Whenever an employer hires a candidate to join the company, the individual spends a portion of his or her time with human resources. Here they fill out paperwork, ask questions about company-wide policies and begin their time with the business.
At this point, the newly-hired employee will go off to the department where they will apply their skills full-time. Many assume the human resources department’s responsibility is over, but far from it: we are responsible for managing every staff member’s records.
However, more businesses are starting to utilize HR software to ensure the new workers have the information they need to succeed. Research from the ManPowerGroup found that 39 percent of businesses were unable to fill time-sensitive openings due to some sort of skills shortages. Hiring managers are in the position to identify ways to provide on-the-job training without taking up significant resources.
Even major organizations like Facebook and Twitter had to face the facts: not training these hires won’t produce the results they’re expecting out of these intelligent people, Ben Horowitz, who helped develop Twitter’s management training program, explained to Quartz.
Facebook in particular faced “a pretty large crisis” in 2007, when a lack of communication led to gaps in the website’s product and hurti the website’s overall performance. Now, all project managers and engineers are required to attend a seven-week program. The results from this training session go live on Facebook within a week of completion.
“It’s amazing how productive new people are at that company very quickly,” Horowitz added.
While this is more of a traditional approach, businesses are also encouraged to look into newer onboarding methods like the use of gamified compliance tests and online training sessions. This is a somewhat different from reading the company handbook, but it gives hires the opportunity to answer work-related questions in real-time.
“These types of tools will help companies engage and train their employees,” Business 2 Community contributor Patrick Clark wrote. “And as more companies recruit and hire virtual employees, training programs that can be accessed from mobile devices and cloud-based apps will become increasingly important for HR to incorporate into onboarding and throughout the employee lifecycle.”
Businesses have utilized HR software solutions to manage employee information, and this system can also be used to share announcements for future training sessions or workshops. In turn, employees are given the option to expand their skill set, instead of feeling like they have no means of doing so.