Why incorporate an onboarding solution into your software

The terms onboarding and offboarding are part of the human resources lexicon. They represent two common and important stages in a company's lifecycle: the entry and exit of an employee from the workforce. The quality of an employee's welcome is crucial; it should help them assimilate the company culture and facilitate integration, allowing them to be operational quickly. Equally important is the departure process, which ensures proper information and file transfer.

Preparing for a new employee's arrival with an onboarding solution

Onboarding includes all the tasks associated with hiring a new employee. This process applies to both new hires and employees changing positions within the company, starting as soon as the candidate accepts the job offer.

The costs associated with hiring - including recruitment efforts, agency fees, equipment purchases (computers, furniture, access badges), integration and training, are estimated at one year's gross salary for the new employee. It's no surprise then that more companies are focused on this area, particularly in those recruiting in a market under pressure.

A well-structured onboarding process will help to avoid losing a valuable employee due to a poor first impression. According to HRIS expert, Guillaume Allain,3.8% of new employees leave on their first day of work, and while Deloitte reports that more than 22% quit in the first few months.

The impact of these failed recruitments can affect brand image, finance or productivity.

New employees face many challenges on arrival: adapting to company culture, taking up a new position, meeting new colleagues, integration, sometimes even discovering a new city. Effective onboarding helps limit the uncertainty and fosters long-term committment.

The arrival process in practice

• Before the employee's arrival

  While certain tasks are delegated to the HR Director - such as the creation of the HR file (identity, contact details, social security number, bank details, etc.) - integration is a shared responsibility.

  • HR Manager: leads co-ordination between departments involved in the new hire's arrival

  • Manager: prepares the welcome programme and anticipates training needs

  • IT department: configures email accounts and hardware for the newcomer

  • Administrative assistant or office manager: distributes keys and access badges

  • HR assistant or payroll manager: integrates the employee's data into payroll systems and determines salary calculation criteria

  • Coach (an employee): supports the new hire's integration by explaining the culture and rituals

• On arrival day

  Feeling welcomed validates your new employees' need for recognition, support, and a sense of belonging. It may seem trivial, but a good part of successful integration involves a warm welcome from the manager and an introduction to the whole team, as well as having ready-to-use equipment.

  Ideally, the manager should prepare an agenda for the new employee's first day that includes team tours, introduction to the company's products and services, strategic vision presentation, and familiarization with current important projects.

• In the following days or weeks

  It is important to allow the employee to celebrate early achievements. For example, at Lucca, an editor must quickly publish their first article, a salesperson must conduct their first demo, and a consultant must respond to his first support requests.

  The HR Director plays an advisory role in this process and ensures the integration is personalised. For instance, if a freelancer joins a company to regain a teamwork atmosphere, their assigned tasks should require interaction with colleagues.

Anticipate and manage employee departures with offboarding

Offboarding is the counterpart to onboarding and is the process of preparing for the departure of an employee from their position or the company.

If it is badly managed, it will have a negative impact on the teams: loss of knowledge and skills, create overloaded teams that must compensate for the employee's departure, loss of productivity, data protection…

The offboarding process in practice

• Before the departure of an employee

  The manager must take care not to allocate projects with a completion date falls after the employee's departure date, and to give priority to documenting their actions for handover (CRM, memos, activity reports). This will ensure that ongoing projects or client files are passed on to other team members or to a replacement.

• The day of departure

  The employee is requested by his manager to make an end-of-assignment assessment. All equipment previously allocated is returned. He or she then carries out administrative tasks with the HR department (final payment, end-of-contract certificates, etc.). The employee's access rights and accounts are closed.

• After the departure

  A few weeks after the employee's departure, consider contacting them again to offer to join the former employees' club and regularly invite them to attend events, whether formal or informal.

Automating arrival and departure procedures: key features

The multitude of tasks makes these two procedures particularly burdensome for the HR department, which finds itself being:

• the coordinator of the various departments involved

• the department responsible for the knowledge and correct application of procedures by managers

• the timekeeper to make sure everything is ready on time

• the person in charge of customizing the process for each employee

Customize the management of the company's arrivals and departures

The customization of the different phases of onboarding and offboarding necessarily impacts the experience. Handling each arrival manually is unmanageable in a context of increasing staff numbers. To scale your process, you will have to invest in a software tool. There are many of these on the market. To choose the right one for your company, make sure that it provides you with at least the following:

• a customizable welcome email template

• the collection of administrative data via a form that can be exported to the employee's file

• a task list assigned to a responsible person

• the ability to set up alerts for task due dates

Anticipate actions to be taken

The implementation of an onboarding/offboarding solution allows you to anticipate all the necessary steps and continuously improve them.

You should consider reviewing the "fresh eyes" views of new employees. They are a valuable source of information for optimizing your processes.

Capitalize on best practices and incorporate tasks to make your onboarding and offboarding processes more engaging.

Sample to-do list: