What’s the Best Employee Onboarding Software for Small Businesses?
As a business leader, you’ll understand the difficulty of juggling daily operations with key HR processes. Everything from recruitment and culture-building to maintaining compliance!
But as a small business leader, you know that this is an even bigger challenge. One HR area that can suffer as a result? Onboarding. The process of welcoming new employees into your organisation is often rushed or completely skipped by busy SMEs. In fact, 22% of companies have no formal onboarding program!
However, good onboarding processes are essential for boosting new hire time-to-productivity and engagement. And, most importantly, they make staff 58% more likely to stay for up to three years.
The best and most efficient way to achieve exceptional onboarding is through automated software. Let’s explore why your small business needs employee onboarding software and the key features to look out for.
Why Do Small Businesses Need Employee Onboarding Software?
Small businesses need onboarding software to eliminate the administrative burden, successfully engage new hires, and remain competitive in thriving markets.
The upfront costs of high-quality software can be intimidating, especially for smaller organisations with tight budgets. However, the time saved and errors reduced offer a great return on this initial investment.
Onboarding software also helps you keep motivated, highly skilled staff on the payroll for longer and preserve the valuable knowledge and skills they’ve built. Replacing employees who leave costs up to 200% of their annual salary. High retention rates eliminate this expense!
Here are some other key benefits of employee onboarding software:
Reduces Admin Workload
It’s no secret that small businesses have small HR departments. Some even allocate HR tasks to just one employee or manager! These staff don’t have much time to complete paperwork, instead leaving it to pile up.
The result? Slow onboarding that compromises the new hire experience. This creates a poor first impression and often influences new employees to leave before they’ve even started! In fact, a quarter of employees across Australia, plus the US and the UK, who had a terrible onboarding experience left their jobs! Failing to complete key employment paperwork also results in penalties and fines.
Effective employee onboarding software automates these manual admin tasks, streamlining your workload to lower compliance risks and onboarding time.
Frees Up HR Time
A HR survey found that 48% of SMEs currently spend over 9 hours each week on manual tasks, with some losing up to 16 hours! But, as we’ve discussed, investing in onboarding software means small businesses spend significantly less time on admin.
This leaves more time to prioritise important strategic areas, from product development and client relations to the new hire journey. Standout new hire experiences significantly boost performance, creating employees who are 14% more productive and remain invested in your organisation’s long-term mission.
Help You Hire More Quickly
57% of employers are currently experiencing productivity declines due to skill gaps, which impacts under-resourced small businesses even more significantly.
Replacing slow manual processes with automated workflows, like document assembly tools and instant compliance checks, can help you quickly fill these workforce gaps with top talent. All without compromising the thorough onboarding experience that prepares new hires to start their roles with confidence and motivation.
This is important, since just 16% of Australian workers are fully engaged with their jobs!
The Best Employee Onboarding Software for Small Businesses: Key Features
Find the best small business onboarding software by choosing a dedicated onboarding platform.
Large HRIS systems that cover all areas, from sourcing candidates to managing ongoing performance, lack the customisation and scalability needed to deliver personalised new hire experiences.
Best-of-breed onboarding platforms adapt more easily to your small business’s evolving and unique requirements with the following features:
Automated Workflows
Look for platforms offering automated onboarding tools that can be tailored to your unique culture and HR processes.
For instance, customisable templates streamline document creation for everything from employee contracts and offer letters to company policies, helping you build a strong small business brand. Other key automated onboarding workflows include:
- Instant approvals and reviews
- E-signatures
- Personalised onboarding and communication portals
Compliance Features
Good employee onboarding software should minimise the errors commonly made when creating contracts, such as incorrect data entry. These mistakes can be time-consuming and costly to rectify, especially if they don’t clearly set out a new hire’s employment terms as expected by the National Employment Standards.
Automated background and qualification checks also ensure you’re hiring the right candidate for the job. Onboard Express’s dedicated onboarding platform, for example, works directly with the Department of Home Affairs’ VEVO system to perform instant work rights checks for every new hire.
Mobile-Optimised Onboarding
Another key way small businesses can achieve the flexibility needed for successful onboarding is through mobile workflows.
With 35% of candidates expecting flexible working conditions, they’re now more than an employee benefit. More than half of employees also say they’re just as important as a 5% pay rise!
Adopting a mobile-first approach to onboarding shows that you prioritise this flexibility from day one of the employee journey. Supporting remote and hybrid working opportunities demonstrates to new hires that your small company cares about work-life balance and wellbeing.
Rather than printing, reading, signing, scanning, and manually sending completed contracts and policy documents, candidates can complete the entire process efficiently on their mobile phones. This mobile communication flow means less waiting for managers who are off-site to sign crucial documents. New hires remain informed and engaged, while the onboarding process is sped up for smaller teams.
Mobile workflows also help small businesses expand their reach. On-the-go onboarding processes enable you to access a broader global talent pool and create accessible working practices that appeal to highly skilled candidates wherever they’re located.
Data Reporting
Selecting a best-of-breed onboarding solution helps HR staff (or even business owners who double as HR managers) quickly and easily spot trends in onboarding data, such as:
- Number of candidates successfully onboarded
- Time to onboard
- Time for new hires to reach full productivity
- New hire training module completion rates
These insights, displayed on dedicated HR dashboards, allow you to make data-driven onboarding improvements, from enhancing efficiency to implementing strategies that successfully engage more new hires.
Simple Scalability and Integration
Exceptional onboarding software should adapt to your changing capacity, scaling up during busy seasonal recruitment drives and down throughout quieter periods.
This flexibility means you won’t have to worry about outgrowing the onboarding system if you decide to expand in the future! It also means there’s no pressure to quickly scale, either, and end up with wasted onboarding capacity that’s out of your budget.
Most importantly, select flexible software that integrates smoothly and causes minimal disruption to your small team’s daily operations and responsibilities.
Onboard Express works alongside your existing recruitment, HR, payroll, and performance management platforms to automate and streamline the entire onboarding process. Book your free demo today to discover how our dedicated solution can adapt to your small business’s unique onboarding needs.