Let’s face it. If you’ve been in staffing long enough, your business has often been impacted by obstacles beyond your control. Varying economic conditions, policy shifts, technological innovations, and fluctuating labor markets have always thrown staffing curveballs. For agency leaders, operating in a frequently changing employment landscape is nothing new. So, what makes today’s work environment fundamentally different?
Previously, outside conditions affecting the workplace were seen as merely temporary setbacks. But gig work, mobile technology, and ongoing talent shortages have profoundly changed the nature of employment, placing employees squarely in the driver’s seat. Moreover, this situation is unlikely to revert to what it once was. And in today’s candidate-driven market, it’s hard to compete when your talent holds all the cards.
With all these challenges, one thing is certain: the world of work has changed, and staffing will have to change with it in order to thrive. Luckily, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Technology has created better user experiences in almost all facets of our lives, from shopping to banking, dining, and travel. And now there is staffing software and technology that is applying these same principles to even the most complex employment practices, building a more seamless and pleasing work experience to keep candidates engaged with your business.
As recruitment firms are looking at technology to improve the candidate and recruiter experience, onboarding remains especially top of mind. And that’s no surprise as recruiters have always considered onboarding to be arguably the single biggest barrier to a successful hiring process as less than half of found talent ever finish it, and of those that do, only 60% show up for the first day of work.
The most forward-thinking staffing leaders are turning towards onboarding technology to solve this hiring chokehold, creating a more seamless experience that can enhance their agency’s brand and increase talent loyalty. So, what should you look for in your onboarding software?
The mobile revolution is taking the world by storm – changing user expectations in almost all aspects of their day-to-day transactions. So, the same should hold true with employment. By leveraging mobile technology in your onboarding process, you can give candidates the same convenience of anytime, anywhere access that they enjoy in other parts of their lives.
A best-in-class onboarding app will allow talent to enter their personal data once into the mobile app and have all forms populated automatically, creating a streamlined consumer experience. This will allow them to move through any necessary onboarding transactions with ease, efficiency, and convenience – and with less reliance on your recruiters.
And, by allowing talent to review documents, make attestations, and e-sign all necessary documents directly from their mobile device, you’ll get a larger pool of candidates who are willing and able to complete the process – and faster, which will improve speed-to-fill, increase show-up rates, and create a better experience for your users that will keep them coming back for more!
The best onboarding solutions will provide recruiters with the ability to trigger entire workflows from a selectable menu of tasks, including background checks, Form I-9 and E -Verify, relevant tax documents, and any other forms that require employee signatures.
And with the ability to automate any repetitive communications, such as reminders, recruiters can continue to engage candidates and motivate them to complete all steps without needing to waste time babysitting the process, which will allow them to focus on more value-added work.
The right onboarding tool should also be highly configurable to allow your recruiters to easily and efficiently pre-configure workflows that can be adapted to meet your clients’ specific work requests – and then be saved for continuous re-use. And, with a simple click of a button, recruiters should be able to send only the correct, relevant forms and job information to candidates. This will make it faster and easier for recruiters to move their candidates along all necessary onboarding steps and get them to complete the process.
In addition, being able to configure workflows into distinct and separate stages can greatly assist your recruiters in placing qualified candidates faster. For example, with a general apply process, talent can fill out basic onboarding forms during the initial application phase which will allow recruiters to prequalify candidates ahead of time and hasten placement once the right opportunity comes up.
Any onboarding software you adopt should seamlessly integrate into your main ATS. This will allow for all candidate information to remain in one place. By creating one source of truth for applicant data, you can help to reduce redundancy which will speed redeployment efforts. Imagine the time and money you could save if your recruiters had a pool of qualified talent whose onboarding information is already stored in your system, making it that much faster and easier to redeploy them to open positions.
And, if recruiters are able to receive real-time updates through the main staffing platform, you can greatly reduce the amount of wasted time and effort they have to spend babysitting their candidates through the process which will greatly improve productivity.
We are proud to announce the release of Avionté 24/7 ONBOARDING, a new set of onboarding tools for the Avionté 24/7 mobile app. It permits talent to complete all onboarding tasks from their smartphone while providing real-time updates to recruiters through our AviontéBOLD staffing platform.
“Our objective with 24/7 ONBOARDING was to take one of the biggest administrative hassles in staffing and turn it into a source of competitive advantage for our customers,” says Rishabh Mehrotra, CEO of Avionté. “Our new application gives the staffing world a high quality, digital onboarding experience that’s automated, configurable and mobile enabled.”
Our new onboarding solution is both modular and configurable, allowing recruiters to automate customizable workflows from BOLD with just a few keystrokes. Recruiters can also set up workflows into distinct onboarding stages. For example, using General Apply, they can send onboarding documents to prospective candidates early in the application process to prequalify talent and get them placed faster once the right opportunity comes available. In this way, our 24/7 ONBOARDING supports both traditional staffing operations and mobile-enabled digital talent marketplaces.
While available as a standalone product, 24/7 ONBOARDING was built to work seamlessly with other Avionté 24/7 mobile modules, such as Avionté 24/7 WORK, an online staffing application that can push relevant job notifications to pre-qualified talent. In addition, 24/7 ONBOARDING will also integrate with our soon-to-be-released mobile job board, which lets staffing agencies advertise open positions on their custom brand mobile app, so talent can search and apply.
“With the addition of ONBOARDING to our 24/7 Mobile Talent platform,” states Sushma Tripathi, Chief Product Officer of Avionté, “our customers now have the ability to deploy a complete end-to-end custom-branded mobile talent app that consolidates job apply, onboarding, communication, push-notifications, job scheduling, and pay on a talent’s smartphone.”
Click here to learn more about our 24/7 ONBOARDING mobile solution.
