The current pandemic and global lockdowns have disrupted many businesses’ operations and supply chains, though some industries have experienced an almost-overnight increase in demand for their goods and services. In their subsequent rush to recruit temporary or permanent staff, these companies now face an influx of onboarding requirements for new team members while also re-onboarding existing employees about mandatory trainings or new policies for business-critical roles.
Historically, the onboarding process has taken too long, with optimal employee productivity taking even longer to achieve. Unstructured systems and processes have further added to the inefficiencies, causing loss of time and productivity as well as frustration among new employees. This has been amplified by the current remote-working environment, with onboarding activities that initially relied on face-to-face interactions becoming virtual experiences.
Consequently, onboarding will increasingly become a key business risk. Organizations must recalibrate their onboarding strategy to accelerate the process while providing a customized, consumer-grade experience. While most organizations have adopted virtual approaches, the processes are often accompanied by multiple challenges:
- Linear and sequential processes that can take up to 45 days
- Loss of valuable time between offer acceptance and first day on the job due to the lack of pre-boarding capabilities
- HR and IT teams working in silos, and remaining disconnected from the new employee prior to the start date
- Dependencies on manual interventions
- Unstructured and generic training modules with no feedback mechanism
- No single-view resource to track onboarding progress
- Infrequent communications that leave new employees confused
Wipro’s Rapid Onboarding solution reimagines the onboarding process to deliver a rich, engaging, and highly personalized experience that begins with a series of pre-boarding activities. By automating and triggering workflows that onboard people directly into organizational systems, the persona-driven tool provides users relevant information at the proper pace and nudges them to take an action.
Whereas most organizations’ onboarding activities are sequential and dependent upon multiple stakeholders and systems, Rapid Onboarding redesigns these processes so activities are more parallel, eliminating unproductive ‘dead’ time. Deployed in six to eight weeks on a mobile, the solution can reduce employees’ time to productivity by up to 60% and employee costs by 40%. It achieves this by creating a temporary and secure environment to maximize pre-boarding time and help make new employees feel like part of the organizations even before their first day.
Speed is of the essence in the current environment, and this extends to an enterprise’s onboarding and orientation processes. With Rapid Onboarding, companies can deploy a digital platform that offers a seamless experience from pre-boarding to the first week of work to continued onboarding. Using a secure temporary environment that maximizes pre-boarding time and One Window to track activities and timelines, Rapid Onboarding enables companies to improve their Day 1 readiness, boost productivity, and generate a higher return on investment. The ability to adapt, leverage simple and intuitive technology-enabled interfaces, and remove operational complexities will be key differentiators for organizations in the “new normal.”