So what is preboarding and how do organizations benefit from preboarding. It is not just about Onboarding anymore and in my opinion, Preboarding process is an excellent way for organizations to strengthen employee engagement even before Onboarding your new hires. Imagine yourself when had a couple of offer letters in hand and still could not choose one over the other. Which was the deciding factor that helped you make that decision. Every person who is about to join a company would have the following questions and apprehensions on their mind :???:
“How are the people in the organization going to be?” “How do the managers treat their employees?” “What will the work culture be like?” “How are my goals going to align with my career path”? What are the company policies?
Here lies a huge opportunity for organisations to impress their new hires by clearing their doubts and confusions even before they could voice it out and make them feel welcomed :grin: .
In essence , preboarding is the experience you give your new hires even before they join the company which is the time between offer acceptance and the first day of work and onboarding is the process that kicks in once they start working with your organization including a robust orientation plan. 
Pre-Onboard with SuccessFactors
Preboarding automation is the key to effective onboarding and SuccessFactors Onboarding provides its customers the right technique to ensure a smooth and a satisfying journey for its new hires by following the below model which pretty much sums up the whole idea of catering to a successful onboarding experience .
- Guide your new hires through the key onboarding activities
- Connect your new hires to the right people and the appropriate information pre day 1 and go social :wink: !
- Develop new hires quickly into productive employees through innovative learning and training plans
The preboarding process begins and concludes with the key stakeholders – New hires, HR manager and Hiring Manager. It gives them an opportunity to plan for the new hire activities well in advance and also leverage the essential pre day 1 activities.
Some of my much loved SuccessFactors Onboarding Pre day 1 features –
New Hire Activities – This makes the life of all Hiring Managers so easy and simple. In just few steps, you are ready to give your new hire a warm welcome!
Write a welcome message for your new hire, setup recommended links , assign a buddy or a people manager or even create a short term goal plan so your new hires turn into productive employees in a shorter period of time.
Furnish Equipment – This is my personal favourite and a hit with customers too as this will let you make arrangements for the downstream assignments like business cards, laptop, phones etc. and also trigger a workflow to take approvals from the respective teams, if needed –
You can add any number of equipments with workflows that can be kicked off based on the business needs.
In the below diagram,
- In step 1, a request for arranging phone equipment is made where the hiring manager can enter comments that the approver will get to see upon approval.
- In step 2, upon making the request, a workflow is triggered and is now pending for approval with the respective team.
- In step 3, when an equipment is awaiting approval it shows a waiting sign.
- In step 4, on clicking the equipment you will get to see the approvers along with the details.
- In step 5, once approved the equipment indicates that the approval is now complete.
In 5 simple steps, the hiring manager is now able to request for an equipment for the new starter.
Onboarding Tour in Pre day 1 Access – Pre day 1 access means granting platform access to new hires even before they become employees. The homepage for your new hire has an appealing carousel on top which lets your new hire take a quick tour. Access to other confidential data like performance, goal, compensation, organisational chart, personal information can be restricted via RBP. This is where your new hire gets to see all the welcome messages and communication sent by your manager.
One can explore more about the organization by accessing the About Us Tab which takes you to the Employee Portal.
Configuration of this portal is customer’s responsibility and should be taken seriously as this is where companies can pay attention to improvise their branding and make it look attractive for the visitors of this site. It can include attachments, policies, texts, videos etc. and make it look appealing !
Notifications – Successfactors Onboarding allows you to create notifications, the content of which can be drafted using rich text formatting options and you can even include table type view and other features – Be Creative and explore to send the most awesome welcome letter to your new hires! You can include dynamic data in the form of tokens and all data collected in the panels during the process are potential tokens. One cool thing to note here is the ability to add conditions on the notifications that control if a notification is applicable or not. There are also various triggers available by standard that determine when the notifications should fire off.
Integration – To facilitate seamless flow of data, the Onboarding module is integrated with various modules of SuccessFactors like recruitment management and Employee Central. It also supports integration with Learning Management system, JAM and Goal Management. Below image will give you a snapshot of the modules integrated with Onboarding. Additionally, Onboarding module is capable of integrating with SAP HCM or any other HRIS / ATS through APIs and standard exports.
Compliance Forms – Successfactors is making every effort to include standard compliance forms from all across the globe to support commonly used forms. Current countries included are – US, Canada, India, Australia etc. Guide your new hires to fill out these cumbersome forms online and get them signed electronically so that you can time and energy.
Intelligent Services – Everyone is talking about intelligent services and sure it is intelligent enough to release the pain points of most HR processes. In onboarding, successfactors makes sure that the system is intelligent enough to make automatic updates in data in onboarding based on changes to data in Recruiting or Employee Central like start date change in Recruiting or Hiring manager change / buddy change etc. The system restarts and makes reassignments in the steps of the Onboarding process based on these changes.
Benefits from Preboarding
- Connecting and collaborating lets your new hire meet and know the team so they can be aware of the company culture and their own responsibilities in the team. Always remember being social pays! Always!
- Raising the anticipation – With these exciting features, will get your new hires to definitely look forward to their first day at work.
- Reduce apprehension – Your new hire feels more connected and engaged and has the access to right content and information leaving no room for doubts.
- Reduce no-shows – Having face to face meetings with new hires and even their families, frequent contact and communication from recruiter and hiring manager and maximizing contact through team mates can all be very helpful in reducing the number of no shows drastically.
- Faster employee effectiveness – With short term goal plans and effective training and learning management programs can ensure your new hires hit the ground and become more productive in a shorter period of time.
- Increase retention - Research has shown that preboarding activities can increase first-year retention by as much as 80 percent. Involving current employees in onboarding also increases their engagement and their “ownership” of new hires.
Welcome on-board :smile: !!!
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