Onboarding is where new hires acquire shared knowledge, skills, and organizational behaviors they need to be successful in their jobs. A good onboarding experience is difficult to achieve but is vital to increasing productivity, decreasing churn, and saving the company time and money. Raffle Workplace Search offers a seamless search experience of the company's knowledge database, which is key for a good onboarding experience and moving your employees into the future.

At one point or another, everyone goes through onboarding. It can be exciting, but more often than not, it is information overload and goes in one ear and out the other. It is hard to recall everything and know where to access information, even for the most experienced employee. 

Moreover, onboarding is not as successful as many managers want, but who has the time to reinvent the wheel?

Onboarding is stuck in the past

Onboarding was first introduced in the 1970s but wasn’t adopted until the late 1990s. Onboarding was created in response to the growing size of companies and the competitive landscape to get employees quickly up to speed. Furthermore, the Entrepreneur in 2022 shows the changing perspective on work-life balance and how we work due to covid-19 and the Great Resignation has greatly changed—highlighting the importance of onboarding once again. Onboarding must be quicker and more effective to stay ahead of the curve.

According to Talya N. Bauer and Berrin Erdogan in 2022, onboarding or organizational socialization is the process by which new hires acquire shared knowledge, skills, and organizational behaviors they need to be successful in their jobs. Behaviors are traits that have limited flexibility based on unique characteristics. On the other hand, skills and shared knowledge are constantly evolving and growing within an organization.

Sue Newell in 2015, outlines the importance of knowledge sharing for organizations as a way to share data, learn from coworkers, and advance innovation. Years later, Togetherplatform in 2021, shares the impact knowledge sharing has on onboarding as a way to learn the business structure, strategies, and work style. Sharing company knowledge is vital as it ensures everyone is on the same page and that innovation can occur. 

Furthermore, knowledge is divided into two categories, tacit and explicit. Tacit knowledge will be gained over time as employees interact, yet explicit knowledge is learned more frequently and quickly from data. 

Explicit knowledge is found in documents, file types, or procedures shared over various communication channels or databases. Yet, if the company database is not easily searched, this explicit knowledge, which is the easiest to acquire, becomes impossible to teach or learn. This dramatically hinders new hires' onboarding and existing employees as they are slowed, having to bother coworkers with a plethora of questions, make mistakes that would be preventable, remake existing documents, and spend countless hours searching for correct answers. 

Onboarding established employees to the network, knowledge of the company, and distinguishing their operational roles, among other vital tasks. Within the initial few weeks, their level of productivity, loyalty to the company, and behaviors will be solidified. Harvard Business Review (HBR) in 2022 emphasizes that a good onboarding experience is necessary to increase their overall employee experience. 

Onboarding is their first experience and will affect their perception of the work culture, affecting the company's reputation. A great experience decreases churn, saving the company time and money as talent is retained. But what contributes to a good experience? 

Crafting a Good Onboarding Experience is not Rocket Science

Though there are countless ways to improve the employee and onboarding experience, one of the best is improving access to shared knowledge. Forbes in 2022 outlines the importance for new hires to have access to the company databases establishing shared knowledge and allowing them to get off the ground running. Similarly, Harvard Business Review in 2021 states that even your current tenure employees feel like new hires when there are changes within the company. Employees, regardless of the start date, value shared knowledge and a database that is searchable to be able to find that data.

Many organizations try to mitigate this problem through enterprise search, yet these traditional searches are 2.5 times slower than Raffle Workplace Search. Moreover, with Raffle, onboarding time is cut in half, and new hires find answers 96% faster. CareerPlug in 2020 lists that better knowledge management helps new employees integrate into the company fasters and become stronger and more knowledgeable employees that are more productive, produce quality work, and make more income for the company. 

Harvard Business Review in 2015 views onboarding as a slow process that may only take a week to a month but informally occurs for many months. Typically, 60% of new hires fully integrate into their roles after six months. After this period, employees are expected to have shared knowledge and answer questions themselves, yet if access to companies' knowledge is poor, so is the employee's performance. New hires are an expense and that cost increase with each unsuccessful hire. 

In addition to cost, time is another depleted opportunity as it takes time to train, educate, and assist new hires until they become independent. With onboarding, it's not about decreasing the time spent educating new hires but maximizing that time to its full potential. Time is a valuable asset that is easily wasted. Utilizing various onboarding and knowledge management tools, such as Raffle Workplace Search, helps to optimize onboarding time, ensuring all benefits are reaped. 

A real-life example exists with Codan, the largest insurance company in Denmark. Their onboarding process was lengthy due to the nature of insurance being a complex practice that needs accuracy at every step. Due to their long process, new hires were costly in time and money. Thus, when Raffle Workplace Search was able to cut onboarding time in half, increase the knowledge of all workers, decrease search time by 96% and improve their service to the customer- Codan was sold on Raffle. With Raffle, Codan saves tens of thousands of dollars every month, allowing them to reallocate money and time. 

Moreover, onboarding is an untapped area for employee insight, as mentioned by McKinsey & Company in 2021. New hires offer a fresh eye on business operations, products, and services. Fresh eyes are valuable as they display areas lacking details that seasoned employees may not catch. If these insights on the company are gathered and analyzed, then the company's strategic abilities and processes are optimized. This is precisely what Raffle Insights aims to do. 

Raffle Insights provides detailed reports on Knowledge Gaps or missing content that employees and new hires have been searching for, creating opportunities for the company to grow. Raffle Insights Trending Questions shows what users are asking the most, enabling you to refine content, data, and knowledge sharing. Onboarding is a valuable asset that offers endless insight if that data is gathered, analyzed, and abilities appropriately. 

Onboarding for new hires makes or breaks careers and companies. A good onboarding experience, or organizational socialization, depends on the company's ability to seamlessly share explicit knowledge with new employees. Else, valuable time is wasted, and profits go unseized. Moreover, their onboarding offers opportunities for insight and optimization. Don't let something so simple slip - let Raffle catch you. 

Raffle Workplace Search allows employees to quickly and accurately search for validated information regardless of spelling, punctuation, grammar, or language fluency. Additionally, the search requires no code or maintenance yet is entirely customizable, allowing you to pick font, text, icons, content appearance, and location on your existing website. Raffle Insights offers an extra leg up on the competition as you gather trending questions, knowledge gaps, resolution, time and money saved, and much more. Raffle Workplace Search is vital for onboarding and moving forward for your employees to do their jobs efficiently. 

Don't waste valuable time with lackluster onboarding- join the Rafflelution!