enwisen on boarding whitepaper - four thought - april 2011

8/6/2019 Enwisen On Boarding Whitepaper - Four Thought - April 2011

1/14

Onboarding Technology

Four-Thought

FourCommon Myths

FourKey ROI Points for Building Your Business Case

FourSteps to Onboarding Success

By Barbara Levin, Senior Vice President

Marketing & Customer Community

Enwisen

2010. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Enwisen Whitepape


2/14

Onboarding Technology Four-Thought Page 2

Enwisen 2010 All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents Page

Onboarding business challenges 3

The role of technology in onboarding initiatives 4

Four common onboarding technology myths 5Four key ROI points for building an onboarding technology business case 8

Four technology-driven steps to onboarding success 10

Summary 12

About the author, Enwisen and AnswerSource Onboarding 13

Additional resources 14


3/14



Onboarding Business Challenges

Is your organization challenged with:

Streamlining onboarding costs and processes? Getting new-hires up-to-speed faster? Engaging new-hires and decreasing new employee turnover? Integrating all of the various software systems involved in the

onboarding process?

Simplifying onboarding administration for both HR andhiring managers?

If so, youre not alone, as these numbers in Table 1 prove.

Table 1 Onboarding By the Numbers1

30 Thats the number of steps that are involved in the typical onboarding process counting every form that needs to be filled out every approval every

data entry into various systems, and the like.

14 Represents the average number of software systems that are involved in the

onboarding process from applicant tracking systems to HR and payroll

applications to benefits administration to documents management and

provisioning solutions to training and performance management

applications, and others sales incentive systems, for example.

45 Thats how many days it takes a typical new employee to reach full

productivity costly for employers and demoralizing for the employees!

8 Seems like a small number compared to the others, but not when you

consider that it represents the percentage of compliance paperwork thats

never collected and the costs associated with potential litigious situations.

4 Billion The amount of dollars North American companies spend annually on new-

hire orientations much of it lost after Day 1.

In addition to the above administrative numbers, there are other even more important

numbers to consider as well. According to AberdeenGroups 2009 Onboarding Benchmark

Report, 85% of new hires decide, within the first six months, whether or not they will stay withtheir new employer. And, according to Gartner, new people coming in to the workforce today

will have an average of 20 jobs over the course of their careers. Given all of these numbers, the

goal becomes clear: employers today must provide a better new-hire experience. With fewer

steps. And lower costs.

1Table 1 figures from University of Michigan Onboarding study and U.S. Dept of Labor


4/14



The Role of Technology in Onboarding Initiatives

To achieve this goal, more and more employers are automating the most

time-consuming, expensive and resource-intensive components of the

onboarding process.

There are three types of onboarding technologies:

1. Forms and Task Automation: These solutions automate mostonboarding forms and provide checklists to manage associated tasks.

They eliminate a fair amount of the paperwork involved in the process.

Because they do not integrate data into the appropriate systems (i.e.,

HRIS, payroll, benefits administration) and do not provide for culture socialization

these types of systems are most often deployed by smaller-sized employers, typically

with under 1,000 employees.

2. Onboarding Orchestration: Onboarding orchestration technologies go beyond formsand tasks automation to include workflow, integration of data sources, electronic

acknowledgements of policies, I9 e-Verification, provisioning, stakeholder (new-hire,

hiring manager, HR) dashboards and tools to extend onboarding past Day 1 during the

critical six months when new-hires are deciding if they made the right job choice. These

might include features such as new-hire portals to accommodate pre-boarding, a

knowledgebase of policies/benefits info/work-life events, benefit decision support tools

and social networking options such as the ability to chat online with mentors or hiring

managers. Some orchestration solutions provide personalized tours, so that new-hires

see only the information relevant to them in their job role, location, bargaining unit and

other parameters defined by the employer.

3. Collaborative Options: For a complete new-hire experience, many employers integratesolutions such as Learning Management and Performance Management solutions into

the onboarding workflow to show new employees what training options are open to

them; and/or understand their 30, 60 and 90-day goals, for example.

Best-in-class employers particularly in mid-market and large/enterprise-market organizations

leverage both onboarding orchestration and collaborative options to improve the new-hire

experience and retention, lower costs, ensure compliance and streamline the process for all

stakeholders. Additionally particularly for employers with heavy seasonal hiring, such as retailor hospitality organizations automated onboarding eases the burden on HR Shared Services

Centers, Call Centers and Helpdesks.


5/14



Four Common Onboarding Technology Myths

Myth # 1 A blue-collar or in-the-field workforce will not

use online onboarding.

This has been proven over and over again to simply benot true. According to Knowledge Infusion, only 1 in 5

adults do not regularly access the internet and they

tend to be over the age of 65 and without a high-school education therefore

not representative of the majority of most workforces. Additionally, according to

the same Knowledge Infusion findings, there are more computers in homes

today than cable TV. In short, even if your new-hires will not be sitting at desks

with computers, chances are excellent that they have a computer at home and

know how to use it.

Case in point: Hershey Entertainment & Resorts. HE&Rhires 7,000-8,000 seasonal employees annually to work in

their hotels, restaurants and amusement parks. Its youngest

new-hires are 14 years old the oldest in their seventies. In

the summer of 2009, HE&R did its seasonal onboarding completely online for the

first time. And, fewer than 1% of all new-hires were unable to pre-board online,

upon accepting an offer letter, using personal computers and email addresses.

Myth # 2 Online onboarding takes the human touch out of new-hire orientation or the

human out of human resources.

In fact, in speaking to dozens of employers about their onboarding automation

experiences, anecdotal evidence would find the opposite to be true. Today, most

face-to-face orientations are spent filling out forms, being told the rules and

policies, and being overwhelmed with benefits information. This leaves very little

time to talk about an organizations culture, or about the things that make

working for it fun and exciting. This can be demoralizing and un-motivating

dampening the enthusiasm (or increasing the anxiety) of new employees. By pre-

boarding online, new-hires arrive at orientation with forms already submitted,

and policies read and acknowledged. If the onboarding solution has benefits

decision support, chances are theyve already elected their benefits. And if there

is an integrated knowledgebase theyve been able to answer their ownquestions about things like vacation and pay. Which leaves the face-to-face time

for the things that matter the most in getting your new-hires up-to-speed and

engaged.


6/14



Case in point: Fox Entertainment Group (Fox TV Networks,

Fox Interactive Media, including MySpace, Fox Movie

Studios, Fox News Network and more). While surveys

show that consumers believe Foxs movies, TV shows, etc.

to be innovative and exciting, the opposite was true for

new-hires, who spent their first days filling out forms and waiting for equipment.Given the competitive nature of the media business, Fox wanted to provide a

new-hire experience that would reinforce the excitement of coming to work in

the entertainment industry. Today, new-hires pre-board online. Because

provisioning is also completed as part of the pre-boarding process, new

employees have all of their equipment on Day 1, and the hiring manager is ready

for their arrival. Most important, the first day is filled with studio tours and other

exciting activities. Did it work? Yes. New-hire turnover is down, and productivity

is up. And surveys show that new employees have a much higher level of

satisfaction with their decision to come to work at Fox.

Myth # 3 It is better to license onboarding software from your applicant tracking

software vendor than from a best-of-breed vendor.

While there is no right or wrong answer here, the trend has certainly pointed

to this notbeing best practice. For many ATS vendors, although not for all,

onboarding was an after-thought, and the applications tend to be more basic

forms and task management. Additionally, many of these solutions are designed

to integrate only with other applications from the particular ATS or talent

management vendor vs. best-of-breed onboarding solutions, or onboarding

solutions that are part of HR Service Delivery suites which more readily

integrate with all of the HR, Payroll, Benefits, ATS, Performance Management,Document Management and other solutions in the typical mid-to-large

enterprise multi-platform environment.

To find the answer for your organization, you might start with some questions:

1) Which is the highest priority? For pre-boarding and onboarding to be:a) The end of the recruiting process?b) The beginning of an employees life cycle with your organization?

2) Is it most important for your onboarding technology to:a)

Integrate with your ATS solution?b) Integrate with your entire HR Service Delivery platform (employeeportal, benefits administration system, HRIS, Payroll system, ESS,

MSS, ATS, etc.)

3) Is your current onboarding practice (or planned onboarding initiative) to:a) End formalized onboarding after the first day or week?b) Have onboarding be a formalized process for Day 30, 60 or beyond?


7/14



If you answered a to two or more questions, an

integrated ATS/Onboarding solution might be the

right choice for your organization. If you answered

b to two or more questions, a best-of-breed

onboarding solution, or one that is part of an

integrated HR Service Delivery suite, may be thebetter choice.

Case in point: GartnerGroup and CedarCrestone: In its 2009

Hype Cycle for Human Capital Management Software, leading

industry analyst, Gartner, separated onboarding from ATS for

the first time, ranking onboarding solutions as technology

triggers for HCM excellence and mainstream adoption.

Additionally, leading industry consultants, CedarCrestone, also

for the first time, in 2009, separated onboarding from ATS in its 11th

annual HCM

Technology Survey, ranking it as key to HR Service Delivery excellence.

Myth # 4 Onboarding solutions arent a priority in a down economy when there are

fewer employees being hired.

Although most employers may hire fewer employees in a downturn economy,

they are still hiring. And onboarding new-hires manually is expensive. It still

takes people and time, and data-entry mistakes or lack of compliance

paperwork drives cost even higher. More important, the cost of turnover is

even more expensive than the cost of onboarding. The Society for Human

Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that it costs 1 - 2 x salary to

replace an employee, including hard-dollar costs, such as recruiting, and lesstangible costs, such as lack of productivity while a position is vacant. Therefore,

engaging new-hires from the day they accept an offer is even more critical when

organizations cant afford avoidable turnover.

The other situation where automating onboarding in anyeconomy is important

is with industries such as retail, services, healthcare or hospitality where

there is heavy seasonal hiring. Whether a retailer is hiring 10,000 holiday season

employees in a bad economy vs. 15,000 in a good economy automated

onboarding will still be more efficient.

Last, many onboarding orchestration solutions also offer off-boarding which

provides efficiencies in terms of time, people and compliance during

downsizing or at the end of a seasonal hiring period where the seasonal

employees must be off-boarded.


8/14



Case in point: Alegent Health. Even in

a downturn economy, Alegent Health,

after automating onboarding, is still

on track to save $1.4 million in 3-years via cutting processing

time by more than 50%, reducing turnover by almost 12%,

and consolidating five hiring locations into one.

Four Key ROI Points for Building an Onboarding Technology

Business Case

There are many return-on-investment (ROI) points that can help build a

business case for automating onboarding. However, in todays economic environment, many

traditional HR ROI calculations have included too many soft or intangible costs. For the

purpose of this paper, we will stick to four areas in which hard-dollar savings can be achieved.

Further, a key consideration is that the cost of automating is a replacement of costs. Your

organization is already spending dollars in these areas costs that can be eliminated, orresources realigned to other work. In fact, at Enwisen, many of our onboarding customers

realize a positive hard-dollar ROI within the first year of deployment.

ROI # 1 New-hire administration and labor

It costs employers an average of $30 to print and mail full new-hire packets,

including all forms, benefits information, handbooks and more. For an employer

who hires 3,000 employees per year, that is a cost of $90,000 which would be

eliminated with online onboarding. Data entry, at an average of $35 per hour,

would take 6,500 hours to manually enter all data for 3,000 new-hires in to

relevant systems. This, too, would be eliminated at a savings of $227,500. There

are many other administrative and labor costs that would be reduced or

eliminated as well. But just these two examples represent a savings of $317,500

which, in the case of the Enwisen SaaS-based AnswerSource Onboarding

solution, for example is more than 3-times the cost of a 3-year license for an

employer with 5,000 employees per year.

ROI # 2 Reduction in turnover costs

If 10% of new-hires leave in an organization hiring 3,000 per year that

represents 300 new employees who will leave during their first six months. Usingthe most conservative number, lets assume this will be reduced by 5% with a

more engaging onboarding process facilitated by technology. Replacing 150

employees, with an average salary of $50,000, and using the lowest figure of 1x

salary to replace an employee this represents a savings of $7,500,000. This

estimate, alone, represents a significant hard-dollar ROI for any solution over the

lifetime of the solution.


9/14



RO1 # 3 Orientation and travel costs

For very decentralized organizations, organizations that do heavy seasonal

hiring, or organizations that just simply must cut costs wherever possible, some

onboarding solutions offer the ability to do streaming videos and much more toacclimate new employees to corporate culture. This can significantly cut down

the labor and travel costs associated with face-to-face orientations. If, for

example, 30% of new hires travel to orientation, and that number can be

reduced to 15% and using an average of $600 per trip for travel expenses, only

this represents a savings of $270,000. In the case of Enwisens AnswerSource

Onboarding, this alone would more than pay for a full 3-year license for an

employer with 15,000 employees. The savings are even more significant when

adding in the cost of HR and other staff involved in the face-to-face orientation

process.

ROI # 4 Compliance-related costs

Earlier we showed that in the typical, manual new-hire process, eight percent

(8%) of new-hire compliance-related paperwork is never collected. This can be

extremely costly when considering the cost of litigation. If 1.5% of 3,000 new-

hires (45) bring a complaint and at a cost of $5,000 in legal expenses per

incident this represents $225,000 in compliance-related costs. These costs can

be eliminated via onboarding technology, which, through workflow, automatic

notifications and electronic acknowledgements, prevents a new-hire from

coming onboard until all compliance information and completed forms are

received in the system.

To summarize the ROI hard-dollar savings that can be realized via onboarding automation,

see Table 2:


10/14



Table 2 Summary of Onboarding Hard-Dollar ROI1

New-hire labor and administration $ 317,500

New-hire turnover reduction $ 7,500,000

Orientation and travel costs $ 270,000

Compliance related costs $225,000

TOTAL HARD-DOLLAR ROI $8,312,500

1

Table 2 ROI based on an employer hiring 3,000 employees per year

Four Technology-Driven Steps to Onboarding Success

When the first generation of automated onboarding solutions first arrived on the industry

scene, there were generally three components that were evaluated: Forms Management, Task

Management and Socialization. Newer generation solutions, however, take this to the next

level with four key steps for onboarding success.

Step # 1 Acclimate new-hires to your corporate culture, policies, benefits and more.

If your onboarding solution allows for pre-boarding, all forms and other tasks can

be completed online prior to Day 1. This not only facilitates faster new-hire

productivity, but allows for a more effective face-to-face orientation where youcan better focus on culture, core values and more.

Integration with a personalized, searchable knowledgebase is also important for

this step allowing new-hires to ask questions about policies, pay and more

before they come to work. Acclimation is further facilitated by solutions offering

a workflow design vs. checklist. In this way, new-hires are intuitively guided

through personalized tours based on job code, location and criteria you define

to provide a robust, engaging experience.

Features such as the ability to present streaming video and/or social media

promote a new-hires ability to see messages from the CEO, chat with mentors

and more to feel welcome into the culture when they walk in the door.

Further, remember that acclimation and engagement activities should not end

when an employee walks in on the first day. To reduce new-hire turnover during

the first critical six months, look for solutions that provide features such as:


11/14



Benefits decision support tools to roll-out during pre-boarding or 15days before an employee becomes benefits-eligible.

Collaboration with solutions such as Performance Management andLearning Management systems to help new-hires stay focused on their

30, 60 and 90 day goals, for example and/or sign up forrequired/optional training.

Step # 2 Automate process workflow and management for key stakeholders.

Through features such as

electronic forms along with

automated notifications to HR,

hiring managers and new-hires

the administration time and

costs associated with new-hireprocessing can be significantly

reduced.

Next generation, easy-to-use

dashboards that provide

status and drill-down reporting

capabilities can also simplify

management for all

stakeholders.

Step # 3 Integrate all relevant data and systems.

Onboarding administration can be minimized even further with solutions that

provide for the pre-population of forms and automatic Day 1 triggering. This

means that a new-hire, when they first log in during pre-boarding, can review

forms populated with data received from the ATS and update their information.

At this point the remaining downstream forms will be populated - eliminating

duplication of effort by the new employee.

Then, at the appropriate time when the employee arrives on their first day or when they become benefits-eligible, for example an automated data file can

be provided to integrate the form data with all relevant systems such as your

core HRIS, Payroll, Benefits Administration and other HCM systems on your

platform.

Dashboard example from Enwisens AnswerSou

Onboarding 2


12/14



Some solutions also allow for the integration of provisioning systems so the new-

hire has everything they need such as parking passes, name badges, safety

equipment, email addresses, desk/phone/computer, etc. when they walk in

the door.

The end result is fewer steps for both the new-hire and HR, more accurate

information, the elimination of manual data entry and, perhaps most important,

new-hires have the equipment they need to begin working on their first day.

Step # 4 Ensure compliance with policies, laws and regulations.

As shown in the earlier ROI section, compliance-related complaints from as few

as 98 employees can result in costs exceeding a half million dollars. Automated

onboarding features such as electronic acknowledgement of company policies,

electronic verification for I9 compliance and more can significantly reduce these

risks and help avoid unnecessary litigation.

Summary

Adoption of online onboarding solutions is becoming more mainstream as employers break

through common myths. Today it is clear that online onboarding will:

Achieve widespread usage by even the most diverse workforces including blue-collarworkforces.

Facilitate even more effective face-to-face orientations. Be extremely important in any economy both up and down.

Employers who achieve best-in-class onboarding status can achieve dramatic hard-dollar return

on investment which can top $8,000,000 for organizations hiring 3,000 employees per year.

And, given the wide variety of priorities and needs, there are onboarding solutions to fit all

sizes.


13/14



About the Author

Barbara Levin is the senior vice president of marketing and customer community for Enwisen.

She has more than 25 years experience in working with employers to understand how to

leverage human capital management technologies to meet business goals. She is a frequent

author and speaker in the HCM industry. She can be reached [email protected].

About Enwisen

Enwisen is the leading vendor of Software-as-a-

Service based solutions that help employers

provide better in-house service delivery with

fewer resources and lower costs. Enwisen has

provided proven hard-dollar ROI for employers

such as Nissan North America, Unisys, Hershey

Entertainment & Resources, State of Montana,Alegent Health and hundreds of others.

Enwisens AnswerSource Onboarding

AnswerSource Onboarding

is the industrys leading

comprehensive solution

that features the four key

steps for next-generationonboarding success.

AnswerSource Onboarding

helps employers provide a

better new-hire experience

with fewer steps and lower

costs. Onboarding

Acclimate, Automate,

Integrate and Comply is a

registered trademark of

Enwisen, 2010.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


14/14



Resources:

For more information on AnswerSource onboarding, including an ROI calculation for your

organization: email your request to:[email protected]

For more about Alegent Healths onboarding case study:http://www.enwisen.com/customers/case_studies/case-study?id=4

For more about Fox Entertainment Groups onboarding case study:

http://www.enwisen.com/resourcesanddemos/secure/require_auth.php?type=form&name=A

ccess_Resource_Form&return=%2Fresourcesanddemos%2Fsecure%2Fwebinar-

detail%3Fid%3D68
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.enwisen.com/customers/case_studies/case-study?id=4http://www.enwisen.com/customers/case_studies/case-study?id=4http://www.enwisen.com/resourcesanddemos/secure/require_auth.php?type=form&name=Access_Resource_Form&return=%2Fresourcesanddemos%2Fsecure%2Fwebinar-detail%3Fid%3D68http://www.enwisen.com/resourcesanddemos/secure/require_auth.php?type=form&name=Access_Resource_Form&return=%2Fresourcesanddemos%2Fsecure%2Fwebinar-detail%3Fid%3D68http://www.enwisen.com/resourcesanddemos/secure/require_auth.php?type=form&name=Access_Resource_Form&return=%2Fresourcesanddemos%2Fsecure%2Fwebinar-detail%3Fid%3D68http://www.enwisen.com/resourcesanddemos/secure/require_auth.php?type=form&name=Access_Resource_Form&return=%2Fresourcesanddemos%2Fsecure%2Fwebinar-detail%3Fid%3D68http://www.enwisen.com/resourcesanddemos/secure/require_auth.php?type=form&name=Access_Resource_Form&return=%2Fresourcesanddemos%2Fsecure%2Fwebinar-detail%3Fid%3D68http://www.enwisen.com/resourcesanddemos/secure/require_auth.php?type=form&name=Access_Resource_Form&return=%2Fresourcesanddemos%2Fsecure%2Fwebinar-detail%3Fid%3D68http://www.enwisen.com/resourcesanddemos/secure/require_auth.php?type=form&name=Access_Resource_Form&return=%2Fresourcesanddemos%2Fsecure%2Fwebinar-detail%3Fid%3D68http://www.enwisen.com/customers/case_studies/case-study?id=4mailto:[email protected]

enwisen on boarding whitepaper - four thought - april 2011

Documents