13%). Hence for your physical, psychological, and especially financial efforts to bear fruit,  your recruits must have an employee experience unlike any other throughout the onboarding process.

 

Every organization must have a structured onboarding process and attempt to acquire this brilliance manually. Without the assistance of free onboarding, tools reduce your odds of becoming outstanding or even average. While investing in premium onboarding software may not be the best solution in the growing stage,  to make onboarding successful, we must utilize free onboarding tools to personalize and provide a great experience, which would immediately boost retention rates. Here are some of the tools that can aid you.

5 Essential Onboarding Tools For Startups

Don't worry, we won't simply list what you need and leave it at that; we'll explain why you need these tools in particular and even recommend which tools are most likely the best fit for you.

• Email Automation Tool

A significant error you may make as part of the onboarding process is to leave your recruit hanging after giving them a position in your firm.

You could think, "I've already offered them the position; what more is there to communicate?" According to research, new employees think a lot about exploring alternative chances between obtaining the offer and joining day, and this is also the period when numerous firms solicit them.

So, communication is essential to ensure they continue with your organization and join 15 days later with excitement. As part of the onboarding process, you should have an email automation tool to assist you with your drip email marketing. Welcome Email Drip Campaigns are now an assured thing in the onboarding process, and tools like Freshteam, OptinMonster, and RafflePress might be the preferred tools for you to employ.

These allow you to create email campaigns with over 100 free themes. You may also establish segments to group your new employees based on position or geography and total automation of the email campaign by setting up pathways on which the email sent to the employee is based.

• E-Signature Tool

HR professionals have critical concerns to attend to, and occasionally (just sometimes), they may overlook the unsigned NDA form. They may have to chase down the new hire, probably seated on a different floor, and get them signed. Sounds exhausting? Is there an easier way to do it? Oh yes, by automating it! Include all the documents in your welcome kit, and get them e-signed during the pre-onboarding phase. That’s one more task ticked off your onboarding checklist.  You don't miss any tasks; you don't have to trail the recruit, and they don't have to travel seas merely to post a sign.

Free e-signature tools like EverSign and DocuSign can be crucial to automating and digitizing your onboarding process. As part of the onboarding process, your recruits, HR personnel, or managers may be required to sign hundreds of paperwork. However, investing in a welcome kit tool that includes e-sign integration would be wiser. Welcome kit tools can transmit "documents to sign" to more than one e-sign partner, making it simple to choose your integrations.

• Checklists Tool

Juggling responsibilities and keeping track of all your business obligations may be stressful in today's work-from-home environment. Every hour of every day, there is always something that has to be done. The same applies to employee onboarding. An onboarding checklist should consist of a list of the most important tasks that must be done before and after the employees’ first day; send welcome emails, preboarding paperwork, asset allotment, and so on.

A checklist tool should allow you to construct checklists with tasks you can allocate to various stakeholders. This helps you keep your stakeholders aware of their roles in the onboarding process and builds the new hire's and every other stakeholder's ownership skills.

If you're searching for a feature-rich checklist tool, Freshteam, Grove HR, and Qualee should be your first picks since they include checklists and the "send reminders" option in the welcome kit. You can mail paperwork, monitor whether they've been signed and sent, and do everything from one location.

• Employee Database Tool

Alternate email address, previous employment, compensation information, emergency contact number, reporting manager information, you know the drill by now. When a new employee is hired, a slew of information must be collected and stored for legal compliance. Would you physically gather all the information and put it somewhere, only to spend hours later attempting to retrieve one piece of information?

If so, switch to an Employee Database tool with an employee self-service option, which means your employees will fill out all essential information and be saved in the database permanently.

You will have all the necessary information in one place and within your reach. The ideal employee database tool will not just help HR. It gives employees more authority. Employees may access their information and make changes using an employee self-service portal. Employees using employee data management software may clock in and out straight from the app, submit time off requests or expense reports, and respond to performance assessments or survey questions. All essential information is kept in their file.

You will configure the fields based on the information you wish to gather once and then forget about them. Employees will self-service and fill out forms; your tool will securely keep the information for you until you remove it. Freshteam, OrangeHRM, and TimeTrex are Employee Database solutions that provide these capabilities. These tools take care of welcome kits, checklists, E-Sign, and more.

• Survey Tool

Even if you have solved most of the issues, you cannot infer that you have provided the best employee onboarding experience to your recruits, at least on your own. You'll need information and validation from the recruits before you can report to your management that your team has nailed the ideal onboarding procedure for your organization. Of course, the only way to acquire this is to ask them. Use surveys at regular intervals to get feedback and work backward to enhance your procedure for future onboarding.

It is a smart practice to measure any effort you put into anything. The same is true for your onboarding efforts. Once you've used all the crucial tools to create and implement a good onboarding process, assessing the process's efficacy and success is critical. Use simple Survey tools like SurveyMonkey, Google forms, and Typeform to create surveys that support multiple users, allowing you to securely exchange survey findings among teams participating in the onboarding process. These tools also have specialist questionnaires for HR, employee engagement, and other purposes, making it simple to create your survey. Send it to your new employees and get feedback on your employee onboarding process.

Onboarding tools allow your personnel to self-administer the tool, removing the need for hand-holding. As previously said, a comprehensive onboarding process necessitates using many tools, but it would be impossible to juggle them all and manually transmit information between them. Choose solutions that offer them all or have open APIs and extensive integrations so that you can integrate all of your tools and make onboarding smooth.

It is usually a good idea to try a product before purchasing it, so select a tool that offers a free trial, with no credit card required, and offers support whenever you need it. This allows you to test your tool before purchasing it and ensures that you select a legitimate and transparent product. Make sure your tool has robust reporting and analytics capabilities to let you know how well your onboarding process is performing. This is also vital for you to measure and modify your procedures promptly and easily.