What is onboarding? It’s more than just paperwork and introductions—it’s the key to setting newcomers up for success. A strong onboarding process helps employees feel welcome, understand their roles, and integrate into company culture. For customers, it ensures they quickly grasp the value of a product or service, making it easier for them to get started and stay engaged.
Without a strong orientation process, businesses risk higher turnover and lower productivity. These statistics show why the employee onboarding process matters:
- Up to 20% of employee turnover happens within the first 45 days on the job
- The average U.S. company loses almost 25% of all of its new hires within one year
- 69% of employees say they're more likely to stay with a company long-term if they experienced a great onboarding process
So, how can you make onboarding seamless and effective? Keep reading to discover the benefits of a well-structured onboarding process. Then, learn how to simplify it for your team.
What is onboarding?
Onboarding is a structured process that helps businesses welcome and integrate newcomers, either employees or customers. It provides the information, tools, and support they need for a smooth transition.
- Employee Onboarding: This process helps new hires adapt to their roles by introducing them to company culture, policies, and expectations. A well-structured onboarding experience ensures employees feel welcomed, understand their responsibilities, and are set up for success.
- Customer Onboarding: This process guides new customers through the initial setup and effective use of a product or service. A successful onboarding experience helps customers recognize value early, use the offering efficiently, and feel supported.
Onboarding best practices
A well-structured onboarding process gives businesses control over how employees and customers experience their organization. When done right, it improves retention, engagement, and overall satisfaction.
The key to effective onboarding is simplicity. Provide clear information, eliminate redundancies with templates and automation, and leverage AI for fast, efficient customization. Summary of onboarding best practices:
1. Ensure clear access to company policies
Unclear company policies can leave newcomers feeling disconnected. Unexpected surprises—like uncommunicated pay deductions or confusion about leave policies—can lead to frustration and early turnover.
Providing a well-documented employee handbook from the start ensures new hires have the information they need. GoSkills users can upload policy manuals and let Genie AI transform them into a polished online course, making policies easy to access and understand.
2. Automate the onboarding process
Manual onboarding consumes valuable time for HR and management. Automating key steps allows employees to get up to speed faster while reducing administrative burdens.
GoSkills users can upload a policy manual, convert it into a course with AI, invite learners, set reminders, and track engagement—all in one platform. By monitoring engagement rates, managers can identify trouble spots and refine their onboarding programs, creating a self-improving loop for continuous enhancement.
3. Use onboarding course templates
Building onboarding materials from scratch is time-consuming. Elearning course templates offer a structured, consistent, and professional way to deliver training while saving time and resources.
GoSkills provides ready-made, customizable onboarding programs that ensure every new hire receives the same high-quality experience. Businesses can maintain consistency across departments while tailoring content with company branding, including logos, colors, and specific messaging. This ensures a visually polished, structured onboarding experience that reinforces company culture and expectations from day one.
4. Personalize the onboarding experience
Personalization makes new employees feel valued and welcomed. Small but meaningful touches can have a lasting impact on engagement and job satisfaction.
For example, onboarding software can introduce new hires to their team before their first day, helping them feel connected right away. Even simple gestures—like a personalized welcome email—can make a new hire’s first day more memorable and positive.
How organizations benefit from a positive onboarding experience
Smooth employee onboarding helps to ensure that new employees are properly trained, understand company policies, and feel welcome in their new workplace. Additionally, it helps to reduce the turnover rate of new employees, as they are more likely to stay when they feel comfortable in their new environment. Let's dive a bit further into the benefits businesses will see from a better onboarding process.
1. Improved employee retention
Strong onboarding serves as an important employee retention strategy. Companies that invest in a comprehensive onboarding process are more likely to experience lower turnover rates. When employees feel supported and valued from the start, they are more inclined to stay with the organization, reducing the costs associated with recruitment and training.
2. Increased productivity
Effective onboarding equips new employees with the skills and knowledge they need to contribute effectively from the outset. This results in increased productivity and efficiency, as employees are better prepared to meet their performance targets and contribute to the company's success.
3. Strengthened company culture
A well-structured onboarding process helps to strengthen the workplace culture for remote teams and establish values and goals, ensuring that every employee is aligned with the organization's objectives. This unity can lead to a more collaborative and motivated workforce, which in turn contributes to a healthier, more positive work environment.
4. Streamlined compliance and documentation
Compliance training can be delivered through an onboarding template. Effective onboarding includes the collection and management of essential documents, such as tax forms, confidentiality agreements, and other necessary paperwork. This ensures that the organization remains compliant with relevant laws and regulations, mitigating potential legal complications.
How employees benefit from onboarding activities
Businesses aren’t the only ones that stand to benefit from a smooth onboarding process.
Better understanding of duties. Employees who have undergone a well-structured onboarding process are more likely to have a clearer understanding of their roles and responsibilities, which makes them more likely to jump in and begin contributing to their teams. This also applies to the onboarding process for remote employees, who you may not have regular interactions with.
Increased confidence and job satisfaction. As a direct result of the above, a comprehensive onboarding process helps employees feel more confident and competent in their new roles, leading to higher job satisfaction and motivation.
6 benefits of using GoSkills for onboarding
Implementing GoSkills for your onboarding process offers numerous advantages that enhance efficiency, consistency, and employee engagement. Here are seven key benefits:
1. Time and resource efficiency
Developing onboarding materials from scratch can be labor-intensive. GoSkills streamlines this by providing ready-made, customizable course templates, allowing HR professionals and team leaders to focus on other critical tasks.
With built-in AI and automation, GoSkills further simplifies the process by transforming policy manuals into structured courses, setting reminders, and tracking learner progress—all without manual intervention.
This reduces administrative workload and ensures a seamless onboarding experience.
2. Consistency and branding
Maintaining uniformity in training materials is essential for cohesive onboarding. The GoSkills Learning Management System (LMS) enables seamless integration of your company's logo, colors, and visual elements into training content, ensuring a polished and professional appearance.
3. Enhanced employee engagement
Engaging onboarding experiences are crucial for retaining talent, especially among millennials. GoSkills transforms traditional training into interactive learning with gamified features including points, badges, and leaderboards, These motivate learners and make the process more enjoyable.
4. Improved employee retention
A positive onboarding experience significantly impacts job satisfaction and retention. By utilizing GoSkills, new hires feel valued and supported, leading to increased loyalty and reduced turnover costs. Investing in comprehensive onboarding fosters a culture of continuous learning and development.
5. Streamlined compliance and documentation
Using Templates for employee training make it easier to ensure that your onboarding process complies with applicable laws and regulations. This helps you maintain accurate records and avoid potential legal complications down the line.
6. Customizable for your unique needs
Every organization has its own culture, values, and goals, and GoSkills provides flexible tools to match. Beyond customizable course templates, GoSkills allows businesses to tailor every aspect of the onboarding process.
Users can modify content structure, add branding elements, and integrate videos, quizzes, and interactive modules for a personalized experience.
With AI-powered course creation, automation features, and detailed analytics, organizations can continuously refine their onboarding process to meet evolving needs while maintaining consistency across departments.
Wrapping it up
In today's competitive business environment, a well-structured and engaging onboarding process is essential for attracting and retaining top talent. The GoSkills Template Gallery for LMS users is designed to help businesses streamline this process, saving time and resources while ensuring a positive experience for new employees.
By leveraging the numerous benefits of our templates, such as consistency, employee engagement, improved retention, clear communication, streamlined compliance, customization, and integration with our learning platform, you can create a training experience that sets the stage for long-term success within your organization.
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