
It is currently difficult to find an organization that does not offer new hires support during the adaptation period. Everyone agrees – onboarding is needed, preferably within a formal framework. Differences appear in the approach to the adaptation process. In some companies, the circulation of documents is crucial, in others aspects of organizational culture and socialization of the new employee. Regardless of the adopted model , SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding supports all stakeholders of the process: new hires, HR specialists, managers and administrators.
At a time when everyone competes for talent, onboarding should pursue two goals:
In other words, ideal adaptation should maintain a high level of satisfaction and even sometimes excitement of the employees and at the same time efficiently prepare them for a new role in our organization.
Reality
A number of studies conducted in 2022 unfortunately paint a rather unfavorable picture of onboarding offered by companies. Here are the results of several of them:
There is good information!
In 2022, we received a number of answers to the question: Why do we need good onboarding? These are not new discoveries, but nothing is more convincing than numbers:
What should the perfect onboarding look like?
We already know the importance of onboarding for employee satisfaction, engagement and readiness to support recruitment. So what should an effective adaptation process look like? The answer is worth looking for in the report "Onboarding new employees: maximizing success" prepared by Talya Bauer, studying adaptation processes as part of a research team from Portland State University in Oregon. The study identifies a number of good practices:
It is difficult to imagine the effective implementation of the above activities without the use of technology. SAP's proposal – SuccessFactors Onboarding – supports all stakeholders of the process: new hires, HR specialists, managers and administrators.
Experience of a new hire
Talya Bauer in her report emphasizes the importance of a quick start of onboarding. The candidate, after accepting our offer, and before the first day of work, should be gradually involved in the life of the organization. If we do not start onboarding at such an early stage, there is a risk that the person we have been striving for in the recruitment process will change his/her mind and accept the offer of another company. In addition, it is worth using this time to familiarize the candidates with our values, team, show them what the first days at work will look like, and get additional information from them that will improve the adaptation process (m.in. preparation of documents, referral for medical examinations, organization of the place and work tools). Many companies operate according to the maxim "from yes to desk" and start adaption immediately after accepting the offer (preonboarding).
SuccessFactors allows you to provide the candidate (who accepted the offer) with a home page containing including:
On the first day of work, the external user of SuccessFactors Onboarding is automatically converted to an employee and his start page can be enriched with additional functions and tasks related to adaptation.
HR specialist experience
Adaptation design and monitoring is most often the domain of HR departments. In some organizations, the role of an onboarding specialist is distinguished, which further reinforces the message about the importance of the process.
A key tool provided by SuccessFactors for this role is a dashboard that provides insight into all tasks in the process. From this level, we can monitor the status of individual steps and intervene in the event of delays or failure to meet standards.
Manager's experience
The manager, as the initiator of recruitment and the future supervisor of the employed person, is by definition a key person in the onboarding process. Unfortunately, in reality, he lacks time, and sometimes experience in introducing new employees. Technology comes to the rescue. SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding guides the manager through the next steps of the process, reminds about tasks and proposes ready-made solutions (welcome message patterns, agenda of first meetings, recommended links, etc.). Often the tasks of the manager include:
SuccessFactors will remind you of the deadlines for these tasks and propose how to implement them.
HR director experience
For the HR director, the answer to the question is crucial: Is our onboarding effective? This is where SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics comes in handy, which in particular will allow you to assess the impact of changes in the onboarding process on employee effectiveness and retention.
In addition to operational data, data related to experience (commitment, opinions of the new hires about the effectiveness of the manager, satisfaction with the training experience, well-being) are extremely important – such information, although more ephemeral, is also available within the organisation (surveys, periodic assessments).
Analysis of this data will allow the HR decision-maker to change the onboarding process accordingly. This is what Qualtrics tools are for, which allow you to correlate operational data with information from employees (surveys) and, as a result, identify problems in HR processes, including onboarding.
SAP Best Practices
The starting point for the implementation of the solution may be the SAP Best Practices for SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding. It is one of the three pillars of SAP Activate (the others are guided configurations and methodology), including preconfigured onboarding processes, documentation and test scripts. Customers receive an immediately working solution that can be the basis for defining organization-specific adaptation processes.
Not only onboarding
SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding can support other "transition" processes, in particular:
For each of these processes, as for onboarding, you need to plan tasks for various stakeholders, monitor their implementation and finally verify and evaluate the results.
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