Transforming HR: The ultimate guide to efficient and secure onboarding

In today's fast-paced environment, automating employee onboarding isn't optional - it's a must-have for a competitive edge.

Automation streamlines operations, cuts costs, and surprisingly, helps preserve your company culture. By ditching paperwork, new hires feel valued from the start.

But the real advantage lies in the way it can transform your company. According to research, new employees are 82% more likely to stick around and accelerates their time to productivity by 70%. This is essential, as employee turnover can cost from half to double their annual salary.

The solution: Digital HR transformation

However, traditional onboarding often buries HR and departments under paperwork. The need for digital HR transformation is clear: It relieves administrative bloat, improves speed and transparency, and keeps new hires productive.

Follow our tactical roadmap to learn how automation in onboarding can transform your HR operations and significantly reduce turnover rates.

The impact of onboarding automation on company culture

A common concern with automation is that it might impersonalize onboarding, negatively impacting company culture. However, the opposite is true. Automating repetitive tasks with eSignatures frees up HR professionals to focus on what truly matters: Building relationships with new hires and fostering a strong company culture.

Research shows that 65% of new hires decide if a job is the right fit within the first month, and 27% know in the first week. On average, companies have just 44 days to impress with a stellar onboarding experience.

Fortunately, electronic signatures and onboarding automation can help make hiring processes faster, onboarding smoother, and even contribute to a positive company culture.

Early engagement thanks to an easy integration

Traditional onboarding processes are often slow and frustrating, resulting in disengaged new hires.

Automating with eSignatures speeds up the process, allowing new employees to complete paperwork swiftly and embark on meaningful tasks sooner. This accelerated integration fosters a sense of accomplishment and enhances engagement with the company and its culture.

Onboarding that reflects efficiency

Utilizing eSignatures demonstrates that your company is modern, tech-savvy, and efficient. This resonates with many new hires, particularly younger generations who value a streamlined and digital work environment. A company that embraces automation reflects a culture that is adaptable, innovative, and forward-thinking.

Automated onboarding with eSignatures also ensures a consistent and transparent experience for all new hires. This fosters trust—reinforcing the company's values and expectations to establish a solid foundation for a positive culture.

The cost of manual onboarding: Why automate with eSignatures?

The cost of not optimizing your HR processes can be hidden but substantial. It can impact employee satisfaction, productivity, and even compliance.

Automated HR solutions offer a strong return on investment (ROI) by streamlining processes to save you time and money. For a medium-sized business hiring about 100 employees annually, adopting an automated onboarding process with tools like Dropbox Sign can offer significant financial and operational benefits.

The impact and benefits of automating onboarding with eSignatures

We’ve already touched on how eSignatures can help improve employee retention and strengthen your company culture, but there are plenty of other operational benefits eSignatures can unlock too.

Scale faster with automated onboarding

As your business grows, the ability to scale your onboarding processes without additional resources becomes invaluable. Take training for example: It’s easy to send out documentation and information to new recruits, but how do you know they’ve actually engaged with, or even read your carefully prepared materials? Dropbox Sign ensures you can track every new starter’s progress—regardless of when they join or how quickly your company is expanding.

Boost efficiencies

Electronic signatures and automated workflows eliminate the need for printing, scanning, and filing. Digital document management ensures that all forms are correctly filled out, securely stored, and easily accessible, which cuts down on time spent managing paperwork and allows HR staff to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Enhance onboarding transparency

Real-time tracking is a game-changer for HR managers, making their jobs smoother and more efficient. With instant visibility into the status of every document, HR professionals can effortlessly keep tabs on important paperwork, from employment contracts to onboarding documents.

This transparency removes the guesswork, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. By streamlining these tasks, HR managers can focus on strategic initiatives, confident that everything is running smoothly.

Simplify and save costs

According to research, adopting eSignatures can lead to significant cost savings. For instance, the average salary for an HR generalist is about $59,975 per year.

By saving 175 hours annually through automated onboarding, companies can save approximately $5,466.47 each year in HR labor costs alone. These savings reflect not only a reduction in hours spent on manual tasks but also an overall decrease in administrative complexity.

5 effective tactics to automate onboarding without losing company culture

Creating an automated onboarding process that reflects your company values can be challenging. Ultimately it involves integrating technology while preserving human interaction to build a supportive work environment. And that’s no mean feat! However, there are some simple ways to achieve this using strategic automation and digital HR document management.

1. Map your current process before making changes

Every successful journey begins with a clear understanding of where you stand. This means taking a close look at your current onboarding process and identifying areas for automation. Talk to key stakeholders involved in onboarding, like HR professionals and new hires, to understand the impact of each step and how they connect.

2. Go paperless with digital onboarding

Paperwork, repetitive tasks, and departmental divides slow down onboarding. However, IT holds the key to removing obstacles and tailoring the process for a smooth new hire experience.

Digital onboarding is transforming how new employees are integrated into organizations. This innovative approach offers a more engaging, multimedia-rich experience that can be accessed from anywhere. As a result, the administrative burden associated with traditional paperwork is significantly reduced.

3. Develop engaging digital training modules

Employee training can be expensive. A 2023 Training Industry Report found that U.S. companies spend over $100 billion annually on training, with costs rising due to inflation and evolving training needs.

Digital training modules offer a cost-effective and scalable solution. Similar to onboarding paperwork, training materials can be converted into online, interactive formats. These modules allow new hires to learn at their own pace, reducing training time and costs for your organization.

4. Create a universal onboarding checklist

While automation eliminates manual paperwork tasks, other onboarding steps require a structured approach. A universal onboarding checklist ensures all new hires go through a consistent, well-organized process.

Here's a sample checklist to get you started (remember to customize it for your specific needs):

• Offer acceptance: Create a "welcome workflow" that includes the offer letter, onboarding documents, and an invitation to your employee portal – all electronically signed and delivered.
• IT setup: Have your IT team provision new hires with the necessary software, computers, and access permissions.
• Workplace setup: Ensure their workspace is ready and welcoming. Provide a brief software walkthrough and set up some basic tasks to help them get started.
• Day one introductions: Schedule an office tour and introductions with key colleagues and their manager.
• Role clarity: Ensure the new hire's supervisor has their role, goals, and responsibilities clearly defined, aligning with expectations discussed during the interview process.
• Ongoing touchpoints: Schedule regular check-ins with the new hire throughout their initial employment journey (week 1, month 1, month 3, etc.)
  

5. Refine by collecting data and feedback

Digital onboarding forms not only streamline the process but also provide valuable data for analysis. This data can offer insights into your workforce demographics, skills gaps, and other areas that can inform strategic planning and resource allocation.

While data is important, don't underestimate the power of human feedback.

Regularly solicit feedback from new hires—and actively listen! This fosters a culture of open communication and can significantly improve retention and productivity.

Incorporating these tactics will empower you to create a streamlined onboarding process that embraces automation while preserving your unique company culture. This, in turn, will lead to a more engaged and productive workforce – a win-win for everyone.

The best two ways to onboard employees using Dropbox Sign

Whether you’re ready to test the waters or dive right in to automated employee onboarding, with Dropbox Sign you’ve got all the options you could ever need.

1. Streamline employee onboarding with Dropbox Sign

Sign up for a Dropbox Sign plan and start creating reusable templates for all your onboarding documents, from mobile-friendly forms and NDAs to contracts and employee handbooks. Easily distribute documents for eSignatures, ensuring a smooth and secure signing experience for new hires. No more printing, chasing signatures, or manual data entry.

2. Integrate Dropbox Sign API for onboarding automation

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Embed paperless, customizable onboarding flows right into your existing website, app, and systems with Dropbox Sign API.

With the ability to scale efficiently, especially when handling high volumes of new hires, Dropbox Sign API ensures your onboarding process remains smooth and effective regardless of size. Tweak and tightly integrate our functionality to fit your most unique processes and extend the brand experience with our white-labeling options, allowing you to maintain your brand identity throughout the onboarding journey.

This seamless integration enhances the employee experience by providing a cohesive and branded onboarding process, making new hires feel welcomed and valued from day one.

Transform your HR with better employee onboarding

Automation isn’t about turning your office into a bunch of robots that never talk to each other. It’s about removing redundant, manual tasks from your everyday work life so you can have those important conversations that lead to real organizational growth.

Ready to revolutionize your HR onboarding process?

Discover how Dropbox Sign can simplify document signing, automate workflows, and keep your company culture vibrant.

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