How HR Tech Integrations Enhance the Onboarding Experience
Over 94% of businesses have already switched to digital systems in 2025. But today, having the latest technology in your office is more than just a smart move. HR tech is a powerful strategic tool that helps businesses attract top talent, engage new hires, and retain employees for the long haul, which is especially important in a competitive digital age. Another crucial tool is onboarding. But slow, manual onboarding processes can have the opposite effect, demotivating new hires and starting their career badly. As we’ll explore in this article, the first few weeks are fundamental to shaping the journey from candidate to fully onboarded employee. Aided by the right tech, this journey can be seamless and successful for HR teams, new hires, and entire organisations. Read on to find out why streamlined onboarding tools benefit this process and how to choose the best ones for your business.
Why Should You Enhance the Onboarding Experience?
The onboarding journey goes beyond those first few days a new hire spends settling in. A successful onboarding experience sets the scene for an even more successful career, encouraging everything from higher job satisfaction to improved business productivity. In fact, effective onboarding has been shown to increase overall employee performance by up to 70%! Here are some other benefits of prioritising your team members’ journeys from the very start.
Boosts Productivity
Good onboarding programs are designed to induct new hires into their roles. They include everything from pre-boarding, where contracts and polices are signed, to new technology setup. But truly great programs also help employees learn more about the organisation’s mission, values, and culture.
Employees who feel connected to their employer’s culture are four times more likely to be engaged at work. Building an engaged workforce delivers several benefits, with Gallup research showing that highly engaged employees are 14% more productive. They also:
- Make more sales (18%)
- Improve customer loyalty (10%)
- Boost profitability (23%)
- Participate more (22%)
- Experience better wellbeing (A huge 70%!)
Attracts Top Talent
Did you know that highly engaged team members are also six times more likely to recommend their workplace to others? Whether in retail and education or health and social care, building a great reputation for high-quality service is a must. Top talent is crucial to achieving these goals if you’re operating in these sectors. Recruiting those first-choice candidates begins with being an excellent employer that values its employees’ needs and working conditions, right from day one of the onboarding process. A happier, more motivated workforce, satisfied customers, a reputation as a caring employer, and more word-of-mouth recruitment referrals are the results!
Improves Retention
A quarter of organisations with poor onboarding processes have average turnover rates of 20% or above. On the flip side, strong onboarding can help companies retain staff for up to three years, which is especially important in traditionally high-turnover industries.
The difference? A good program of onboarding activities, filled with quality HR tech for on-demand guidance and support. This encourages new hires to feel secure and happy in their roles going forward, meaning they’re more likely to stay long-term!
Reduces Costs
Onboarding expenses cover time spent on everything from training and paperwork to welcoming new hires. Automated processes eliminate up to 80% of these manual onboarding costs. Create branded employment documents, tax forms, contracts, and other vital new hire documents in significantly less time. Good HR tech also ensures they reach the relevant departments and team members without the back-and-forth typically required for manual onboarding, too!
Retaining more of your new employees also minimises rehiring costs. Replacing valuable employees costs between 50% and 200% of their annual salary, plus the precious hours taken to find top-tier candidates. The money saved can then be reinvested into product development, improving customer service, marketing campaigns, and better employee benefits.
What Are the Benefits of HR Technology for Onboarding?
68% of professionals say they plan to integrate technology into HR processes in the future, seeing it as the missing piece in their onboarding toolbox. But why? Traditional onboarding approaches are often filled with piles of paperwork, slow communication, rapid colleague introductions, and verbal welcome sessions that overwhelm new hires with information. Replacing these manual processes with automated HR technology can instead:
- Streamline Onboarding: Customisable workflows automate repetitive tasks like contract generation and approvals. Instructions and welcome packages for new hires are ready from day one, meaning no waiting around.
- Reduce Errors: Replacing hand-drafted documents with automated systems minimises the risk of human error, performing quick calculations and instantly applying new rates.
- Encourage Flexible Working: New hires can complete essential pre-boarding tasks at their own pace using mobile onboarding tools. Access training materials, complete forms, and allow employees to begin working from any location.
- Offer Data Insights: Comprehensive metrics such as completion and engagement rates can be produced to identify onboarding areas for improvement. These accurate insights are based on user behaviour and data collected straight from new hires.
How to Add HR Tech Into Your Onboarding Program
Not all HR tech will offer the right solution for your business. Enhance the onboarding experience and ensure seamless integration by following these three steps when selecting your tools:
1. Consider Employee Needs
Before deciding which types of tech and key features to look for, consider the needs of your current and future employees. Organisations in highly regulated industries may have a more comprehensive pre-boarding process, filled with large amounts of paperwork to ensure compliance. For instance, aged care onboarding must fulfill several requirements, from police checks to dementia care and medicine management training. To create a good, employee-focused onboarding journey, providers require tools that streamline these procedures while also meeting industry regulations.
Communication is another key point of consideration when investing in tech. Establishing solid communication streams right from the onboarding stage is key to ensuring new hires can ask questions and quickly find the information they’re looking for. While some businesses work well with real-time communication tools like chatbots or Slack, others prefer updates via email.
Regardless of the requirements, always choose onboarding tools that are flexible and can be customised to your specific needs. Look for software with adaptable processes that scale as your needs grow and change, particularly for high-volume or seasonal recruitment businesses.
2. Ensure Easy Integration
You’ve found HR tech that ticks all of your onboarding boxes. But does it fit into your existing tools and systems, without complex coding?
Software that integrates easily should keep all relevant departments, teams, and employees in the loop to ensure a seamless communication experience. It should also provide clear instructions on a user-friendly interface, with workflows that deliver information in manageable chunks.
Replacing complex tools with easy-to-use HR tech also causes fewer errors that increase administration costs, lead to lost time, and cause frustration. With government research showing that 20% of employee turnover occurs within the first 45 days, it’s clear that disruptive onboarding experiences can be fatal to your new hires’ journeys.
3. Get Regular Feedback
As your organisation grows, so do your onboarding needs — from more colleagues for new hires to meet to a wider variety of operational processes. The best way to ensure your tech is meeting these requirements, while still delivering the best employee experience, is with regular evaluations.
Gather feedback on HR tech from existing employees through surveys or focus groups. Ask new hires to complete questionnaires detailing the ease of their onboarding experience.
Choose tools that offer continual improvements, too. Automatic software updates ensure compliance with your onboarding process and documentation, which is especially important in regulation-sensitive industries like health and aged care.
Enhancing the Employee Experience with Onboard Express
There’s no doubt that HR tech is a crucial tool in supporting seamless onboarding. Integrating good technology into your workflows is no longer just an expectation for the modern workforce — it’s an absolute necessity for businesses wanting to compete for top talent.
At Onboard Express, our effortless onboarding tech integrates seamlessly into your existing systems using open API, not complex coding.
We prioritise continuous innovation to help you maintain a top-quality onboarding experience, with industry-leading updates and a dedicated project manager for personalised support. Benefit from streamlined workflows that create tailored, advanced contracts in no time, plus secure digital approvals sent automatically to the relevant departments.
And with 150,000+ onboardings already completed across Australia and New Zealand, the results speak for themselves. Contact us today to book your demo and see quality HR tech in action.