Effective employee onboarding is essential. The good news is that you can utilize many tools to meet your objectives—even e-learning. So, you’ve decided: why not give it a try? Here are some secrets to successfully using e-learning for your onboarding!

 

The 6 Secrets to Successfully Use E-Learning for Onboarding

Use a Blended Approach

E-learning is a beneficial tool for onboarding, but it should not replace the needed face-to-face contact between the new hires and their colleagues. Doing so will only backfire on you—instead of making your onboarding process more engaging and effective, it will make it even more impersonal.

So, what should you do? Use a blended approach. You should combine the e-learning elements of your employee onboarding with formal and informal face-to-face meetings. You could also conduct group training through in-person, synchronous e-learning, or live sessions.

Use Different Formats

There are different types of learners. The VARK model groups them into four categories—visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic. So, if you want to use e-learning for your onboarding, here’s one of the secrets: use different formats.

Use visually-pleasing materials, videos, audios, engaging text content, and simulations. Make it possible for your new hires to take your training and learning programs through a format that works best for them to personalize their experience.

Additional tip: use an introductory video. It allows you to humanize your new members, and people often prefer watching a video to reading text. After this, consider giving learning options for your actual e-learning courses.

 

Think About Your Learners

Not knowing your audience is one training mistake that you should avoid. Whether traditional learning or e-learning for onboarding, think about your learners.

  • Who are they?
  • What do they need?
  • How can they best learn?

Many onboarding processes are from the perspective of the company. There are formalities and rules that are involved, and that becomes the focus instead of the goal—to integrate a new hire into the organization. When you use e-learning, you can better look at this issue from the perspective of your new employee.

Plan the learning path that will give your new member all the information they need, but in a way that they can best take in and understand.

 

Let them know about your organization

The next secret to successfully using e-learning for your onboarding: let your recent hires learn about your organization. Remember that onboarding is integrating your new member into the company. It’s essential that through e-learning, they can learn about your organization and your culture. Communicate your mission and vision to them and how their position contributes to these things. Doing this will make them more comfortable in their choice to come and work for you. It also gives them a sense of purpose—driving engagement.

You can also use your current employees to film some videos as part of your e-learning content. Let the existing members of your organization explain what it’s like working for your company. It’s even better if your new employees can relate to the staff on the video—for example, if they have similar jobs or responsibilities.

 

Make it interactive and engaging

Most onboarding programs do one thing—give the information the company wants the new hire to know. And while there’s nothing wrong with this, it can make the process drudging and disengaging, which results in little to no information retention.

Using e-learning can help you combat this. Adding active learning elements can make your onboarding more interactive and engaging. Gamify your e-learning, add simulations, quizzes, and other content that requires the learner to participate.

 

Get feedback, evaluate, and improve

When you use e-learning for your onboarding, how can you know if it’s effective? The answer: feedback. No matter what you implement, ask your employees for their comments and suggestions, especially with something as crucial as onboarding.

The proverbial saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is not especially true for things that are beneficial for your business. You should constantly aim to improve your onboarding processes. Based on your gathered feedback, evaluate what’s working, what’s not, what you can do better, and refine your programs. That’s the best way to continuously optimize the results and adapt to the constantly changing world.

 

If one of your organization’s challenges is retaining talent, then improving your onboarding processes can be one of the solutions. And e-learning for onboarding can help you achieve this. Make it your competitive advantage!

 

Do you want to have e-learning for your employees? Presenting LearnED, a learning management system powered by People Dynamics, Inc., an online platform that provides E-Learning services through enriched online courses. You can access over 300 courses anytime, anywhere! You could also customize it to suit your organization’s needs. For more information, contact us through email at solutions@peopledynamics.ph or through our contact page at https://learnedlms.com/contact-us/.