Onboarding employees into your organization involves training them on company technology or enabling them to use technology more effectively. That’s why technical enablement is an essential part of employee onboarding.
Employees need and expect a thorough onboarding process. Without it, they won’t have much confidence in your organization. A couple of days of paperwork, a brief tour of the office, and maybe a team lunch don’t cut it anymore.
While these traditional onboarding rituals certainly have their place, they’re not enough. They leave new employees feeling underprepared and overwhelmed when navigating the company’s technical landscape.
That’s why integrating technical enablement into onboarding is a must. Imagine a scenario where your employees hit the ground running from day one, armed with the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in their new roles. That means knowing which systems to use and how to use them correctly.
If you need a refresher on technical enablement, check out our post about that. It’s similar to sales enablement but focused on technology. That means technical enablement isn’t just ensuring your new employees get their equipment and logins. They need training on using all the essential company technology for their role.
It goes beyond simply plopping a laptop on their desk or shipping it to their house. Do they even know how to set it all up?
That’s all part of technical enablement for onboarding. While that’s all essential, this post will focus on the training aspect of technical enablement and onboarding employees.
By incorporating technical enablement into the onboarding process, companies can transform their training programs into comprehensive experiences that help new hires understand the company culture and equip them with the tools they need to succeed, technology and all.
This post explores the importance of integrating technical enablement into onboarding and how it can significantly boost the success of employee onboarding.
Providing comprehensive hands-on training on company-specific software is a great strategy for significantly improving how your employees absorb and apply their training.
There’s only one way to unlock new employees’ potential and ensure they want to stay at their jobs long-term.
Doing these things right isn’t easy, though. There are challenges to overcome and ways technology must fit into the onboarding process.
The Challenges of Traditional Onboarding Methods
Onboarding isn’t always seamless. Sometimes, the focus of onboarding is on one area, whereas other parts of it are forgotten. That could be when you start a new job and must fill out paperwork and watch compliance courses, and maybe your computer is ready, or maybe it’s not.
All those things are great, and we hope the computer is ready, but things don’t always work out that way. Working towards the ideal onboarding process is necessary. That means the computer needs to be prepared, but more importantly, training for technology needs to be accounted for.
I don’t know about you, but some of the most challenging aspects of onboarding at a new company involve understanding the software ecosystem. That means knowing what’s available, what to use for what task, and how to use each application.
The technical part of employee onboarding often falls short of adequately preparing new employees for the technical aspects of their roles. While paperwork and office tours are important, they do little to equip employees with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the company’s technology landscape.
The biggest challenge of traditional onboarding is the lack of a cohesive training program for company technology.
What do new employees need to know to do their jobs and ease into work at your company?
If you don’t have a clear answer to that question, then technical enablement in onboarding is lacking at your company.
Employees will likely feel frustrated and overwhelmed, hindering them from fully embracing their roles and contributing to the organization. A rough start at a company and any negative feelings nearly guarantee they’ll be looking for a new job within their first year.
Understanding the Concept of Technical Enablement
Since we wrote a thorough post about what technical enablement is and how it can help your organization, I’ll provide a brief overview here.
This is our exact definition of technical enablement, which pulls directly from Garter’s definition of sales enablement:
The foundation of a technical enablement strategy is providing employees with the technology they need to do their jobs successfully.
Providing employees with the technology they need to do their jobs successfully is only part of the equation; they also need training. Yes, training plays a crucial role in technical enablement. It’s only part of providing the hardware and software; knowing how to use it is the rest.
You might say that technical enablement refers to providing employees with the tools, resources, and training they need to use company technologies effectively. That could be off-the-shelf software, but more likely, it’s custom software that people need training on. However, providing a mix is still needed for professional development but not necessarily onboarding.
By integrating technical enablement into onboarding, organizations ensure new hires have the knowledge and skills to hit the ground running from day one. It also makes them like their job better.
But what sort of impacts might technical enablement have on onboarding?
The Impact of Technical Enablement on Onboarding Success
While we don’t have any hard numbers of the exact impact of technical enablement on onboarding, we can tell you a successful onboarding process contributes to employees staying at your company longer.
Integrating technical enablement into onboarding is essential because technology is essential at most companies today. There are severe repercussions if you don’t have an onboarding program or one lacking essential pieces like technology.
Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%. Companies with weak onboarding programs lose the confidence of their candidates and are more likely to lose these individuals in the first year.
Brandon Hall Group
Integrating technical enablement into onboarding can significantly improve the success of the overall onboarding process. When new employees are adequately trained to use company technology, they feel more confident and empowered. This leads to increased productivity, faster ramp-up times, and better job satisfaction.
However, good technical enablement training isn’t about PowerPoints, the applications you use, or the steps to accomplish tasks. There are ways to incorporate hands-on training and provide the right resources for employees.
Incorporating Hands-On Training in the Onboarding Process
It’s essential to give employees the right training for company technology. But just as important is not to overwhelm them with too much information. Too much information is as good as no information at all.
But hands-on training, in the right amount, is ideal. There’s no better way to learn company technology than by doing it, but it must be done in a safe environment. That’s why we think technical enablement for onboarding should always provide some software simulations where it makes sense.
Quality software simulations provide near real practice in a safe environment where employees can fail without repercussion. That means new hires can actively engage with company technology at their own pace.
Look at our example software simulation course that has you start a Microsoft Teams meeting. It’s a good example of how employees can get real practice and experience the process in a realistic scenario that they could likely encounter.
Technical training is essential for onboarding, but ensuring employees know where to get additional resources to continue their journey is important. This is every bit as much a part of onboarding as training itself.
Providing Resources for Continuous Learning
Technical enablement shouldn’t stop after the initial onboarding period. To truly empower employees in their roles, organizations should provide ongoing resources for continuous learning and ensure employees are aware of them during onboarding.
Onboarding is where a culture of continuous learning begins. Technical enablement is essential to ensure employees continuously learn company technology and how to help themselves.
During the onboarding process, it’s essential to introduce employees to where they can get more help. That means providing one place to find performance support and a healthy library of essential performance support so employees can find the right help.
There’s nothing worse than searching for help and not finding what you need. If employees can find what they’re looking for, they can help themselves and reduce calls to the help desk.
For complex company systems, contextual help is also a great option. With strategic guides and walkthroughs, employees can be onboarded into new software with interactive guides that walk them through application tasks.
But how do you measure how well the technical enablement part of onboarding works?
Measuring the Effectiveness of Technical Enablement in Onboarding
This is a topic that doesn’t have an easy answer. Because employees are new, it isn’t easy to understand precisely how much onboarding moved the needle.
One good measurement for onboarding is the research showing that companies that onboard employees have significantly better results than those that don’t. But there are a few basic ways to understand whether technical enablement in your onboarding process is doing its job.
Employees can express how well prepared they feel after onboarding with a carefully worded survey that includes questions focused directly on technical enablement.
Sometimes, assessing new employees’ new skills in company technology may also be necessary. For sensitive applications that can have negative repercussions, you may want to test employees’ ability to use them after onboarding.
Take a test, pass, and then get access to the software. It could be as simple as that. To account for employees who already know the software, allowing them a way to test out can be helpful.
Your needs will be unique, so working with an instructional design consultant may be the best way to assess the effectiveness of technical enablement in onboarding at your organization.
Overcoming Resistance and Promoting Adoption of Technical Enablement
While the benefits of integrating technical enablement into onboarding are clear, some leaders may resist. Some may think employees are already technically savvy or don’t consider technical enablement important enough to be formally part of the onboarding process.
To overcome this resistance, it’s helpful to communicate the value and benefits of technical enablement. Nothing should be left to chance, and training should be provided for all employees at all skill levels.
Highlighting success stories from other organizations or conducting pilot programs to demonstrate its effectiveness firsthand may be helpful.
Wrap Up
Integrating technical enablement into the onboarding process is crucial for ensuring the success of new employees. Onboarding for technology empowers employees with the skills they need to be successful with company technology.
By providing hands-on training, continuous learning resources, and measuring effectiveness, organizations ensure the success of these programs and the long-term success of their employees.
Don’t settle for a one-dimensional onboarding process. Ensure your company also implements technical enablement into onboarding. Embrace this powerful strategy to unlock your employees’ full potential from day one and ensure their long-term retention.
Work with us to plan an onboarding process that accounts for technical enablement. Schedule a free consultation to discuss how a comprehensive onboarding process that covers technology will help your employees and company thrive in the modern technical era.