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The Role of Automation in Improving Candidate Engagement

Manual onboarding can be pretty overwhelming. From creating accurate, compliant contracts to helping multiple new hires settle in at once, these long, ineffective processes often result in organisations losing top talent.

That’s why almost half of Australian employers plan to automate processes this year. 55% aim to increase efficiency and productivity, while 46% hope to bridge the gap left by the lack of skilled professionals in today’s labour market. Lowering costs, reducing human errors, and shifting more resources to strategic initiatives are other reasons. 

So, why should your organisation consider replacing repetitive onboarding tasks with automated workflows? Keep reading as we explain how automations provide more time for HR teams to focus on the task that truly matters: building a committed, engaged workforce and setting them up for long-term success.

How Does Automation Improve Candidate Engagement?

Automating repetitive tasks frees up time to focus on creating meaningful experiences that leave candidates wanting to stay at your company. Research shows that engaged employees are also 14% more productive, make 18% more sales, and boost profitability by up to 23%.

Here are the benefits of onboarding automations:

Streamlines the Onboarding Process

While 38% of Australian workers plan to leave their jobs over the next 12 months, 48% of business leaders have no plans to redesign their Employee Value Proposition (EVP).

A positive onboarding process is more than just an employee benefit. Today, it’s a vital part of this EVP. Yet only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organisation does a great job onboarding new hires.

Automating the onboarding process can help by offering:

  • Advanced Document Assembly: Streamlined offer letter and contract creation tools allow you to switch specific clauses or pages on and off. Choose pre-existing templates and autofill with each candidate’s details, or create from scratch with your business’s branding and logos.
  • Automated Review Workflows: Contracts and essential onboarding documents are automatically sent to the relevant departments and personnel. These workflows facilitate quick reviews with secure e-signatures and ensure no steps are missed to maintain compliance. This includes pre-employment Work Rights checks that are completed quickly, so candidates aren’t left waiting.
  • Online Training: Flexible training that can be completed from anywhere is a win-win: candidates learn their responsibilities more quickly and see where they fit into the team, while HR teams boost time-to-productivity. This has several benefits, like reducing onboarding costs by up to 80%! Faster, smoother onboarding therefore means you’ll see your return on investment in automated software much more quickly.
Personalises the Candidate Journey

Did you know employees who feel connected to your organisation’s culture are four times more likely to be engaged at work? 

High-volume onboarding can make it challenging to consider each candidate’s unique needs. That’s where automations come in. They offer an optimised, engaging onboarding process without damaging the personal touch. This ensures candidates feel valued and part of the team culture from the very beginning.

Purpose-built onboarding platforms like Onboard Express include an exclusive welcome portal, personalised to each candidate. Each portal delivers automated notifications celebrating important milestones, like a candidate completing paperwork or a training model. 

These personalised automations leave more time for HR teams to focus on the fun, engaging side of onboarding. Think team-building activities and staff socials where new hires meet other staff.

Improves Communication

Automations mean all pre-boarding tasks are completed more quickly, including offering timely feedback after interviews. Candidates don’t experience the “black hole” effect: being left to wait for an answer, while feeling stressed and anxious about the uncertainty. 

This means they’re less likely to become disengaged and take another job offer, or leave before they’ve even started! Automated workflows therefore help to reduce your drop-off rates and build trust.

Automations also ensure consistent communication throughout the onboarding process and beyond. Set personalised communication flows like reminders and notifications, and then the system will automatically send them at the desired time. 

Take UnitingCare Queensland, for instance. Switching their current all-in-one software to Onboard Express’s purpose-built platform allowed the aged care charity to establish onboarding pods. These pods distributed required information to the aged care charity’s new hires at regular interviews. Onboarding time was reduced from 2 weeks to 2 days, and UnitingCare created a more engaging candidate experience.

You can also check in to see how candidates are progressing with training. These easy check-ins provide the chance for them to ask questions before starting the role, ensuring candidates feel listened to and respected.

How to Automate the Candidate Onboarding Experience

Create an engaging onboarding experience by choosing automations that align with your evolving needs. Select workflows that best serve your industry and the candidate types your organisation hires by considering the following tips:

1. Assess Your Needs

Start by thinking about your onboarding goals and needs, which will determine the best automations and tools for you. A small, independent cafe, for example, will require a different strategy to keep candidates engaged than a large aged care charity.

Some potential onboarding needs and solutions include:

  • High-Volume: Choose a platform that facilitates bulk onboarding while offering a personalised, engaging candidate experience.
  • Seasonal: Onboarding automations should scale up and down to cope with recruitment drives throughout the year. 
  • Compliance-Sensitive: Look for sensitive data protection, pre-employment checks, and data reports that help you easily stay compliant and audit-ready.

2. Choose the Right Onboarding Software

As well as automating the onboarding process, good software should:

  • Offer Mobile Workflows: Completing essential paperwork and comprehensive training from anywhere via mobile ensures faster day-one readiness and time-to-productivity.
  • Be Easy to Use: Intuitive automations integrate easily with your existing HR and payroll systems with simple set-up and 24/7 accessibility.
  • Make Compliance Easy: Look for software with an automated dashboard displaying candidates to onboard, the current workflow step, start date, and work right check status. Centralised employee records and reporting tools offer quick, audit-ready access to data.
  • Scale with Your Needs. Effective automations should allow you to onboard even more candidates for larger or seasonal recruitment drives, without adding more work, creating unnecessary stress, or sacrificing an excellent employee experience. 
  • Offer Dedicated Support: Onboard Express’s automations come with a project manager to support you through the implementation process.

3. Conduct Regular Reviews 

Onboarding needs evolve as your organisation grows. This means adjusting your automations and onboarding strategy to keep candidates engaged.

Analyse HR data insights through your onboarding software dashboard to see where changes are needed. Track metrics such as:

  • Retention rates
  • Drop-off rates
  • New hire turnover

Retention rates lowering while drop-off and turnover increasing suggests candidates aren’t engaged, for instance.

If you’re still struggling to identify exactly why engagement is low, measure satisfaction rates through surveys and check-ins with new hires. Find out which automations work for them and how the onboarding experience could be improved for future candidates. 

4. Don’t Lose the Human Touch

Automated onboarding workflows should be used to create more time for personal interactions, not replace them. 

Avoid this by ensuring HR teams and managers regularly interact with employees. Schedule face-to-face meetings and informal check-ins to see how candidates are doing. Manual administrative tasks are now taken care of and should also free up some time!

Assign a designated point of contact for new hires during onboarding. Candidates can then directly contact this person to put their minds at ease if they’re unsure of anything throughout the process.

Try a buddy or mentor scheme, too, which works particularly well in health and aged care settings. Nursing management studies show that programs involving capable mentors can improve the workforce’s capacity to deliver high-quality resident care.

Discover Scalable Onboarding Automations for Your Business

Automation helps organisations create consistent communication channels and maintain compliance, without piles of paperwork taking over. The result? Reduced stress for HR teams and personalised, engaging onboarding experiences that make candidates happy.

At Onboard Express, our flexible, scalable onboarding automations adapt to your needs. Integrating easily into your systems using open API, our workflows reduce onboarding timelines from 2 weeks to just 2 days, while transforming the candidate experience for leading organisations.

Want to see why we’ve already onboarded over 150,000 engaged employees across Australia and New Zealand? Book your demo today.