How to Do An Effective and Engaging Employee Onboarding with Rolljak

🕒 7 min read

Employee onboarding is an essential process for new employees to better prepare them with their role, workplace culture, and collaboration in their organizational mission.

It is key for the onboarding process to feel engaging to the new employees to make them feel as welcomed as possible which inclines them to stay in the company for long. They will also be trained to be committed in their roles which draws them towards company growth.

Since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, employee onboarding has evolved into somewhat of a mix of both virtual and in-person process; which challenges employers into providing an engaging experience for their new hires. Rolljak is suitable in providing the best onboarding experience for all environments

So, how can employers provide a unique and engaging experience, to motivate new hires during the employee onboarding process?

In this post, we will delve and explain into why engaging employee onboardings matter and how can employers provide an effective and engaging employee onboarding with Rolljak.

Does an engaging employee onboarding matter?

Certainly! According to a survey conducted by SilkRoad Technology and CareerBuilder, an astounding 93% of employers agree that a good onboarding experience is critical to influence a new hire’s decision to stay with the organization.

Yet, 29% of the same employers did not think they did adequately enough during the onboarding process to prepare new hires for their role.

87% of new hires also stay with their company when they were provided an engaging experience during the onboarding process.

Well, it is clear that how employees first react to their first few weeks in their new company will be a huge impact on their future performances and expected outcomes. With the right tools and information on hand, without a doubt, they will start to reach expectations set by their employers.

How will a gamified onboarding help?

Gamified experiences have also shown to be incredibly beneficial to employee onboarding processes where fun elements are introduced to encourage achievement of different tasks; by including elements of rewards and incentives which encourages desired behaviors of motivation and training in new hires.

New hires will also be desired to complete the onboarding process not only because they want to, its because they are eager to by motivational satisfaction and rewards.

A study by TalentLMS on the Gamification at Work survey also found when adding gamified elements to training, employee motivation would climb up by 83%, and boredom drops to 10%.

And for new employees feel that adding game elements makes them feel socially engaged and connected in the workplace with a sense of purpose and belonging. Hence, it is clear that the key in providing an engaging employee onboarding is by introducing gamified experiences to new employees.

Features of a successful employee onboarding process:

While most employers often confuse employee onboarding with orientation, onboarding is a comprehensive process that involves management and employees and can last up to 12 months. Hence, throughout the process, a successful employee onboarding should feature:

• Acclimation into the company culture
• Understanding of the roles and responsibilities
• Strong communication with colleagues
• Training and learning opportunities
• How can Rolljak help maximize engagement in Employee Onboardings

Rolljak is the newest Engagement and Collaboration Platform in the market. Where interactive learning techniques such as online social interaction and game mechanics can help create learner engagement, especially in a new hire onboarding scenario; Rolljak does just that.

Each activity on Rolljak can be personalized to be suited for the entire employee onboarding process, creating questions for multi-choice questions, sketching, polls, and many more!

So how can we utilize these features on Rolljak for an effective employee onboarding?

How to create an onboarding session using Rolljak

1. Making introductions

It always sucks to be the new guy, and that is why new hires should feel welcomed by their existing employees. Help them set the tone by introducing them to one another to help lighten the mood.

By sharing the new employee’s background and skills, positive expectations can be forged from their new coworkers that also provides them credibility when they enter the workplace. With Rolljak, you can introduce your new employees in a heartbeat.

Here is an example:

1. Choose The Survivor activity under Rolljak’s Signatures
2. Randomize the prompt and choose the whackiest one for your session.
3. The Collaboration is already enabled in this activity so your participants collaborate by sketching on other participants’ ideas to survive together with their hidden talents!
4. Peer Evaluation feature is enabled with Scales. You can edit the metrics from the Scale Library, or simply create a new quirky but relatable scale by your own! Click Create New Scale and type in your desired name. We went with “Would they survive?” for this prompt. Don’t forget to label the left and right scales and save your progress!

Questions set must be relatable and provide colleagues a stepping stone to getting to know one another without the need to break the barrier of being too arrogant on your first day.

Rolljak has already created an easy-to-use Employee Onboarding preset for all users! Click here to try it on your next employee onboarding session.

2. Clarifying roles

When reality hits on the 30-day mark, the newcomers may realize that the expectations of their roles are conflicting with what they signed up for a month ago.

To combat this, new hires should really take the time to think about everything they are learning and ask questions, make suggestions, and show employers that they are interested. Here is how employers can get their new hires to do so with Rolljak:

After creating your desired session, create a Poll activity.

1. Test your new hires by asking them about their roles. For example, we asked a straightforward “What are your roles and responsibilities?”
2. “Question has a correct answer” toggle button is disabled as we intend to showcase a summary of their roles and responsibilities.
3. In available options, input all the different roles and responsibilities you expect in your new hire.
4. Set a comfortable response time, so new hires will be able to dictate and evaluate the “right answer”
5. When inputting different roles and responsibilities, try to pinpoint the common differing responsibilities your employees may feel is not what they signed up for. This can be a segue to a later discussion with your new hire. On top of that, employers can also put in misleading roles where their new hires would easily point out and ask questions and make suggestions.

3. Dealing with information bombardment

With this case, it is insensitive to expect employees to retain all key information about their new company, its culture and their policies and everything else on the very first day.

Well, automating the employee onboarding process with a gamified experience can help streamline the onboarding information distribution to ensure that new starters are up to date with that they need to know. Here is how you can do so on Rolljak:

1. After creating your desired session, create a Sketch it Out activity.
2. In the choice of Question, try to narrow down on the adjectives of your desired answer and make employees draw nouns that fit them. We chose “Draw an animal 🐻 that represents our company methodology the best and describe it without using adjectives”
3. Enable Collaboration and Peer Evaluation feature and choose a suitable peer evaluation tab. We recommend Invest so newcomers can also grade their own understanding of the topic.
4. Save your progress!

Use Sketch it Out to allow your employees to answer outside the box while letting them associate memorable things to their workplace.

Gamified experiences helps newcomers retain what they have learnt during the entire onboarding process; dealing with information bombardment while creating a fun environment.

We have compiled 3 effective tips to ensure engaging onboardings

1. Get all the paperwork out of the way as soon as possible

While paperwork may be crucial in ensuring that employees understand company policies and guidelines that have been set, it can be the most dull, confusing and frustrating part of the entire onboarding process.

Employee onboarding process should focus on reducing paperwork and increasing engagement rate as it can improve retention rates by 82% and productivity by 70%.

The faster you finish off paperwork, the faster you can focus on the engagement process of onboarding! Utilizing digital paperwork as well as hybrid onboarding allows you to speed up your time to hire impressively; which creates a good first impression with your new hires.

2. Match newcomers with an onboarding buddy

An onboarding buddy is someone who is tasked in educating new hires about the daily processes, introducing them to the team and answering questions that arise.

Buddies can be incredibly effective when:

• the buddy closely understand the roles and responsibilities of the new hire and can help
• Buddies and the new hire report to the same manager
• The buddy allocates time in their schedule to assist the new hire
• While large companies may use a sophisticated internal system to assign buddies based on their fit, startups can utilize an intentional conversation with employees to determine who is willing and qualified instead.

3. Conduct surveys

While the employee onboarding process may be over, surveys directly implies that the new employees matter and their views are important.

Information gathered during surveys can also provide insight for further continuous improvement of the onboarding process for future newcomers.

Bonus Tip: Show expression!

While using Rolljak, don’t forget to conduct sessions where users can not only hear their colleagues, but see them as well! Encourage your employees to be themselves; let them show genuine expression which lets new hires know that they are welcomed in the work environment!

Conclusion

Introducing gamified experiences to your onboarding process can provide effective and engaging employee onboardings.

On top of that, Rolljak provides a blank canvas for employers to customize and design effective and creative onboarding processes based on their desired content with minimal effort.

Utilizing Rolljak in your employee onboarding procedure introduces a fuss-free, efficient and meaningful experience for your new employees!