It’s clear that onboarding staff to your firm correctly is more important than just onboarding them because if not done well, your efforts could be in vain, as staff need repeated instructions and training to get the process right.
This doesn’t mean your hiring process is insufficient, or that there’s something wrong with the people coming into your firm. It may just be that they have little experience with certain systems or your particular use of a given system.
As such, identifying the common tech-based frictions you experience and working ahead of time to fix those issues is key. This way, you can prevent an otherwise well-meaning staff member from struggling to fit into the role, especially if you’re hiring college graduates, first-time workers, or individuals coming from other fields.
With that in mind, let’s discuss some tips to save you a great deal of time and effort:
Inadequate Support For Remote Onboarding
Given how most people have personal devices they use daily, be that a smartphone, laptop, tablet or more, it’s easy to assume everyone in your firm will be happy to remote work. Not so. Some may need to adapt a little more with express instructions on how to find files, how to log into your VPN for security on public WiFi (and what a VPN even does), as well as how to work video conferencing apps appropriately. Of course, it might be that you furnish your staff with Chromebooks or other similar devices, the software economy of which might be new to your employees. Make sure to invest in training to ensure everyone is working from the same page.
Customer-Facing Tech Utilities
If you’re onboarding tablets for your storefront salespeople to use when checking inventory or selling goods, or if you’ve introduced a new POS card reader for easier sales and booking, it’s important to provide full training as well as explain the advanced features utilized.
This way, staff can more easily book in clients, manage the foot traffic in your business, and keep focused on customers in front of them while also navigating these menus and systems. It’s a helpful method of connecting your tech utilities to improve productivity, but it’s essential to avoid taking that adoption for standard. Testing knowledge and measuring response times can be ideal, as are constant reviews to make sure the system is actually working as intended.
Inventory & Stock Tracking Requirements
You’ll find that inventory and stock tracking requirements are not only important to install correctly, but require diligent management from your team as well. From swiping in inventory when accepting deliveries to checking how many you have in store through your computer systems, to being able to update stock on the fly after a sale, this isn’t always so easy for staff unless they know exactly how to manage those practices.
For example, if you run a shoe store but also list some of your products online, a healthy digital marking system will be able to tag which products are for sale, and which aren’t. From there, in your staff’s downtime, managing your online storefront can be a parallel task. This means that no matter what, your stock is always in rotation. Just make sure that deliverables are tagged correctly, and that staff know how to organize and what your selling priorities are.
Your HR System & Personnel Management Software
Have you ever worked a job with a mystifying HR system, where you had to dig into twenty or so different subsystems just to book a week of work off? That in itself can be tiresome, to say the least, but it also prevents you from feeling connected and capable in the way you might like, especially with the esoteric systems of how your job actually works.
Of course, in this instance training staff on an outdated method is simply nowhere near as important as fixing the issue to begin with. That might sound obvious, but integrating a brand new, cloud-based, remote-accessible HR system will allow your staff to feel more in contact with the departments that manage them. This will also make them more likely to engage with some of your vital programs, like reporting harassment when they see it.
A helpful, well-designed and trainable system also makes onboarding so much easier, and allows for systems like e-learning training to be understood more quickly without constant assistance.
With this advice, you’ll repair or at least prevent the continual tech onboarding issues that many staff, even technically gifted staff, could face at your firm.
