A POS system on a restaurant kitchen food run counter.

Why is Recruiting and Onboarding Software Important For Your Team?

Friday, November 14, 2014
The hiring process has come a long way in recent years. New software and digital integration allow your businesses to take on higher quality workers at less expense, and get them on the floor, equipped to work faster than ever before.

Because every business wants to hire, train, and retain quality employees, this article will focus on how you can take advantage of modern software to streamline and maximize efficiency in recruitment and training processes.

What is recruiting software?

Recruiting software is a broad term that generally means any software that assists in completing the many varying tasks involved with hiring new employees.

These can include:

  • Searching for and attracting potential candidates
  • Presenting all job expectations, duties, and necessary training to potential hires
  • Screening resumes
  • Hosting dialogue between a hiring team
  • Tracking, organizing, and updating the statuses of candidates
  • Sending out job offers

What is onboarding software?

After recruiting software completes its job, employee onboarding software streamlines the training, instructional procedures, and various paperwork involved with new hires. Like recruiting software, onboarding solutions are also specified and involved with new employee hires. They cover the transitional process between hiring employees and setting them off independently to fulfill their job tasks.

Specifically, these tasks can include:

  • Scheduling and listing out remaining training tasks
  • Facilitate the storing and collecting of employee information
  • Staying up-to-date on new legal requirements regarding new employees
  • Offering guides and answers to frequently asked questions to employees as they complete various training tasks and paperwork
  • Gathering necessary employee tax forms
  • Run additional necessary government verifications
  • Distribute employee handbooks and company values

Why are these softwares important?

Help HR departments plan: Modern recruitment and onboarding software can significantly make the tasks of hiring and training easier on your Human Resource department.

These programs provide uniformity to the onboarding experience, so HR doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel whenever they need new employees. HR can often become overwhelmed by creating, facilitating, and tracking the numerous tasks and paperwork of just one new employee, let alone a whole group of new hires! Automating these tasks should be a top priority to free your HR to focus on managing veteran staff and making strategy decisions to increase productivity.

Furthermore, these programs will promote easier and more effective collaboration between HR members regarding hiring and employee training. All candidate and new hire information will be unified into one easily accessed and organized location. This allows HR members to sift through all the pertinent data, make comments, message each other, and leave alerts regarding upcoming tasks. Having everything accessible will lead to no hiring committee left behind, so everyone can collaborate and share their thoughts with up-to-date data and informed decision making.

Streamline the process: With everyone on the same page using the same system, both the recruiting and onboarding process will run more efficiently than if it were run manually by a limited group of employees.

Additionally, these programs have efficient diagnostics that track how long specific tasks are taking. You and your HR team can become aware of hurdles and make appropriate changes.

No more sifting through boxes and boxes of employee papers and having to worry about losing files, securing data, or missing key info that you need to make decisions. These programs keep data secure, accessible, and user-friendly so your team doesn’t waste time playing catch up.

Automate the tedious parts: Rather than take up precious labor hours by having employees relay the same training presentations to each new hire, these programs will allow you to run video presentations of training procedures, interactive learning applications, and present guidebooks of company standards.

These automated programs:

  • Save you labor costs
  • Save your employees from routine and repetitive work
  • Allow new hires to learn at their own pace to retain information better and not overwhelm

These programs can also facilitate tests to track new hire retention of what they’ve been presented and allow you to see how they are progressing through the onboarding process. By knowing which areas they are struggling with, you’ll be able to meet them where they are at and boost both yours and their confidence by responding to any concerns or confusion. You’ll also be able to see areas in which they excel, helping you and HR know more about your employees and which parts of your business they can strengthen the most.

One of the greatest benefits of these programs is the automation of paperwork. Manually researching which paperwork is appropriate, administering it, collecting it, inputting the data, and finally securely storing it not only takes up countless hours but is also tedious, repetitive, and sometimes overwhelming. Manual data collection and entry is also prone to human error, which could end up costing you in the long run.

These programs let you rest easy by automating these tasks and having them occur in the background of your business, so you can focus on managing your employees and making more inspired business decisions. The programs will update you if any issues arise and if any new legal requirements are in need of accommodation, keeping you ahead of the game rather than working from behind.

Builds a better candidate experience: The hiring and onboarding experience is your employees’ first impression of your company: strive to make it a good one! Not only will a good first impression help you reel in quality employees, but it’ll also make them feel like a part of the team and proud to work for your company, increasing productivity and skillful work.

Nightmare stories abound in which potential candidates walked out of training or removed themselves from possible hiring due to a disastrous onboarding experience. The stories often involve a disorganized training program, lost confidential paperwork, overwhelming amounts of information, unprepared first days, candidates being told contradictory information between trainers, and moody managers who have a crisis from having to lead a new hire through the same tedious information.

These programs create a unified experience to have all your new hires on the same page. New hires will train at their own pace and ask questions when needed to avoid feeling overloaded with information. They’ll feel assured that all their personal information is within a secure system. The programs won’t have any emotional frustrations on the new hires, and, lastly, you’ll be able to oversee everything from a distance and have yourself or team members step in whenever needed.

Promotes company culture: Employee Onboarding is the perfect time to share with new hires your company's values, history, and objectives. You can use onboarding to share employee/customer testimonials, awards or peaks of successes throughout the company’s years, and small biographies about managerial staff and how they became a part of the company. Perhaps you have new employees read through your company handbook and history. Or, maybe you shoot a video presenting your business's core values and outlook.

Studies consistently show increased productivity and employee engagement when new hires feel welcomed, informed about their business’s values, and confident that they make an

important contribution to the team. Take advantage of this time and use onboarding programs to instill these values and help your business thrive.

Retains employees: Employee turnover is almost always a negative for your company. You lose out on the labor hours you used to find, hire, and train the employees. You’re then left with vacant space that needs filling, and you have to start the process all over again.

These programs help you retain and keep employees by hiring the best candidates for the job and training them effectively for their tenure at your company. Employees will find it difficult to leave your business after going through the work of getting hired and onboarding, so make sure those processes are as efficient and as streamlined as possible so that they not only complete the process, but have a great experience doing so and feel prepared for the job ahead of them. A happy worker is a committed worker, so start strong.

Conclusion:

Recruiting and onboarding set the tone for your employee’s career at your company. An ineffective hiring and training process can cost you unnecessary labor, stress, and potential workers. Recruiting and onboarding software provide all the necessary tools to run a productive and positive hiring experience at minimal expense to yourself and your staff.

Don't underestimate the importance custom recruiting software can have on your company. If you haven't already, consider looking for software that can help benefit your business.


Are you interested in teaming with our human resource professionals or taking advantage of our HR solutions?

Heartland is the point of sale, payments and payroll solution of choice for entrepreneurs that need human-centered technology to sell more, keep customers coming back and spend less time in the back office. Nearly 1,000,000 businesses trust us to guide them through market changes and technology challenges, so they can stay competitive and focus on building remarkable businesses instead of managing the daily grind. Learn more at heartland.us