IT Briefcase Exclusive Interview: Promapp’s Onboarding and Training Add-on

with Sarah Berkowski, CMO, Promapp Solutions

In this interview, Sarah Berkowski, CMO of Promapp Solutions, focuses on the renewed importance businesses are placing on onboarding and training programs, and the reasons why they need to be linked to an organization’s business processes. Berkowski also discusses the features contained in the new onboarding and training solution recently introduced by Promapp.

• Q. The business community seems to be paying more attention to onboarding programs for new workers and ongoing employee training than ever before. Why has onboarding and training become so important from a business perspective?

A. Businesses are becoming more aware that their people are often their greatest asset. That’s not just a cliché, it’s a financial fact. Employee turnover costs a lot of money – up to 30% of a role’s salary by some estimates. Effective onboarding programs and training have been proven to improve staff retention, encourage better relationships with management and create a greater sense of purpose for new hires. Not only do they stay with the organization longer, but research suggests that properly onboarded staff are more productive more quickly, more engaged and more brand-minded than those who are left to sink or swim on their own.

• Q. Proper onboarding programs and ongoing employee training hold some obvious benefits for business, but what about employees? What can a new employee hope to gain from a good onboarding initiative and why is ongoing training so important?

A. A good onboarding plan helps an employee understand the why of their work, not just where to find the bathrooms or what their email password is. It is a tool that can give a sense of purpose, and ideally establish healthy, helpful relationships with key colleagues and management. It can set the new hire up with support structures and knits them into a team. It should also set clear goals, giving them a roadmap to follow in their first weeks or months.

Ongoing training gives staff a sense of their value to the organization. It tells them that they are valuable enough to invest in. By equipping their staff with new skills, employers also open pathways for their potential advancement. Offering teams new and different opportunities to learn increases motivation and interest, which is key in staff satisfaction and retention.

• Q. Is it important for onboarding and training to be linked to a company’s business processes?

A. Absolutely. The idea of onboarding and training is to reduce the chance of costly errors, and to help new hires understand how they fit into the organization. It’s an opportunity to set them up for success and to ramp their productivity quickly and efficiently. The best way to do that is to connect role-based training with existing processes – the very things they are going to be expected to do in their role. Basing training on an organization’s business processes makes it clear and intentional. It removes the requirement to reinvent the onboarding plan for each new hire, or develop custom resources, because the procedures and workflows have already been documented for each role. It’s also a great way to encourage process improvement participation from the outset, helping staff understand that they can provide feedback and suggest improvements to processes while they familiarize themselves with their responsibilities. Training programs that are permanently synchronized with processes save time and eliminate the risk of misalignment.

• Q. Promapp recently introduced a new onboarding and training tool. How does that solution work?

A. Promapp’s onboarding and training solution links an organization’s process knowledge with their training procedures, and helps automate the creation of role-based onboarding plans for new staff. Promapp uses existing roles and responsibilities from within processes to simplify and improve the consistency of onboarding and training record management. It facilitates ongoing learning and compliance, while engaging teams and providing up-to-date training records for staff and managers alike.

• Q. What features does Promapp’s onboarding and training solution contain and why are they important?

A. One of the key strengths of Promapp’s onboarding and training solution is the fact that it integrates directly with an organization’s business processes. Training units incorporate existing roles and processes and they can also be associated with specific risks, compliance, incidents or tickets. It’s personalized with individual user dashboards and it notified users of the status of the training they are involved with in real-time, whether they are a supervisor or a trainee. There’s a further training dashboard for those responsible for overseeing onboarding and training that provides a real-time update on who has been trained, and at what level, at a glance. We’ve built in reports to provide audit records of training and attendance which can help with compliance requirements, and we provide a mobile interface to allow simple and clear sign off on training attendance or process change acknowledgements.

• Q. Are there certain kinds of companies for which the new onboarding and training solution is ideally suited?

A. Promapp’s onboarding and training solution is ideal for organizations that are still managing their training manually, using spreadsheets, poorly integrated systems or even paper-based records. It’s also ideal for organizations that have an ad-hoc approach to how they onboard new team members. It scales easily and works well within an existing process structure to improve efficiency and accountability of training and onboarding. This solution is also useful for organizations who have critical processes that require change acknowledgements from affected teams.

• Q. What kind of reaction has the new onboarding and training solution received to date from the business community?

A. We’ve received very positive feedback from the business community about the value the onboarding and training solution is bringing to their organizations. We’ve heard that it’s made coordinating training and managing training records easier and that it’s created a sense of security and confidence that staff are aware of their responsibilities and have completed their required training. Early adopters have reported efficiencies quickly, with experienced staff being interrupted less and new team members becoming better informed about their roles and expectations, and adding value more quickly. Even the hiring process has been positively impacted in some organizations, with clearer job advertisements and more focused interviews as a result of clear training guidelines and processes.

Sarah Berkowski is Chief Marketing Officer at Promapp Solutions, an industry leading provider of cloud-based process management (BPM) software for creating and storing business processes online. For more information visit www.promapp.com.