When welcoming new hires, creating a seamless onboarding process is one of the most crucial steps for ensuring success in the long run. The best way to streamline the onboarding process is through onboarding automation.
Onboarding tasks, such as completing necessary paperwork, getting familiar with company policies, and going through initial training, play a vital role in helping new employees integrate into the organization.
That is why in this particular post, we will be covering how you can not only create onboarding tasks for your new hires inside an incredibly widespread communication and collaboration tool like Microsoft Teams but also how you can make sure these tasks are fully automated.
As the role of automation and AI in HR keeps rising in prominence, automated onboarding tasks are one of the easiest boxes to tick in your employee onboarding checklist.
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Why Microsoft Teams for Onboarding?
Before we dive into how you can start automating employee onboarding and more specifically, onboarding tasks for new hires, let’s discuss why Microsoft Teams is the right base platform for this.
Microsoft Teams provides a centralized hub where new hires can easily access all necessary information, resources, and communication channels. It is a hub for new hires to communicate and collaborate with veterans and seasoned members of your organization.
One of the standout features of Microsoft Teams is its ability to integrate with a wide range of other Microsoft and third-party applications.
This integration capability allows for the automation of various onboarding tasks. While Microsoft Teams on its own, doesn’t have employee onboarding features built into it, you can seamlessly integrate an employee onboarding tool and effectively welcome new hires.
In fact, the first step we will be taking in order to create automated onboarding tasks for new hires is to integrate an official Microsoft Partner application into your Microsoft Teams.
Step 1: Integrating an Employee Onboarding App for Microsoft Teams
The app we will be using to automate employee onboarding processes will be: Teamflect. It is an official Microsoft Partner and it is the highest and most rated app in the category.
In order to add this onboarding solution to your Microsoft Teams, all you will need to do is:
- Head over to the Microsoft Teams App Store
- Search for Teamflect
- Add it to your Microsoft Teams.
The best part is, you don’t need to sign up or create an account! You can simply log in with your Microsoft account.
There is no additional setting-up required. Since this is a Microsoft native solution, it draws your organizational chart from Entra ID (Formerly Azure AD).
This means, all the necessary information about your team newcomers and veterans alike will already be in the app.
Step 2: Creating Onboarding Task Groups
The next step would be to create an onboarding task group. While assigning tasks manually is still simple enough, the benefit and convenience of onboarding automation is to have these onboarding tasks assigned automatically.
Onboarding tasks groups need to be specific and tailored to each department or team.
A new hire joining the sales team should be receiving a different set of onboarding tasks than someone joining the HR team.
Admins in Teamflect can simply head over to the Tasks section of the admin center and start building different sets of onboarding tasks.
Simply click the ” + New task group” button and start adding any onboarding tasks that you deem necessary to a newcomer learning the ropes.
The consistency that comes with automating the onboarding tasks employees receive for each department, helps maintain a standardized onboarding process, reducing the risk of important steps being overlooked or handled differently across the organization.
Step 3: Automating Onboarding Tasks at Desired Intervals
Naturally, the next step after creating different onboarding task groups is to automate them. Depending on how you want your onboarding program to function, you can automate your onboarding tasks to be sent any amount of time after the hire date.
This level of onboarding automation is what truly saves organizations time. This process only has to be set up once. As opposed to going through the motions for every new recruit over and over again, automation ensures an efficient employee onboarding process that saves both parties time and effort.
Step 4: New Hires Receive Tasks
The last step in setting automated onboarding tasks for new hires is the employees actually receiving their onboarding tasks.
Once a new hire reaches the number of days with the organization that have been designated in the automation process, they will receive and be responsible for their onboarding tasks.
Time to Start Streamlining Your Onboarding Process
Automating onboarding tasks can significantly transform the way organizations welcome and integrate new hires. That being said, they are only a small piece of the employee onboarding puzzle. They should be followed up by automating onboarding surveys and conducting 90-day reviews!
If you want to be able to do all of that and more inside Microsoft Teams and Outlook, alongside having access to a wide-array of performance management and employee engagement features, you can try Teamflect for free, today!
