According to the company stepstone, the onboarding process for new employees can be divided into three phases.
1. the period after signing the contract
2. on the first day in the new job
3. onboarding at the workplace
Chatbots can basically be used in each of the three phases and bring added value. For employers, it is first important to define what goals they want to achieve in each phase, how employees feel during this time and how high the degree of automation is in each phase.
Chatbots can then be designed and implemented for the onboarding of new employees.
Here are some examples of how chatbots can be used in the respective phases
1. the period after signing the contract
The first step of onboarding, known as preboarding, begins when the contract is signed. The first important information, such as the schedule for the first working day, contact information for potential contacts for initial queries or the agenda for the induction training, is sent to the new employee. During this phase, it is extremely important that the new colleague feels well looked after and does not have any unnecessary unanswered questions. A chatbot or digital assistant can already help the new employee here.
Instead of long emails with lots of PDF attachments, the new employee gets a chatbot with a caring personality at their side. The chatbot informs the employee about all the important information for the first day at work. I might even recommend building this chatbot according to the principle of storytelling. The chatbot is the new team member’s virtual colleague, so to speak, and accompanies them in the time leading up to their first day at work. The chatbot can even include an initial welcome video or photos of the new team.
Depending on the scope of the bot, it can even answer further open questions from the employee. The better the colleague is prepared for this step, the easier it will be to train them in the workplace later on.
If the employee still needs to submit contracts or other documents, they can even send them directly to the chatbot and the chatbot forwards them.
2. on the first day in the new job
The time has finally come and the first working day is upon us. New employees still remember the start of their new job years later. This makes it all the more important that this day goes almost perfectly. The chatbot cannot take over the human greeting at reception or a joint lunch with the team. But he can be available to the new colleague as a digital assistant for an introduction to the most important topics.
They should also be able to answer the most common questions that employees have on their first day. As a rule, up to 80% can be answered automatically. The rest of the team can save this time and invest it in a team drink together, for example. In addition, some questions that an employee has on the first day may be a little tricky. People are reluctant to ask directly how they can apply for a vacation. With a chatbot, these and other open questions can be asked anonymously.
In addition to answering general questions, it is also important that the employee is familiarized with the general internal processes relating to HR and IT. Here, either the team can take over the most important tasks or a friendly chatbot can introduce the new colleague to the most important processes.
A technically comprehensive chatbot is usually connected to other internal systems and can relieve employees of initial tasks such as applying for important accesses. Depending on how much and what data the bot has stored, it even knows the company’s authorization rules and knows which accesses need to be requested at this point in time.
3. onboarding at the workplace
The most time-intensive part of the onboarding process usually begins on the first day of work and lasts until at least the end of the probationary period. Even after a few weeks, a new employee still has many questions and many situations have not yet become routine. Systematic professional and social integration is the basis for ensuring that a new colleague continues to feel comfortable and can provide immediate productive support to the company. Social integration is difficult for the chatbot to handle.
The bot, on the other hand, can handle the technical integration very well. It has been proven that people learn more efficiently with a chatbot than through a video tutorial, for example. Chat-based learning, in which students are offered knowledge in dialog form and in small “bites”, is remembered longer than many other learning methods. So why not integrate the most important technical information into a chatbot and provide the new colleague with a chat-based learning assistant? You can find out more about knowledge transfer via chatbot in this article.
Of course, the chatbot should continue to be available to answer the new colleague’s open questions. Many processes only stick in the memory after they have been carried out several times. This makes it all the more important for the chatbot to provide support and answer the most frequently asked questions from the new colleague.
Many companies have wikis or intranets that should actually contain all the important information, but employees usually can’t find anything in them. AI-based chatbots with good text recognition can read out the content of intranets and always provide users with the exact answer they couldn’t find quickly enough on the intranet.
Starts with a use case
For most employers, it makes no sense to supplement all phases with a chatbot right from the start. It is best to look for the use case that brings the greatest added value the quickest and develop the concept here. This is followed by implementation. You then take this use case to learn, improve it and can gradually develop it further.
To create a concept, I recommend my chatbot canvas, which you can download here.
Don’t underestimate personality
Likeability is a very important success factor, especially when it comes to onboarding. This makes it all the more important that the chatbot has the right personality. The persona of your chatbot represents your company and should be perceived as pleasant and inviting by the new colleague. Tools such as “Let your Bot talk” are suitable for this, which can be downloaded here.[vc_empty_space height=”120px”][vc_separator color=”custom” border_width=”3″ el_width=”70″ accent_color=”#c94424″]
By the way, there are also podcast episodes to go with this article
#10 – Chatbots for knowledge transfer with Pascal Rosenberger
#15 – Chatbots from a scientific perspective with a focus on HR topics
