Mobility-as-a-service: 3 strategies to improve new-hire onboarding

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Hiring new employees onto your enterprise staff is a costly process, and these costs and challenges don’t end when a candidate accepts your offer.

Employee onboarding is a necessary evil that can sap the resources of any organization. According to Undercover Recruiter, the average company spends $1,200 per employee for training yearly, and the average employee undergoes 32 hours of training each year, much of which is supervised by HR.

Mobility-as-a-service represents a cost-cutting alternative that may also prove more effective at preparing these employees for their role in your company. Here are three ways a mobile solution could improve your company’s outdated onboarding model:

1. Self-guided training that reduces operational costs

Whether you’re bringing on a single new hire or a building an entire department, onboarding consumes a great deal of HR resources, especially in labor hours. Someone has to run these new-hire trainings, which means a significant portion of time is spent dedicating HR staff to prepare workers for their roles within the company. This training process is heavily scripted and planned, so it doesn’t require much critical thought from the person running the training, but their manpower is nonetheless required. Their skills can’t be put to other, more valuable uses during this time.

The obvious answer is to embrace a mobility-as-a-service solution that facilitates self-guided training. Through videos, articles and interactive content, HR departments can build an onboarding program that new hires can operate on their own. This gives employees the ability to work at their own pace and make sure they understand the company’s rules and the position’s duties and expectations. Meanwhile, HR personnel are free to put their time to more valuable uses, while still offering support to new hires when needed.

Self-guided onboarding also allows HR to spread out training so that it isn’t overwhelming to employees. Some training modules will need to be completed before starting any work, but other modules could be completed over time — say, within the first 30 days — giving the employee more flexibility scheduling their training while getting them into their day-to-day routine faster.

2. Tailoring orientation to each business role

Many large organizations embrace a one-size-fits-all approach to onboarding: To cut costs, they group new hires together and have everyone go through the same training. While certain aspects of onboarding are applicable to every employee, including information about retirement benefits, sexual harassment policies and so on, Workforce notes that many new hires require onboarding that is specific to their job role.

Instead of wasting each employee’s time by putting them through trainings that aren’t relevant to their role, mobility-as-a-service onboarding solutions can help HR build customized onboarding content that is tailored to each individual. Whether a new hire is an executive, an accountant, a customer service representative or an administrative assistant, mobile onboarding ensures that new hires only undergo the onboarding modules that relate to their anticipated duties. This can accelerate the onboarding process for some employees while making the entire process more efficient and effective.

3. Automated training through mobility-as-a-service

Enterprises don’t have to resign themselves to a lecture-style approach to onboarding. The use of mobile onboarding solutions gives companies the ability to create interactive onboarding experiences. Employees can receive hands-on training related to the software and systems they will use on a regular basis, and this interactive approach to learning can increase engagement among new hires.

The gamification of onboarding further incentivizes engagement by using quizzes and other competitions to motivate workers as they absorb new information and test their knowledge. This helps transform the onboarding experience from a tedious orientation process to an engaging introduction to an employee’s new work environment.

When applied to enterprise onboarding, mobility-as-a-service can help large organizations save tens of thousands of dollars per year while reducing the time commitment of onboarding, churning out new hires equipped to perform. If onboarding continues to be a drain on HR resources in your organization, it’s time to consider how mobile solutions can transform and upgrade this aspect of operations.