Businesses today move very quickly and demand a lot more from their employees. Many have embraced onboarding to ensure new hires get up to speed and reach their potential. Some have even taken it up a notch, opting for employee onboarding systems like SilkRoad Onboarding to make the process simpler and more efficient.
However, even the best onboarding software has its limitations. For instance, a new hire needs to have access to the internet to log onto the system and submit their documentation. Moreover, many sites are hardly designed for mobile devices, and lugging around a laptop bag can be a nuisance.
Thankfully, there’s a solution: employee onboarding apps.
Apps are always available and save a company significant costs and time. In fact, they can help save on the following costs of manual onboarding.
#1 Costs of Printing and Sending HR Materials
Printing out a single page can cost between $0.20 and $0.80 (US$0.15 and US$60 respectively). Since your offer pack includes contracts, tax forms, welcome information, and policies, your printing costs per new hire will be far from negligible.
The more paper you include, the more you pay your courier service. Expect to pay from $1.50 (US$1.13) for priority domestic letter service, which will take 1-4 days depending on destination. If your employee is abroad, expect to pay over $100 (US$75.47) for a service that could take even more time.
While web-based onboarding software helps eliminate a fraction of these costs, it won’t get rid of them altogether. Besides, some of these costs are transferred to your new employee. For instance, they may need to print out their contract, sign, and scan it before sending it back to you.
#2 Labor Costs of Human Resources Staff
On average, a human resources advisor earns $84,709 (US$63,932) annually in Australia. This means that they make around $46 (US$35) per hour. Their productivity is lost if they’re too busy manually onboarding new talent in their daily tasks. Crunch the numbers and you’ll see just how costly your recruitment staff becomes due to an inefficient onboarding program.
Employee onboarding software makes auditing employee documentation and determining their progress easy. However, your staff will still spend time checking emails or contacting new hires in person just to make sure everything is progressing smoothly.
#3 Cost Wasted During New Hires’ First Week
Some organizations don’t start onboarding until a new hire’s first day. Unfortunately, filling forms the minute they walk through the door is very time-consuming. The process can take even more time if they’re a little nervous. New employees end up wasting half a day learning the company’s policies and getting acquainted with their teammates.
Considering the average employee takes four days to get started in their new role, you can easily end up wasting thousands in lost time during that short period. So, you should ensure that your new talent is ready and fully productive from day one. Most onboarding software may not be helpful in this regard. Not only do most solutions require a reliable computer, they also need an active internet connection to function. This can be a hassle, especially if your new recruit is too busy wrapping up work at their previous employer or enjoying a short holiday before joining you.
#4 Cost of Input Errors
Traditional onboarding is a surefire way of making errors. Paper can disappear from your desk or while being transferred from one department to another. There’s also the large amount of errors your staff can make while digitizing these documents. This is especially true in case you need to manually enter data.
Automating the onboarding process is definitely one of the best ways to reduce input errors. However, even standard systems can be troublesome. For instance, if the system crashes or the internet disconnects, your new hire can lose all the data they entered and tried submitting. This can be tedious and you’ll end up wasting their time and affecting their time-to-productivity.
#5 New Employee Turnover Costs
90% of employees decide whether to stay or leave an organization within the first six months of their employment. By not instilling loyalty to your organization through effective onboarding, you can expect to go through the hiring and training process all over again. This means that you’ll be spending thousands of dollars on adding job listings, conducting interviews, and training new employees. Similarly, you’ll lose thousands due to the lower productivity of new hires, increased stress on existing staff, and productivity shift for the employees in charge of hiring.
To give you a better idea of how much you stand to lose, here’s a breakdown of the typical costs of replacing employees according to Talent Management.
- Entry Level Positions – Expect to spend 30-50% of the employee’s annual salary.
- Mid-Level Positions – You’ll be losing more than 150% of the employee’s annual salary.
- High-Level Positions – Employees of this level as well as specialized professionals can cost you more than 400% of their annual salaries.
If you combine these costs together, you’ll realize that your company is bleeding money by sticking to its paper-based onboarding process. These costs can also exist by not having an onboarding app which complements your existing software.
By providing an onboarding app, you streamline the management of employee documentation, engage with new hires before their first day, and impress them with a unique mobile experience. In addition to revolutionizing your onboarding process, the app will help your organization gain efficiency and save costs.
So, don’t lose any more money and take the necessary steps to ensure the job satisfaction of both new and existing staff members.
