How SkillBuilder® LMS Can Optimize Your Onboarding

In 2021, the average cost per hire was over $4,600. It's a big expense, especially when you consider that half of hourly employees are gone in four months while half of executives last only a year and a half. And even when you find the one who'll stay, how long does it take them to get up to speed? An effective onboarding process can both minimize costs and maximize efficiency, and SkillBuilder® LMS may be just what you need to step up your onboarding.

How SkillBuilder® LMS Can Optimize Your Onboarding

Businesses with a standardized onboarding process reported "54 percent greater new hire productivity and 50 percent greater new hire retention rate." Creating formalized onboarding is an effective way to capitalize on this, and an LMS is an ideal platform for a formal onboarding process. It can outline the process, house your material and document each new hire's progress through an individualized program that offers them what they need to succeed in your business.

Interested in how SkillBuilder® LMS can make your onboarding process more effective? Read on!

1. Use SkillBuilder® LMS to document the onboarding process and ensure every employee experiences the training and events they need to thrive

As said above, successful onboarding is formal. And what better way to document your process than in the LMS that plays such an important role in delivering it? SkillBuilder® LMS's diverse range of learning items makes it possible for your organization to include all the steps of onboarding, including the all-important face-to-face events, in your LMS. Learning items include:

Downloads and URLs: Your Employee Handbook and important policies and procedures can be included in the onboarding learning path as PDF downloads or links.
Seminars and Webinars: Meet-the-team social and work events are an essential part of good onboarding. Schedule team events as seminars and webinars, as appropriate.
Assignments: One-on-one meetings are also necessary. Consider a meeting with each direct report. For remote offices, phone calls with key coworkers give the new hire the opportunity to meet the people they'll be working with and learn about others' roles, a process that contributes to their understanding of their own role and office processes and relationships. These events can be set up as assignments.
Online Lessons: Training is often a major element of onboarding. Whether the focus is on compliance or job duties, there's something to learn for every position.
Online Exams: If a lesson, or even certain downloads and URLs, is worth delivering, it's worth evaluating. Online exams can also document the completion and understanding of compliance training.
Practical Evaluations: Some job duties are best learned on-the-job, not on the computer. OJT assessments are recorded in SkillBuilder® LMS as practical evaluations.
Learning Journals: Learning journals give your employees the opportunity to make notes and record what's meaningful to them about the onboarding process.

2. SkillBuilder® LMS maintains a record of the onboarding process and displays results in reports

From a legal perspective, it's just as important to keep records of compliance training as it is to conduct it. SkillBuilder® LMS automates otherwise tedious record-keeping. Do you need proof that an employee completed health and safety training or signed off on your sexual harassment policy? If you've added those requirements to your onboarding learning path, it's a simple matter of running a report. You can even drill down to the assessment level and check which questions the employee answered correctly (or incorrectly) on an online exam.

3. SkillBuilder LMS® allows onboarding to start before your new employee shows up to work

eLearning can occur anyplace and anytime. With SkillBuilder® LMS, you can add employees as soon as they're hired, and they can log in from home. Most new hires are curious about their new role and environment. They'll be glad to have access to some introductory information, like dress code, a worksite map and a schedule for their first day, before starting.

Even better, they can take a look at their duties and job description as well as available training. An employee's satisfaction with their new role often has less to do with their working conditions than with whether those conditions meet their expectations. SkillBuilder® LMS will help your employees set reasonable expectations from the beginning, which ultimately helps with retention too.

4. Use SkillBuilder® LMS to customize learning for each new hire

There are any number of items and activities you can include in the onboarding process, but what about the parts that are better left out? Not all employees need the same introduction to the company.

SkillBuilder® LMS lets you assign individualized learning paths to each employee. A new hire's learning path could include:

A core curriculum assigned to everyone introducing the organization and key policies
Material relating to their specific business unit
Team-specific items
Information relating to the employee's role within the team

learning-path

5. SkillBuilder LMS® reduces onboarding overload with microlearning and ongoing access to learning materials

Even with the best onboarding program, the first day can be a stressful and overwhelming experience. How many new names, policies and procedures does the average employee encounter? How much of that information will they remember next week, next month and next year?

SkillBuilder® LMS provides ongoing access to learning material. Anything a new employee forgets, overlooks or simply doesn't have time for in their first appraisal of the material can remain available for review as necessary.

SkillBuilder® LMS also supports microlearning. Learning can be broken down into manageable bites the employee can access as time is available and as they need the information, an effective strategy for maximizing retention and minimizing overload.

6. Use SkillBuilder LMS® to recognize employee accomplishments with Open Badges, tiers, points and leaderboards

Onboarding can seem a thankless task; you put in endless effort over your first weeks and months, all with the goal of simply getting up to speed with your coworkers. It's not the most exciting achievement. That's why it's so important for the organization to recognize a learner's progress. This acknowledgement not only motivates, but can drive engagement. SkillBuilder® LMS offers the following opportunities for recognition:

Open Badges: "Open Badges are verifiable, portable digital badges with embedded metadata about skills and achievements."
Points: Administrators can assign points for the completion of each learning item. Points are a concrete way of marking progress and can be compared between learners to add an element of competition.
Tiers: Learners can be placed in tiers that reflect the proportion of assigned learning they have completed.
Leaderboards: Inspire your employees with the power of competition. Leaderboards let your learners see how they rank compared to their peers.

learning-path

7. SkillBuilder LMS® encourages engagement and social learning with workplace message boards

Socialization is a crucial part of onboarding. Building relationships with coworkers and learning about the organization's culture and expectations are necessary elements of integrating a new employee. While in-person experiences are irreplaceable, socialization can be enhanced online -if you have the right LMS.

SkillBuilder® LMS takes an innovative approach to building online communities. Instead of including basic message board functionality within the application, we have decided to focus on APIs (application program interfaces) that allow our users to leverage best-in-class applications in other fields. Users can create forums for new employees, teams, business units and any other groupings their organization requires using Disqus, and integrate them seamlessly into the LMS.

Conclusion

An effective onboarding process improves retention and helps you get the most out of each employee, thereby reducing costs and increasing productivity for your organization. SkillBuilder® LMS is the application you need to manage onboarding and make sure the process works every time for every new hire.

If you're ready to see what else SkillBuilder® LMS has to offer you, take the next step now!

How SkillBuilder® LMS Can Optimize Your Onboarding