Employee Onboarding Blog

5 ways streamlined employee communication improves your onboarding

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

A new job is always exciting, both for employee and employer. Everyone involved is probably bristling with enthusiasm about the new working relationship. Yet within six months, one in three new employees is already looking for a new job. This is mainly due to a bad first experience with the new employer. To avoid that from happening at your organization, here are 5 ways in which an employee communication platform like Netpresenter can improve your onboarding.

Give new employees a warm welcome

An employee communication platform is very useful if you want to give your new colleague a warm welcome on their first day. By welcoming the new employee on digital signage screens throughout the building, the latest addition to the team will feel appreciated right from the start. Just imagine them seeing a big picture of themselves accompanied by a friendly welcome message on big screens everywhere in the office!

improve onboarding

Our client Richemont does precisely that. “When we have new hires we put a welcome message on the TV screens,” Laura Laustriat, Brand Ambassador and eCommerce at Richemont, explains. These messages also serve as a quick and easy introduction to newcomers. “Before posting the welcome messages, I conduct a small interview with the starters so they can tell me a bit more about themselves and their backgrounds. These little bios are then displayed on all screens in our office. This allows everyone to get to know newcomers a bit better, without them having to repeat the same thing over and over again,” says Laustriat.

Even if some employees are working at home or at other locations, you can organize a warm welcome this way. Netpresenter enables you to reach dispersed workforces using Teams, the employee app, and numerous other tools. No one will ever have to wonder who ‘the new one’ is.

Schedule all your posts and updates in advance 

A solid onboarding program can take days or even weeks. It usually starts with providing the physical and technological means they need to get started, such as a desk, chair, laptop, phone, etc. When that’s taken care of, your onboarding is far from finished. You’re just getting started. The new employee will have to get acquainted with colleagues, receive access to specific systems and programs, and get the right training. In short, there’s plenty to do for the new employee, but also for the HR department that must manage the onboarding program step by step. 

The Netpresenter scheduling feature will help you do that in a convenient way. It enables you to prepare messages in advance for the entire process. You can target these messages specifically to just your new colleague, so you won’t be bothering anyone else. Prepare a personal welcome message for the first day, send information ahead of an internal training course a few days later, and invite them for a short meet-and-greet with the CEO after a week. 

Netpresenter Scheduling

The HR department can set up all those messages even before the new colleague starts their first day at work. As soon as the new hire starts, the HR department will have nothing to worry about as the messages are sent out automatically at the right time. If you have multiple employees starting around the same time, you’ll save yourself even more time. You can set different recipients for every message, so you’ll decide whether your message is meant for just one employee or for every new hire.

Keep new employees informed right from the start

You’ll want to make sure your new colleague feels at home. That’s why it is crucial that they are never left out of any activities. There’s always a chance people forget to inform their new colleague about any internal developments or to invite them for a meeting or a drink after work. Thanks to our Office 365 integration, you don’t have to worry about your new colleague missing out on important company news and other employee communications.

Netpresenter can synchronizes with the user groups in Office 365. As long as the IT department manages the account properly, the new employee will automatically get to see all the company news that is relevant to them. You don’t even need to create an account in Netpresenter: Employees can use their Windows login for the Netpresenter desktop and mobile apps thanks to Single Sign-On.

Gather feedback continuously

Onboarding is more than just providing someone with all the tools and knowledge to get started. It’s also essential to make sure that the new colleague feels comfortable. Pulse Surveys will help to keep continuous track of your new hire’s wellbeing and happiness. Do they feel welcome? Do they have everything they need to do their job? 

Netpresenter Pulse Survey

Netpresenter allows you to automatically repeat Pulse Surveys at regular intervals, targeted at only specific individuals, so you can ask the employees who recently joined your organization about how they feel and what they think of your organization. The answers will help you identify problems early, enabling managers or supervisors to solve them right away. Pulse surveys are an excellent tool to make sure employees won’t leave your organization within six months.

Encourage social interaction

Pulse Surveys are great to track your employee’s wellbeing, but you can further improve the relationship between the new hire and the organization by encouraging social interaction. That’s why it is essential to allow new hires to do so with both their direct colleagues and those outside their team.

Our applications for smartphones and PCs allow employees to respond directly to corporate messages. We can even integrate with Teams and automatically publish content from specific Teams channels on your digital signage screens. It’ll give new employees a better picture of what’s going on with everyone and what everyone is working on, even if those colleagues are working in a completely different department or at home.

Netpresenter social interaction

Do you think your onboarding could use some technological support from Netpresenter? Schedule a demo or a meeting; we are happy to show you the possibilities! Or download the free infographic about embracing the remote workstyle and flexibility in your organization.

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Linda van Oppen

Linda is Netpresenter's Head of Operations. Her mission is to bring out the best in every organization by making new employees feel at home and trained. According to Linda, you are doing well when employee satisfaction and performance have increased.