How To Level-Up and Onboard New Employees Using Video and Active Recall
By Dr Alexander Young, Founder & CEO of Virti.
With over 20% of staff turnover occurring in the first 45 days of employment, having a strong onboarding process is vital for new hire retention and employee productivity with effective onboarding improving each by over 82 percent and 70 percent respectively according to research by Glassdoor.
So how can start-ups and corporates create a modern onboarding programme that ramps new hires as quickly as possible while accounting for both remote and in-person roles? Well the same studies show that onboarding programmes that are accessible to employees and that use reinforcement techniques such as active recall see a 27% faster time to productivity and a 61% higher retention rate of information in the first 30-days of starting a new role. So let’s look at how you can create a scalable onboarding process for your new hires and get your people to value as quickly as possible.
The Problem With Your Current Employee Onboarding Process
It might sound obvious but the best place to start is by auditing your existing new hire onboarding process. Talk with your existing employees and understand what they found worked and what didn’t. Then speak to team leads and understand what information they are repeating when new hires join and what they feel can be improved. There are then some gold standards for employee onboarding that apply to almost all companies. This includes helping new hires to understand your company culture, your customers, your product and your existing processes. Depending on your industry and the new hire’s role you may also have mandatory training such as workplace-safety, soft-skills and sales training or technical skills training such as how to operate IT systems or machinery. The problem with traditional onboarding is that there is often a high cost associated with in-person training, it lacks scalability and engagement is often hard to measure.
Create a New Hire Onboarding Playbook
Having planned out what is needed, create a new hire playbook for team leads and hiring managers to use. This includes checklists and email templates which can be sent out to save time. This might include sending a new hire welcome pack 7 days before; activating new emails and IT systems 5 days before and sending the new hire a schedule for their first few weeks communicating an onboarding schedule at start of employment and checking in on progress weekly or monthly. Ensure onboarding is multi-disciplinary and cross departmental and collaborate with your operations team to ensure onboarding documentation is accessible for all employees..
Creating a Hybrid Video-Based Remote Onboarding Programme
Similar to using a playbook, using interactive video delivered through web or an app is a great way to scale key information across your organisation and reduce costs while tracking engagement. At my company, Virti, our video-based onboarding process has reduced new hire ramp time to just 21 days compared to the traditional 3 months. To do this, break down your onboarding into mini-courses, each covering a key topic. For example, an early course might be about your company culture and feature 2–3 video lessons from the CEO and then employees talking about culture and the company’s history and mission to align new employees to the larger company vision.
Make It Interactive, Short and Hybrid
Consider onboarding as a continuous process to ensure new employees are onboarded throughout their tenure at the company. With video-based training, I’d suggest making it interactive with questions or hotspots embedded in the videos so that employees are actively learning and being tested using active recall rather than just passively watching or skipping through a video. Metrics from YouTube show that videos of 5–10 minutes tend to do best and delivering information concisely ensures employees will stick around till the end. In terms of video production, I would recommend having team leads and those making the videos map out a script, hire or buy a DSLR camera and microphone and use a greenscreen or backdrop to increase production value. If you’re a bootstrapped startup, a webcam or iphone is fine to get going too. While video is scalable you also want to stimulate in-person and live engagement for new hires, and so we typically finish each course with a practical challenge for new hires that can be tracked by team leads. This might include meeting colleagues or attending certain meetings.
Track Metrics
Implement an onboarding benchmark against your industry peers for best practices and get feedback from new hires on your new onboarding process, the videos and the courses to see what is working and what needs iteration. Using a simple form collection tool is helpful and make sure employees are able to communicate onboarding activities with their manager and team members. Integrate the onboarding process with employee performance review processes and goals and evaluate new hire activity and participation, communicating any feedback to managers. At Virti, we use regular checkins during a new hire’s first 3 months and brand our interactive video onboarding process as “Virti University” from which successful new hires graduate and receive swag.
Ensure that both managers and new hires receive consistent feedback throughout the onboarding phase and keep it positive. Overall, ensure that the onboarding process is relevant, engaging and gets new hires excited about joining your company.
Virti received the 2021 EdTechX Impact Award for demonstrable economic and/or societal impact. Read more about the 2021 EdTechX All Stars Awards here>>
