Employee Onboarding Software

What is Employee Onboarding Software?

Employee onboarding software helps HR managers manage the onboarding process to get employees the right resources and information to become productive quickly. In its simplest form, employee onboarding software is a tracker of all the steps and processes that new employees need to take, or a business needs to take for the employee, to be successfully onboarded.

Modernizing Employee Onboarding

Modern onboarding solutions have become much more advanced, offering deeper integrations with the rest of the employee lifecycle and drastically improving the onboarding experience itself. For instance, onboarding software’s workflow functionality has become more automated, ensuring that all necessary onboarding steps are completed. There are some core capabilities that onboarding software should possess:

• Enable businesses to coordinate with new employees before their first day, to improve their time-to-productivity

• Ensure employees are provisioned the necessary resources, such as software licenses, computers, office materials, or other hardware

• Ensure that HR has all the necessary personnel information, such as addresses, direct deposit information, and even benefits administration setup in some cases

• Provide employees early access to preliminary trainings or orientation materials

Onboarding software, like most HR software, has also been shifting to improve employees’ experience in the platform. These improvements have led to features like welcome portals and new employee engagement processes like making 1x1 introductions with colleagues throughout the company.

Employee Onboarding and HR Software

There’s a lot of overlap between different categories of HR software. HR processes are really more of a lifecycle, from recruitment to onboarding to management to development to offboarding. Some platforms claim to serve all steps of this cycle, while others are more focused on specific processes, such as onboarding.

Employee onboarding capabilities are most likely to be heavily integrated with the software that serves the processes adjacent to onboarding. Specifically, onboarding point solutions should integrate with the applicant tracking system and core HR management system that the business uses. These onboarding-adjacent products may even offer onboarding capabilities, which could eliminate the need for a separate system for each step of the HR process in some cases.

Employee Onboarding Software Comparison

When comparing employee onboarding software, consider these factors:

1. Standalone Platform vs. HR Suite: Some vendors specialize in supporting onboarding specifically, while others including onboarding features in addition to supporting other HR functions. HR suites will likely offer better data integrations and workflows between HR processes, such as from recruiting to onboarding. In contrast, point onboarding solutions will often offer more robust and niche onboarding features, such as provisioning templates and customizability.

2. Automated Workflows: A big challenge of onboarding is making sure all of the onboarding details are covered. Automated workflows are a strong answer to this frequent issue, but not all onboarding products utilize them to the same degree, or with the same effectiveness.

3. Scalability: Some onboarding software is more focused on serving the SMB market, but rapidly-growing businesses and enterprises have unique needs that not all products can serve. These buyer should consider how much templatization is possible in an onboarding platform, and how customizable it is, particularly in areas like role templates, provisioning profiles, etc.

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Pricing Information

Employee onboarding software pricing will vary primarily based on whether it is a standalone product or part of a suite. Standalone onboarding software will most commonly be priced per month, either per employee or per onboardee. Pricing for point solutions can range from $7/employee up to $35/employee.