What’s the benefit of building an online course for your onboarding? Confident teammates work better than confused ones. But confidence is impossible to build without enough time and guidance to settle into a new role.
There is a way to take new hires from ‘confused’ to ‘confident’ without putting a strain on the current team. It’s not a 3-month shadowing programme. Nor is it a 60-page employee handbook. And it’s definitely not a 10-minute Powerpoint presentation on Day One.
It all starts with an online course. Interested? Let’s dive right into it.
‘Onboarding’ is a management term for the process of introducing a new employee into an organisation while equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and behaviours they need to achieve productivity. It is sometimes referred to as ‘organisational socialisation’ or ‘induction’, with a focus on social belonging and acceptance in the workplace. Online onboarding is onboarding conducted through an online medium, such as email, social media or courseware.
Many companies are already innovating in the online onboarding space. They’re conveying their company values early, building learning communities, using authentic assessments to track progress, saving time with automation, and finding ways to put theory into practice.
You can do it, too. But it’s definitely not a one-person job.
Evaluate what you currently have and scope out what you want to achieve with online onboarding. This helps you find your “why”, which is your best ammo for getting your colleagues involved.
A few tips:
You’ve heard it before: failing to plan is planning to fail. Because it’s true! Especially when it comes to online courses.
A well-planned course is like a well-planned Farmville farm. You do all the hard work first, build buttresses and lay down sprinklers so you can plant some seeds, and then leave it to do its thing while you enjoy the fruits of your labour. When planning your online onboarding course, here are a few things to include:
Click here to download our planning worksheet.
Click here for activity ideas to use in your onboarding course.
Be sure to build in measurement metrics like credits and digital badges or include a survey at the end of the course so you’re not left wondering about the effectiveness of the programme.
Facilitation is not just important for workshops and classes, it's also crucial to build up a sense of community among your team. Here are a few facilitation techniques that you can try:
Firstly, you need to get everyone involved in ‘seeding’ your course with responses which model what you’re looking for. This helps new hires to feel more comfortable.
Next, you need to assign a dedicated facilitator (or hop in as a facilitator yourself) in order to engage with your community. The idea is to kickstart a culture where everyone is learning independently, so try not to provide answers to your new hires' questions immediately. Instead, suggest ways of finding answers from other people in the team using peer-to-peer discussion, feedback and collaboration.
Aim to spend a little bit of time each week, especially when you’ve just hired someone new, to interact in the course and make their transition that much easier. It’s even better if the whole team is involved in facilitating the course, as it splits up the time spent by each team member on onboarding while encouraging everyone to socialise.
And that’s it! You’re well on your way towards providing a fantastic, sustainable onboarding experience for your new hires. If you want to get started right away, don't forget to download our quick-start guide for planning your onboarding course
OpenLearning is a social online learning platform that can help you and your team to achieve your institution's goals. 
Topics: Employee Training and Onboarding
