The Three Key Benefits of a Formal Onboarding Program

By Richard Benyon    November 30, 2017    

PARTNER CONTENT

 

It's an unfortunate fact that marketing and advertising have a much higher turnover rate than most other industries. It's also true that every company is unique in its culture, processes, and overall mission — and needs to protect its investment in developing its employees.

A revolving door in our industry poses a huge issue for advertisers who see new faces working on their business, both internally and through their agencies. In such a fast-paced environment, the hours of training new staff members severely affect the flow of business as usual. Unfortunately, onboarding stakeholders is often an ad hoc process and presents risks around sub-optimal performance and non-compliance. However, with a formal program, the onboarding process does not need to be so daunting.

Training and onboarding are essential and unavoidable elements of business. Seeing as they are a necessity, we must not ask how we can bypass them but, instead, how can we improve them. What are the primary benefits of a formal onboarding program? Who can benefit from it?

Everyone experiences some level of training at some point in their career. When entering a new role or company, we must become familiar with the ways of working in our new environment. A formal onboarding program using an e-learning platform can extend across the business and affect all primary stakeholders, ensuring the training goes full circle. Those primary stakeholders include:

• Internal client staff. With so much to learn upon entering a new role, a formal onboarding program ensures that new team members are educated on internal processes, role responsibilities, guidelines, and overall agency ways of working. A formal program can centralize information on software and communication tools, workflows for new projects, approval processes, and purchase order (PO) guidelines.
• New agencies. Agency onboarding is notorious for being a rush of new information in a short period of time as clients want to begin benefiting from their agency investment as soon as possible. Often the content is focused on top-of-mind information surrounding immediate work. By formalizing the onboarding process, clients can ensure that new agencies are trained and properly briefed on complete client and brand details, including brand guidelines, invoicing practices, scope management and PO processes, lines of approval, and compliance guidelines.
• New resources within an existing agency. With high turnover rates within agencies, the need to efficiently and quickly get new resources acclimated to the client's business is critical. A formal program can create checks and balances within the training to ensure proper education is given prior to gaining full access to critical business tools. Tracking the training status can help determine on what information new resources are up to speed.

Clearly, a formal onboarding program can extend across the business. Implementing such a program has three key benefits.

 

1. Process Efficiency

Most people can relate to the frustration experienced when assembling a new purchase only to find the instruction manual is unclear, bogged down with details, or just too difficult to navigate. The finished product usually suffers. The same can be said for the onboarding process. According to Malcolm Shepherd Knowles, an American educator much respected for his leadership and study of adult learning, adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance and impact to their job or personal life. It is through this theory that we understand the importance of providing direct and consistent information to all stakeholders.

A modular learning method allows for quick and comprehensive knowledge transfer to the user in a direct and organized manner. Not only does this method provide a concise learning experience, it ensures the content is consistent, guaranteeing all stakeholders are receiving the same information in the same way.

Modular learning, like an instruction manual, enables us to go back and see how to address a particular issue if something breaks down or needs attention at a later time. Similarly, since users of the formal onboarding program can simply select the module that is relevant at the time, the initial training purpose also functions as a quick reference guide that can be accessed when needed.

 

2. Optimizing Investment

By reducing the numerous hours of training and onboarding, stakeholders are able to get up to speed on the business more quickly, which makes them more productive sooner than traditional training.

Companies invest in people for their areas of expertise and how they can contribute to the business. Knowles also theorized on problem-centered education, which, applied to training, means stakeholders already know how to do their jobs, but need to learn how to do it for a specific client or company. If those staff members are wading through documents, files, and workflows as part of the learning process, the investment made on talent is wasted. Through e-learning, companies can optimize resources as stakeholders can immediately begin contributing to the business in their area of expertise.

 

3. Risk Mitigation

Each industry has its own challenges regarding compliance and regulations. In the pharmaceutical industry, regulatory compliance within federal guidelines is a critical requirement of marketing. Failure to be familiar with these guidelines can pose a huge risk.

Processes and procedures change on a regular basis and updating traditional training materials to reflect these changes can be time consuming and not always completed in a timely manner. However, with an e-learning program, clients can easily update and maintain current content, ensuring all stakeholders are operating on the most relevant information, reducing what could be a potentially costly risk.

In addition, with the benefit of 24/7 online training, stakeholders can access what they need, when they need it — no matter what the time zone. Since it is up to users to engage in the training courses at their own convenience, they are more likely to be receptive to the information they are learning.

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In a fast-paced, ever-changing business landscape, people will travel in and out of a company. The flow of people can create a muddled and confusing transfer of critical information and core intellectual property. If not handled properly, a business can experience costly risks. Thankfully, through a formal onboarding program, primary stakeholders across the business can effectively and efficiently preserve what is most valuable to any business: knowledge.

 

Richard Benyon is the CEO of Decideware. You can email him at rbenyon@decideware.com.

 

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