Onboarding automation

Part of HR automation, onboarding automation is a mix of organizational processes and technologies, including robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI), that power an automated onboarding program. Organizations choose to automate employee onboarding to create efficiencies, reduce errors and find and hire better candidates. It benefits several stakeholders, including HR departments and new employees.

All organizations, especially those with thousands of employees, benefit from streamlining the employee onboarding process and minimizing the time spent on time-consuming administrative tasks. Some of those repetitive tasks can take place before the employee’s first day and others happen as they begin working for the company. Automation has become even more powerful in recent years due to the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) to HR talent processes.

Eliminating manual onboarding also helps with recruiting and offboarding, the process of managing employees’ exit from the company after they take a new job, are fired, laid off or retire.

For example, it can take information from prospective employees' cover letters or resumes and match it against job criteria to see whether the candidate is a good fit. If the candidate makes it to the interview round, the automated system can populate a briefing form for the interviewer. When an employee leaves, the automated system can send departing employees any remaining paperwork they need to sign and log them out of all sensitive material as soon as they have left. It can also send documentation and mailing labels for any equipment they might need to return if they work remotely.

Automated onboarding technologies increasingly use AI technologies to provide even more benefits.

• Generative AI
• Intelligent automation
• Machine learning
• Natural language processing

Gen AI can power several self-service aspects of the employee onboarding experience, from answering questions from employees in real time to powering the organization’s training experience. It is integral to an organization’s self-service chatbots and knowledge centers. Employees can also use them to make sure they ask the right questions to their managers when starting their jobs.

Intelligent automation uses automation technologies, such as AI and robotic process automation (RPA), to streamline workflows in organizations. It is the cornerstone of any automation strategy. It can supercharge onboarding automation by using artificial intelligence to start onboarding documents based on previously supplied information, complete gaps that employees may miss in the onboarding documents and route permissions to the right manager or administrator. It sits at the center of any onboarding automation strategy.

Machine learning (ML) can help automation tools improve as they learn more about the tasks they are performing and the personnel they are assisting. Companies can use ML to crunch data about the onboarding process and identify bottlenecks or other areas that can be improved.

Natural language processing (NLP) powers the ability to recognize, understand and generate text and speech through computational linguistics with statistical modeling, machine learning and deep learning. Companies use NLP in the recruitment process to parse resumes to determine whether candidates are qualified for specific jobs. In the onboarding process, companies can also use it to take information from onboarding forms and put it into respective fields in contact and benefits systems.

There are many use cases for employee automation strategies that increase efficiency and improve the overall process.

• Approve actions
• Provide orientation and paperwork
• Complete and update internal contact management systems
• Role-specific training
• Answer employee questions
• Ongoing support and feedback

Organizations can set up customized workflows that can make approvals. These approvals can include moving prospective employees to the next phase of the interview process, running salary matching, creating job offers and sending company swag or invitations to meet new co-workers.

Organizations can automate several time-consuming human resource onboarding workflows. They can ask employees to create user accounts for their various systems. Then, they can create templates for new recruits to complete with their employee information.

These workflows can range from getting new hires up to speed, such as a welcome email and information about benefits. The employees denote that they’ve read the materials and supplied any required information. If the employee doesn’t open the email, click a box or supply relevant information, the system continues to follow up until those tasks are completed.

This automated onboarding process is key for getting employee data from new employees, such as benefactors, banking account information and key emergency contacts.

Automation software eliminates the need for a worker to send out the request for information and it can also automate follow-ups for missing information.

Onboarding often requires significant data entry work to get employees into the correct systems, such as a human resources information system (HRIS). Organizations often use an HRIS to record an employee’s contact, banking and tax information. Using an automated software platform that sends relevant forms to employees to capture this information saves employees from unnecessary tasks.

Organizations can set up HR chatbots and AI agents to interact with employees. They can solve some of the employees’s simplest questions and employees can follow up with an HR rep for any questions that remain unanswered. AI-powered watsonx Assistant™ has reduced the time HR employees spend on common HR tasks by 75%.

The first few days of an employee's onboarding are important for setting up both the employee and the organization for success. Organizations that set up a simple system to collect feedback and distribute answers, either by gen AI or individual talent management professionals, can quickly keep those employees on track in the first days.

New employees might need automatic upskilling or reskilling in key areas. Organizations might supply employees with training apps that provide personalized training regimens. The training system continues to follow up with the employees until they complete all the required training. AI automation, such as ML, can also create personalized training based on how an employee does with a particular topic. For example, it can suggest supplemental training around marketing analytics if the employee struggles with those questions.

Organizations that currently rely too heavily on manual processes should take the following steps to prepare for an automated future.

1. Create an onboarding checklist
2. Identify which of these manual tasks can transform into automated ones
3. Select the right technologies and partners
4. Customize the automation technologies
5. Train the HR staff
6. Run an A/B test
7. Deploy at scale
8. Measure results

Identify all relevant onboarding tasks that a new employee must complete to be considered in good standing and ready to work at the organization. Identify which of these tasks are most important and whether there is a specific order in which the employee must complete them. For example, employees must supply their banking information before telling the organization how they prefer to receive their payments.

Every organization should provide employees with the right mix of technology and the human touch. Some tasks, such as answering questions about a misunderstanding around salary or benefits, might always require human intervention. On the other hand, sending out and receiving forms around key, but routine information are ideal options for automation.

Implementing onboarding automation might require licensing several technologies and working with a partner to implement them. They might want to select an AI-driven onboarding technology that automates specific tasks they want removed from employee workflows.

IBM® watsonx Orchestrate™ helps organizations automate time-consuming, repetitive business processes by setting up accounts and standardizing the experience for new employees.

Not every technology runs as an organization wants it out of the box. Working with the right provider, such as IBM watsonx Orchestrate, can make those technologies fit-for-purpose for an organization’s specific needs.

While onboarding automation removes several manual tasks from HR employees’ workloads, they need to learn how their responsibilities change and how to achieve them with technology. Therefore, they need to train to understand what the new system does, how to interact with it and how to get the data they might need. For example, they might need to know how to call up employees’ message history if they are discussing compensation or the employees’ departments’ key performance indicators (KPIs).

Even the most tech-savvy organization might need to trial its new workflow with a small group of employees before deploying companywide. It should select a few new users to try the workflow and provide feedback on what works and does not work and where they missed the human element. That way, the organization has the right mix of human interfacing and technology deployment when it’s permanently used for all new employees.

Once the test period concludes, the organization should roll out the onboarding automation process to the entire organization. Ideally, the head of HR or a senior executive should explain why the automation process is happening and how, if it all, it will impact existing employees.

There are several KPIs that the onboarding automation improves in the process. A key element is time-to-completion, which is the time it takes for employees to provide all relevant information to complete their onboarding. Companies should also track how many errors are in their new automated system and compare it to how many errors occurred under their historical manual system. They should also routinely query employees about their onboarding, identifying if satisfaction increases as the process improves.

There are several benefits to using employee onboarding automation.

• Improves HR team member job satisfaction

• Minimizes human error

• Reduces costs and timeline of talent acquisition

• Transforms the employee and customer experience

By removing manual processes from the HR representatives’ workloads, onboarding automation frees them up to perform more important and rewarding experiences. They can spend time talking to new employees about what motivates them and guide them on how to get the most out of their career with the company.

Employee onboarding software can protect organizations from unnecessary human error, such as entering salary information wrong or sending an onboarding package to the wrong person. Human error around employee data creates reputation and financial risks if that information is improperly stored or distributed. While automation can help minimize human error around data, it can also be susceptible to cyberattacks, so organizations should enhance their cybersecurity around this sensitive data.

Minimizing the number of manual tasks hiring managers need to do in recruiting employees and onboarding them can streamline the overall HR process. It frees them up to spend more quality time with prospects, solving higher-order problems. It also minimizes the time between an employee supplying information and an employee adding it to the HRIS, which hastens the overall onboarding process.

One IBM client, FloCareer, needed to complete 20,000 technical interviews a month. It needed intelligent automated tools to expand the scope of candidates that it could contact and schedule for interviews. Using watsonx Orchestrate to automate the outreach to qualified candidates in a pool created by partner ThisWay Global, FloCareer employees can use watsonx™ to identify a list of highly qualified professionals within seconds.

Organizations can improve employee experience by simplifying how those employees supply information on Day 1 of their employment. Sending automated online forms that employees can complete at home or in the office makes a strong first impression. It makes the first days of their employee experience that much more productive and might lead to increased employee retention by demonstrating that the organization will not make them do unnecessary manual work when it is possible to automate it.

In fact, 65% of HR professionals surveyed by Paychex (link resides outside of IBM.com)¹ expected AI in onboarding to improve employee retention. Employee satisfaction has a trickle-down effect. Engaged and happy employees are more likely to provide excellent customer service to the organization’s customers.