While an organization’s employee onboarding tools are essential to help new hires become productive, it can be difficult to achieve the best results. That’s because there exist several challenges in an onboarding program that needs overcoming before one can achieve the best results. 

With an average onboarding program having over 50 activities, L&D professionals need to find possible ways to streamline the activities. That’ll enable them to deliver an enhanced employee experience and help to track their progress throughout the activities.

One way to go about that is by utilizing onboarding tools for L&D professionals to make your onboarding program successful. In this article, we’ll be exploring the different types of onboarding tools that managers can use to improve their onboarding process for their new hires. 

5 Employee onboarding tools that will enhance your onboarding experience

There exist five categories of employee onboarding tools for L&D professionals to use in improving their onboarding program. They include checklists, chatbots, specialized tools, integrated tools, and free tools.

1. Checklists

Onboarding checklists are one of the simplest and easy to get tools for L&D professionals. They help to show a detailed list of your onboarding activities, including the employees that will get involved in them.

With checklists, L&D professionals can track their new hires’ progress, and the employees can be sure of what activities to do. Onboarding checklists include detailed information about the task that managers need to complete. Below are some of the tasks that get included in a checklist.

• Arrangement of new employees works email and office desks.
• Introducing them to other team members.
• Setting up a meeting with the head of departments/supervisors and creating discussion topics.
• Work expectations and goals prior to a specific week or month.
• Different types of training to get completed.

Although detailed information about work activities on checklists varies from organizations to organizations, what’s essential is providing guides for managers and their new hires. These guides will help new hires have an idea of what’s ahead, hence improving their onboarding experience.

2. Integrated Tools

Integrated tools are the comprehensive, all-purpose tools for L&D professionals. They offer solutions all in one place for HR by helping them manage their employee onboarding program from training to benefits.

Parts of their solution is offering checklists and electronic paperwork to reduce employees’ onboarding challenges.

They also offer to help HR handle other tasks, including payroll, performance evaluation, interview invitation emailing, and attendance that are not related to onboarding programs.

Since onboarding tasks and HR tasks are somehow connected, integrated tools can help to make the processes easy for HR teams. That’ll help managers to deliver an effective onboarding experience for the new employees.

3. Specialized Tools

Specialized employee onboarding tools are specially developed tools to improve the employees’ onboarding experience. Although they are different from integrated tools, they are all-in-one tools for only onboarding processes.

Specialized tools have different tools that help to improve employee onboarding experience in one place.

They have quiz builder tools, communication tools, electronic paperwork tools, and customizable checklists that help to make the onboarding process seamless.

Apart from that, they also empower managers to add their training contents with ease. The purpose of the tool is to improve speed and efficiency while delivering employees’ onboarding program.

4. Chatbots

Employees onboarding chatbots are automated systems that interact with employees in chat format. Although the onboarding process is time-consuming,

HR chatbots can help to save managers time while they focus on other manual activities. They help to streamline and speed up some onboarding activities, hence improving the overall experience.

With chatbots, new hires can seek clarification on unclear issues at their convenience, without disrupting other employees’ workflow. It offers 24/7 service and support, meaning that it’s always ready to answer questions.

With chatbots, there is little or no misinformation about the onboarding processes as new hires get accurate information. In all, chatbots are onboarding tools for L&D professionals to deliver the right information for their new hires, when they need it.

5. Free Onboarding Tools

There are different free tools for L&D professionals that can help them achieve seamless processes. All of them have a unique contribution to the success of an onboarding program.

One of the free tools includes digital project management tools, which allow employees to collaborate and communicate well. Others include group chat tools, checklists templates, and digital paperwork program tools.

Onboarding programs can be difficult for L&D teams to do. However, utilizing the five categories of tools above can make your onboarding experience seamless.

Also, using the right tools that meet your organization’s requirements will help you create better onboarding programs that improve your ROI.