Once you have a new employee, one of the things you’ll want to do is get them up to speed as quickly as possible with how things work in your company. The “onboarding” process is a crucial first step as it orients your new employee with the company and sets the tone for the rest of their experience there.

One of the best ways to use the onboarding process to your advantage in the 21st century is take advantage of the new digital age that we live in. In previous eras of employment a large chunk of the first day of work was lost to filling out paperwork. Benefits packages, legal forms and other administrative requirements are necessary components of your accounting, management and bureaucratic framework, and they should definitely not be ignored. However, that doesn’t mean you can only get this work done on the first day.

By allowing a new employee to receive paperless, digital versions of these forms ahead of time, both you and the new employee can benefit from a much more productive first day. An employee can fill out all the necessary information on an electronic form and submit it back to your HR and other admin staff by email. Not only does this keep the employee engaged even in the days leading up to the actual day of work, but it lets your own staff get this necessary accounting and data entry done early, rather than giving all of these departments a bit of extra work on the first day.

This means when your new employee arrives, you can get right down to orienting him or her with the staff and procedures. You can even introduce more structure such as timelines and milestones that will give a much better impression of how the pace of work will go as the new staff member integrates into your frame work.

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