Onboarding process appears to be the most daunting organizational process of them all. And it’s totally normal to be like that, if you think of it as the beginning of a relationship. The two partners – the company and the employee – don’t really know each other, they only know things they heard about each other, they are both a bit intimidated, not really knowing how to behave… It could be really funny to observe it, if it wasn’t a very serious step, on which many things depend.

When employing someone new for a role, companies usually tend to consider that their job is done, once the agreement signed, and the new employee should manage the situation and mingle with the team. Nothing more wrong! You simply cannot just throw someone into the deep-end of a new work environment and expect the person to perform. Especially don’t expect new employees to perform! They will stumbling around with their first few projects…

Onboarding is, in fact, a transition, a process carried out over a period of time, during which the new employee has to adapt, take over tasks, meet new colleagues and, above all, properly understand the role within the team and within the company. Not easy, right?

To ease this process for the new employees, in order to reach their potential as soon as possible and to perform as expected, as well as to make it as cost-effective as possible for the company, a good strategy is needed.

During the last decade, we’ve helped dozens of companies to successfully onboard hundreds of employees and we want to share with you what we’ve noticed it sustainingly worked over time.

First of all, follow a set of simple, but fundamental principles you create and write down, in line with your company’s mission, vision and values. Could be “Build bonds” or “Streamline and simplify”, for example. It will help you, as a starting point, to build your onboarding strategy and to make it more meaningful, as it derives from the company’s ethos. This is the part that can be done only from the interior, by people who are really in touch with the inner spirit of the company.

Secondly, digitize and make the process more engaging! It might seem expensive, but, in fact, it’s a huge opportunity cost. Usually, new employees aren’t productive for at least several months. Our experience showed off a hot insight we want to share with you – employees who go through a digitized and personalized onboarding program become more productive two months faster, and sometimes in only two weeks, than those who follow a traditional program. If you do the math, you’ll see that the company could take a real financial advantage from this.

To digitize your onboarding program implies to move it to a digital platform, a platform able to track and analyze the new employee’s course and adaptation. And that’s what we’re good at!

Co-Factor developed an innovative digital platform, multiple times awarded, which, through its functionalities, helps new employees deliver faster and feel more comfortable in the new work environment. The platform is employee centric, user friendly, encourages feedback and uses gamification as catalyst of engagement and performance.

With the software developed by Co-Factor, the degree of employee engagement and performance can be increased and measured, all types of feedback can be encouraged and monitored, a specific strategy can be created to support employees to perform, organizational culture can be promoted and employee results can be measured, thus obtaining a clear picture of employee spirit, engagement and performance.