Five Steps to Help Onboard Highly Skilled Professional Service Employees

A shortage in the labor force is making companies look at why workers are changing jobs and refocusing their efforts to keep current employees and bring in new talent. According to a survey by Robert Half, the top reasons workers are looking for a new job include higher salaries (54%), better benefits and perks (38%), and the ability to work remotely long-term (34%). Flex work has been the buzz for awhile, but does that mean specifically for the professional and business services industry? According to a new report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), over half of professional and business services have expanded remote-work options and over 60 percent intend to keep those policies in place to keep up with the rising demands. 

Retaining Talent Starts With Onboarding

In any field, getting started with a thorough and welcoming onboarding process is crucial to showing your employees what they mean to the company. Here are five ways to help streamline your onboarding process for highly skilled workers to assist you in meeting these new expectations:

1. Analyze and Document Processes: Start analyzing your current process and look for efficiencies you can gain. By documenting, reporting, and analyzing how new and existing employees respond to onboarding, you can often find ways to improve your process. Start by talking to remote employees who have been through the experience to get feedback on what is working best and what would have made their onboarding process easier.

2. Communicate With Your CEO: Recruiters need to communicate to founders and chief executives the feedback they are hearing from the field when they interview. In such a difficult recruiting market, organizations need to weigh if the importance should be on getting back into the office or on finding top talent, since so many are looking to work remotely full time.

3. Invest in Virtual Onboarding: With remote and flexible work options, a virtual onboarding process can help HR leaders create flexibility in how they hire and onboard talent. If your organization is new to finding talent outside of the normal locations, you can invest in technology such as I-9 Anywhere® to use a nationwide completer network and keep up with different and ongoing regulations. 

4. Automate Workforce Software: By ensuring forms are easier to fill out, more consistent, and more accurate through an online and user-friendly process, such as with Equifax Workforce Solutions Compliance Center, you can help reduce processing mistakes and alert users when additional tasks need to be completed.

5. Utilize Application Programming Interface (API) Integrations: API integrations can help create a more user-friendly experience between multiple HR software such as your HCM and other databases. Some software organizations offer pre-built APIs that make them easier to implement into your systems.

The onboarding process is vital to every organization because it bridges the gap between the employee and the company. It is even more critical when recruiting highly-skilled and hard to find workers. Creating a uniform onboarding process will help your HR organization track what you've done and what still needs to be done to help ensure a more seamless transition for every new hire. If you are interested in learning about more effective onboarding, check out these additional onboarding best practices on how you can help simplify your processes.

The information provided is intended as general guidance and is not intended to convey any tax, benefits, or legal advice. For information pertaining to your company and its specific facts and needs, please consult your own tax advisor or legal counsel. Links to sources may be to third party sites. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third party sites or services.