What Is Onboarding? How Has LMS Changed the Onboarding Process?

What is Onboarding?

Onboarding is a process in which new hires are integrated and brought into the organization. During the onboarding process, the new joiners are made to complete the initial joining formalities and go through the orientation process.

The new hires learn about the organization, its culture, values, mission, visions, and structure during the onboarding process. They  become familiar with the organization and also its work culture and interact and learn about their colleagues during the process.

Employee onboarding is crucial, because it makes the new recruits feel welcome, and helps them understand their job responsibilities and requirements. With the right kind of onboarding process, the new hires seamlessly integrate with the organization. The most effective onboarding generally lasts at least a few months. The main purpose of the onboarding process is to make the employees feel confident and competent after the completion of onboarding training.

Four Phases of Onboarding the New Hires

Phase I

• Pre-Onboarding – This phase begins as soon as the candidate accepts the offer letter and goes on till the first day of joining. Employees are made to complete all the required paperwork.

Phase II

• Welcoming New Hires – Orientation of the new hires takes place during this phase. New hires understand the organization’s culture during this phase.

Phase III

• Role Specific Training – During this phase, the new hires begin with the training based on their roles and responsibilities.

Phase IV

• Transition – The new hires move to permanent employment during this phase.

We have mentioned the ways Learning Management System (LMS) has helped to smooth the onboarding process below.

·       Saves Time and Money

Traditional training methods are tedious and time-consuming. With the help of an LMS, you can create and execute onboarding training programs and save a lot of working time. When onboarding training becomes digital, there are certain costs you can save on, such as – transportation, printing training material, and conference room charges. Training programs once created can be reused multiple times to train many new hires. You can train a wide audience at the same time.

·       Highly Accessible

Once the onboarding training material is distributed to the new hires through LMS, there is no need to provide printed training material. The course content uploaded on an LMS can be accessed anytime and from anywhere. Thus making it easily accessible using any mobile device, such as – smartphones, laptops, and tablets. The new hires will not have to worry about losing a copy of the training material too as everything is saved at a centralized location on an LMS.

·       Trackable

LMS offers real-time tracking and reporting features. With the help of the tracking report provided by an LMS, you can check the employee performance, learning patterns, how well the employee understands a given topic, job readiness, and more. You can even tailor the course content for the new hires based on the reports so that they become confident once the training is completed. 

·       Asynchronous Learning

LMS can make learning asynchronous. With this, you can lower the disruption at work and minimize downtime, which is good for the productivity of any business. You can provide relevant instruction and upload the onboarding materials. The new hires can access the course material and learn at their own pace while still fulfilling their work requirements.

·       LMS Is Scalable

LMS can grow as your organization grows. Whether you are onboarding 10 employees at a time, or 100 employees, or maybe 1000 employees, the training lessons will be consistent. You even have an option to schedule courses for the new hires.

LMS lets you change and update the course content anytime you want and the new hires can have access to the updated material immediately. With the help of cloud-based LMS, you can keep the process simple and easy. You have an added advantage to update the material at your will. LMS also lets the new hires ask questions and interact with the trainer and other users through the messaging app. Once the onboarding training on an LMS is completed, the new employees can start strong as everything becomes easier for them to excel in their job responsibilities.