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July 28, 2025
Successful integration - or onboarding - is essential for any business.
It contributes to employee engagement and has a considerable impact on retention.
Studies show thata well-designed onboarding process has the biggest impact on employee retention and sets new hires on the path to success. A poor onboarding experience can have significant financial consequences for a business.
HR (Human Resources) onboarding refers to the process by which a company welcomes and integrates a new employee into its work environment. This process aims to facilitate the transition of the new employee, to provide them with all the necessary information about the company, and to introduce them to their new roles and to the team they will be working with.
The main objective of HR onboarding is to make the new employee operational and productive as quickly as possible, while ensuring that they feel welcomed, valued, and committed to their new position. This often includes things like presenting company policies, training in the tools and systems used at work, meeting with colleagues and superiors, and acclimatizing to the company culture.
A good onboarding process can dramatically improve employee satisfaction and retention, reduce turnover, and increase overall business productivity.
Successful onboarding can present several challenges, especially in a constantly changing work environment. Some of the most common challenges include:
Gartner finds that new hires aren't always confident in their new roles.
The study indicates that 46% of new employees would not make the same choice again and that 38% of them intend to leave their new position within 12 months. They also find that the cost for a business to find a new employee increased dramatically by 26% between 2015 and 2017, while the overall cost of hiring had already increased by 18%.
One Recent Glassdoor study shows that a well-designed onboarding program improves the retention of new employees by 82% and their productivity by 70%.
Glassdoor also found that:
“the most effective integration programs rely on advanced learning tools to enable success on demand rather than relying solely on classroom learning. These businesses are 300% more satisfied than their lower-performing counterparts with the technology they use to support their onboarding programs, resulting in significant gains in terms of time to acquire skills and in retaining new employees.”
Digital learning eis a method that has already proven its worth. It is the one we use successfully at Sinfony
Using eLearning to strengthen your onboarding process for new employees can help you get it right every time with consistent messaging in content, automated processes, and rich data. You can even contact new employees before they start working through mobile applications to welcome them to the company as soon as they accept it.
Digital onboarding refers to the process of integrating and welcoming new users or employed in a system, application, or organization through digital means. This process aims to familiarize newcomers with the work environment, digital tools, procedures, and company culture in an effective and engaging manner.
Digital onboarding can include the use of online tutorials, how-to videos, webinars, and automated learning platforms to quickly and effectively get started with the tools and resources available.
The question of digitalization is often asked. However, the digitalization of onboarding has several significant advantages for companies and new employees:
Here we describe six simple tips for taking advantage of powerful online learning modules for the reception of newcomers.
Remember, this is only part of the puzzle: consider social learning tools as well to provide a complete experience.
It's also useful to tap into activities outside of traditional L&D, such as talent acquisition.
Creative methods of onboarding new employees can even extend to the recruitment and selection phase. Where do potential hires go to find out what it's like to work with you, for example?
A good e-learning course offers the possibility of a much more exciting and memorable teaching experience than handing a new employee a series of documents or asking them to read the company website. If you want to set up an integration program or are involved in the design of such a program, let me share my experience with these six tips.
Know the big picture by talking to the right people
Personalizing the learning experience
Leverage existing resources; don't reinvent the wheel
Keep your feet on the ground - encourage storytelling
Involve the hiring manager
Welcoming new hires through prior integration
Talk to talent acquisition managers, hiring managers, IT, and anyone else involved in preparing new hires for success. What are new employees supposed to know and/or be able to do after taking this course?
Talk to the people most directly concerned by the training. Talk to new hires to find out what their biggest fears are at the start and what they hope to learn from an onboarding course. Find out what part (s) of the process learners like and don't like, and why, and use that information to benefit your course.
In short, do your homework first!
Those of you who have a penchant for “vintage” will understand the joy of receiving a “mixtape” as a gift from a friend or partner.
It's a list of songs, each of which was chosen because it means something to you.
In the same way, a good integration experience must be adapted to the needs of the learner. What is essential information for a new employee may not be of interest to another in a different position. Everyone needs to know the history and values of the company, but does everyone need to know about the procurement process? Or, more importantly, do they need to know about this process in the first few days or weeks of employment?
Teach only what is useful and essential; don't overwhelm new employees with irrelevant or “good to know” information. To do that, you need to know as much as possible about them. What roles will they play in the business?
What information do they need to know in order to do so? Also, try to give learners flexibility and autonomy so they can get in and out of the course. Learning doesn't always happen from a desk, so how can you help employees with mobile functions?
E-learning modules should be grouped into learning plans and reading lists tailored to each function and each individual.
Pay attention to The forgetting curve - almost 75% of what is learned will be forgotten the next day and theOnboarding often contains a lot of information! Use spaced practice to spread learning over time and give new employees the opportunity to apply what they've learned before learning more.
Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to. Many businesses have lots of useful information on their website or intranet that you can reuse, such as a company animation or video, or a link to common resources such as company history or organization charts.
While you want initial training to be a comprehensive reference point for new hires, think about what information is essential and where you think you can add the most value. Use your time and budget to find creative ways to present this information, rather than simply repeating what learners can read on the website. For example, rather than repeating an HR policy on harassment or discrimination in your compliance modules, you could use immersive scenarios to show everyday examples of how these issues can occur in the workplace, their consequences and impact — and what staff should do to help with prevention.
Probably the most useful and memorable thing you can give to a new employee is good advice from someone who knows. Current employees have an insight into working life within the company that is impossible to glean from reading a website. Leverage this resource by including stories or short videos from colleagues who have been there, whether to illustrate best practices learned over the years or to preach the warning of “the time it all went wrong for me.” It's also a good idea to include a welcome message from a key person in the organization and end with a message of good luck or a reassuring message.
A particular example that has worked well is the establishment of a “treasure hunt” where new team members have to interview and ask selected employees certain questions. The winner of this game is the one who gives the best answers in the least amount of time. This encourages all sorts of commitments and allows new employees to get to know existing staff. Questions should be relatively open-ended and not limited to black or white answers.
For example, questions should be relatively open-ended and not limited to white or black answers:
Find someone in this organization who has worked there for over 10 years and ask them how they have evolved during that time.
Find someone who manages the “X” function and ask them how they contribute to the strategy and success of the business.
The hiring manager's level of commitment is the most important aspect of employee onboarding.
To retain new talent, the new hire must feel welcomed, supported and stimulated from the very first days. To do this, it is not enough to leave branded water bottles on their desk!
Consider developing online training programs not only for new employees but also for hiring managers. These trainings can be provided during the interview procedure. Typically, these programs include soft skills training aimed at getting the new employee to adhere to company values and culture. They should also include practical tools that the hiring manager can use to ensure a good onboarding experience for new hires into their team.
This could be an onboarding kit for new employees or a checklist for onboarding employees (for example, “Call your new employee a week before starting work” or”Ask a “friend” to welcome him for lunch on the first day”).
Onboarding can start before day one. Moving from one organization to another can be a stressful time and individuals need space to decompress and prepare for their new role. Often, individuals may feel anxious when faced with the unexpected.
You can help them by making sure they know they are expected and welcome in their role. Send them short, easy, and never mandatory content in advance. These could be personal emails from the hiring manager or videos recorded by the CEO explaining the company's culture. Or, with agile learning applications, early access to online learning modules in your learning management system or learning experience platform, or even access to a mobile application on their own device.
The best employee onboarding experiences are engaging and never overwhelming.
They give the new employee the information they need to work, the confidence that they made the right decision, and a genuine sense of enthusiasm for their new organization.