Our seminar, The race for talents intensifies! Efficient onboarding as a competitive factor, gathered a fair amount of interested participants into Hotel Presidentti on March 4. The seminar’s theme dealt with the significance and role of orientation in various organizations, as well as the possibilities offered by e-learning when integrated into efficient onboarding processes.
A part of the seminar consisted of a roundtable discussion on the subject of ”The challenges of onboarding. Can e-learning help?” The people invited as panelists included Development Manager Tarja Jaakkola from Elisa, HR Manager Marita Paajaste from Barona, HR Consultant Outi Heikkilä from Itella Group, as well as Prewise’s Instructional Design Manager, Eevi Kuokkanen.
The panelists represented companies with different practices and experiences in the field of e-learning, and its use as a part of orientation processes. In the following, we aim to offer a brief summary of the contribution of this interesting discussion to all those readers who were unable to attend the seminar.
From job orientation to the deployment of corporate culture and values
In practice, onboarding usually begins with direct orientation into an individual’s tasks and duties. Priority is given to the elements of working, the actual tasks, and the tools with which to work. Orienting people to the corporate culture at this stage might feel secondary, but in long-term considerations it was considered just as important. While this applies particularly to people whose tasks are performance-related, the significance of corporate culture is even more pronounced during the early stages of orientation in jobs requiring expert skills.
If the staff works in a client’s premises as so-called temporary or hired workforce, the meaning of corporate culture will become increasingly important in the long run. Indeed, it might be the precise factor that makes a person an employee of the particular company they represent, and of which they are proud. Values and corporate culture can be seen in day-to-day work.
The learning process lasts a lifetime
The duration of an orientation phase varies considerably depending on both the company and job in question. The time spent on the orientation of a seasonal worker is very short, perhaps only hours, whereas orienting an employee to handle a supervising job is a long-term process. When companies are going through stages of rapid growth, the time spent on orientation again remains quite short.
As a whole, however, onboarding constitutes a longer period of time during which an individual learns new things constantly. From time to time, people should be caught up with and situations reviewed with them. At its best, onboarding can be an enlightening experience not only to the one undergoing orientation, but to the party supervising the orientation. In such cases, both parties learn from each other.
The fact that workers have to undergo some sort of orientation into matters new to them more or less continuously seems to be a present-day phenomenon. Online training proves to be enormously helpful in such situations, providing, as it does, information whenever people need it in their work. Companies should therefore employ many different forms and methods of orientation, into which online training should be integrated. If something needs to be deployed among the entire personnel simultaneously, e-learning is by far the best way to do this.
Speed, consistency, multidimensionality
All the panelists seemed to agree on e-learning having definite advantages with regard to orientation. An online environment is seen as a very flexible medium that enables the distribution of information in a consistent form and quality. Furthermore, it can be distributed rapidly to a large number of people if so required. On the other hand, there were also experiences of much smaller target groups benefiting greatly from e-learning. Need and use determine the benefits.
Online training is considered a very applicable way of supplemental learning. The amount of information distributed to everyone is at times insufficient to some, who need to have more in-depth knowledge of an issue. Online training enables the distribution of additional information and training contents with multiple levels for those in need of them.
Of course, all this is not to say that online training would be suitable for every purpose. Using e-learning as a substitute for training related to, e.g. instructions on practical work was not seen as particularly helpful.
Internal expertise cannot be outsourced
Even though e-learning implementations are done internally and by internal staff in some of the companies represented, such services are also purchased from external sources. The practice seemed to be beneficial and both solutions to have their advantages.
An external partner’s contribution to e-learning projects is an outsider’s point of view, which is an asset. Any company’s own staff can sometimes be so involved in the matter at hand that it is reluctant to discard any of the content. Limiting the training content in e-learning implementations was seen as the most difficult issue in the design process – everything cannot be reviewed. Rather, the focus must be on what’s relevant. An external party can often bring fresh insight into such situations.
Regardless of the stage a company’s at when it comes to e-learning (in addition to one’s own job, one’s own e-learning team, a service purchased from an external provider), all the participants shared the opinion that one’s own expert(s) cannot be outsourced in any of the cases mentioned. Partners can be, for instance, experts of deployment, but, e.g. the substance competence of the policy being deployed must always come from within the company.
Tutors need to be motivated too
If orientation is viewed as an additional duty or the situation is of the kind in which ”there’s not really time to orientate anybody”, it is usually neglected. Motivating and supporting those in charge of orientation is important and something organizations should be paying attention to.
Joint meetings and discussions are fine motivational methods, as is coaching for tutors or mentors. Again, e-learning provides tools and new possibilities to realize this. Web-based discussion forums provide tutors with a common channel through which to exchange experiences and support one another. Implementing coaching for tutors in the format of e-learning has also yielded good results.
E-learning is a big opportunity with which to even out the burden of orientation.
Before the first day at work
New employees about to embark on new careers are usually extremely interested about their future employers and jobs. This phase of the orientation process has recently started to gain an increasing amount of attention. The most active people do ask for a chance to orientate and familiarize themselves with their new employer beforehand and are supplied with information and help in this regard. Public websites provide general information, but e-learning packages might be useful in such situations, too.
Influencing the image a new employee has of a company as early as during this phase is important – depending on the image a company wishes to project, it has an impact on an employer’s commitment starting from day zero. If the desire to learn more can be fulfilled with a 10-minute e-learning course – also contributing to a feeling of “great, I’m being taken into account already” – it is hard to imagine a more auspicious beginning for mutual cooperation.
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Text: Jaana Raaska