Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

A People Matters and Simplilearn Research Study

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2 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

 TRENDS &
BEST PRACTICES
IN ONBOARDING
A People Matters and Simplilearn Research Study

Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 3

CONTENTS
Foreword – Ester Martinez 5

Foreword – Krishna Kumar 6

Introduction 7

Key Findings 8

Conclusion 13

Appendix 14

Expert Views 15

• Saransh Agarwal, AVP- Learning & Development, Cognizant Academy 16

• P.B. Kotur, Head-Global Freshers Engagement Program, Wipro 17

• Deepak Shetty, Senior Director and Head-HR, Philips Innovation Campus 18

• Sanjay Dutt, Global Head - Capability Development, EXL 19

• Jagjit Singh, Chief People Officer, PwC India 20

4 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

FOREWORD
Ester Martinez
CEO and Editor-in-Chief, People Matters Media
T
he talent landscape is unceasingly being challenged by technological
disruption, demographic change, shifting business models and
the evolving nature of work. According to a report1 by the World
Economic Forum, 35% of the skills demanded for jobs across industries
will change by 2020. Talking about Generation Z, data2 from jobs sites
shows that despite 1 million engineering graduates coming out every
year, lack of skilled talent has led several STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Maths) roles to remain vacant. In fact, if you refer to
a 2016 study3 conducted by the employment solutions company, only 7
percent of engineering graduates can handle core engineering tasks.
Hence, there is an immediate need to address the skill gap and boost
reskilling and upskilling efforts in the current workforce and the new
hires. Continuous learning and training interventions are a need of the
hour. However, organizations need to find a way to accelerate the skilling
process to keep pace with the rapid demands of the business ecosystem.
While organizations are adopting various methods to upskill their current
workforce, they are still unable to bridge this massive skill gap. So,
what comes next? How can organizations evolve the training process to
harness the best of future workers and sustain performance over time?
Owing to the changing business dynamics and long training periods,
organizations need to start the skilling processes right from the time
the new hires receive their joining offers. Onboarding and Pre-boarding
programs can act as effective mediums to help new hires from campuses
and lateral hires become job-ready by upskilling in new-age technologies
or skills of the future. Rather than pivoting solely on "on-the-job
development", the foundation can be set through formal learning during
onboarding. However, onboarding is often overlooked as a formality
rather than a key strategy to ensure well-performing new employees
become productive and culturally aligned in an organization. Onboarding
offers a great opportunity to augment competitive advantage by creating
a committed talent pool that gives the desired performance. It remains
an untapped area of creating an impact to the bottomline. According to
the results of the survey, the top three objectives that organizations want
to achieve from their onboarding strategy include “orient new employees
to the organization’s vision”, “familiarize employees to the culture of the
organization”, and “foster a positive experience for new employees”. The
study also highlights that despite the massive gap in the demand and
supply of the new digital skills to perform the required job; only 13 percent
organizations are leveraging pre-boarding as a mean to train and upskill
talent to make them productive and skill-ready from the Day 1 of their jobs.
Continuing with our endeavor to provide actionable research to our
community, People Matters in partnership with Simplilearn studied
how Indian companies are approaching employee onboarding. This
involved understanding the current state of the onboarding process in
the organizations, the role of onboarding technology in accelerating skill
development among new hires and how pre-boarding can fast-track the
skill readiness of a new hire.
The report also features expert perspectives by domain leaders from
leading organizations across various sectors. We are grateful to all
the participants who took the survey along with the individuals and
organizations who contributed their time and expertise in assisting us in
carrying out this study.
We hope that our readers will enjoy reading the findings of this report and
will get back to us with their comments and perspectives. We look forward
to hearing from them.
Happy reading the report!
1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-
industrial-revolution/
2. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/economy/
shortage-of-talent-in-indian-stem-sector-due-to-skill-gaps-indeed-data-2517955.html&sa=
D&ust=1532511276549000&usg=AFQjCNFUtjKangEVupkNw9Qf-Kggv9v3ZQ
3. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/engineering-employment-
problems-329022-2016-07-13
Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 5
 FOREWORD
Krishna Kumar
Founder & CEO, Simplilearn

O
nboarding plays a significant role in wooing new talent and in show- At the end of it like any other project, onboarding too needs to be meas-
casing what their corporate journeys will be like. It’s a golden phase ured to ensure the time and costs spent on training programs eventually
for hiring companies and new joinees to get aligned. I believe that result in clear ROI. Having a focused outcome-centric approach will help
one must treat onboarding as a holistic platform that doesn’t just focus your fresher hires move from their academic way of thinking to apply tech-
on creating impeccable induction programs and Day 1 experiences. A nologies real-time on the job.
lot of industry leaders I have met in the recent past have stressed on
their concerns of traditional onboarding of new employees which have Having shared my views, integrating culture, values, and purpose within all
resulted in increased training time and delayed productivity. We are in new hires is as important as building on their skill competencies. I believe
the age of digital transformation where reskilling is a boardroom discus- cultural onboarding is one area where a human connection can never be
sion and is of critical focus for CEOs around the world. In times like these, replaced by technology. And for everything else, it’s high time for us to
think how can we harness technology to the fullest.
companies are in an endeavor to save time and costs while getting fresh
recruits up to speed in the technologies of the future. There are compa-
nies which are already leading the game by adopting innovative methods
to train their fresher hires to transition them from campuses to corporates
smoothly.

There are no-one-size-fits all in new hire training. While classroom train-
ings are still practiced across companies, online training is growing faster,
and companies are embracing it as an alternate training method. Multi-
national technology conglomerates who have been focusing only on
classroom trainings for new hires are today offering training through a
blend of online self-learning and live virtual classroom sessions. With
pre-assessments and post-assessments, they are also able to gauge the
learning curves of hires.

Let me share an example of a leading American cloud computing

company with large operations in India. They are engaging their campus
hires ahead of their joining with different levels of technical training. With
structured learning paths, customized projects, and mentoring sessions,
the company has been successful in reducing the training period and
ensuring new hires are skill-ready for their jobs. Hands-on learning is the
next big shift in education technology where customized projects, live
labs, and subject matter quizzes play a role in understanding the new
hires capabilities and areas improve.

6 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

INTRODUCTION
T
he People Matters and Simplilearn study is designed and conducted with the
objective to understand how leading companies in India are approaching Employee
Onboarding, Pre-boarding and the use of technology in these processes. The survey
saw the participation of 106 unique companies across industries and sectors.
The study focused on three aspects of onboarding:
A) The current state of onboarding
The current onboarding trends for the year 2018 and the challenges faced in the current
onboarding processes.
B) Onboarding technology
How organizations across industries are adopting technology in onboarding new hires
and how online training as a medium is accelerating the upskilling of the new hires.
Companies are using online platforms to provide a variety of hands-on projects to work
on as part of their onboarding training to ensure that by the time onboarding is complet-
ed; new hires have a very good idea about the kind of project they are going to work on.
Performance on these projects also gives a very good idea of the capabilities of the new
hire to their managers.
Apart from showcasing the results from the survey, the study includes perspectives from
HR leaders from organizations across sectors, stressing on the advantage of having a
formal onboarding and pre-boarding program for the faster assimilation of new hires into
the organization’s culture and to build on their skill competencies from the date of joining
the organization.

C) How can organizations improve their onboarding practices?

Insights from the study indicate that while the organizations responded to focus equally
on training new hires on culture and technical skills, however, the top practices included
in the onboarding strategy included an orientation program (70 percent), an impeccable
Day 1 experience (80 percent), and engagement activities with skill training and mentor-
ing during pre-boarding (68 percent). This suggests that in most of the organizations,
onboarding is limited to employees’ induction into the organization’s history, mission and
values. Though the softer aspect of onboarding cannot be neglected, companies need to
keep in mind that there is a need to devise an onboarding strategy that helps decrease
the learning period or a new hire so that he/she can become productive for the organiza-
tion in a fair period of time.

To speed up the process of skill onboarding, organizations are not sticking to just one way
of making candidates job ready. While Mentoring (49 percent) and Classroom training (40
percent) are popular mediums of delivering training, Online Training emerged popular
among organizations to fast-track the skilling during pre-boarding and onboarding (50
percent). In our conversation with the experts, we found that one of the prime reasons for
adopting online platforms is that online mediums have been quite effective in speeding
up the training processes and enhancing the learners’ engagement. With the advance-
ment of technology over the last couple of years, doing any kind of hands-on project
based learning has become a reality.

Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 7

KEY FINDINGS
1) The current state of onboarding
Over the past few years, organizations have matured in terms of implementing onboard- a) Do you have a formal onboarding process at place?
ing, with a specific strategy and a range of approaches for assimilating new hires.

The study showed that 93 percent of the organizations in India have a formal onboard-
ing process, and of which, 61 percent have different onboarding programs for lateral and 93% Yes 7% No
fresh hires. The current and desired duration for onboarding reflects that currently organ-
izations have onboarding programs that last for less than a month; however, most of them
desire to stretch the program for more than a month.

Onboarding is a mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowl-
edge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members and insiders.
However, onboarding is still seen through a lens of a one-day orientation and induction
b) Top 5 objectives behind the organization’s onboarding program
of employees with the organization’s vision, mission, and culture. The key expectations What is the objective behind your organization’s onboarding program?
that organizations have from their onboarding program include - orienting new employ-
ees to the organization’s vision (90 percent), familiarizing the employee to the culture of
the organization (86 percent), and fostering a positive experience for new employees (85
percent).
90% 86% 85% 64% 64%
Organizations are adopting a range of approaches to speed up the assimilation process Familiarize Foster a Help new Establish
Orient new
of the new hires in their organizations. According to the study, an orientation program employees the employee positive employees relationships
(70 percent), an impeccable Day 1 experience (80 percent), and engagement activities to the to the experience identify their
during pre-boarding like technical skill-training, projects and mentoring sessions by lead- organization’s culture of the for new roles and
ers and managers, etc. (68 percent) are the most sought after methods by the organiza- vision organization employees responsibilities
tions to engage and assimilate new hires.

c) Is your onboarding program different for lateral & fresh hires?

YES 61% NO 39%

8 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

d) Top five practices in an onboarding program f) Measuring onboarding program success
Which practices are conducted during onboarding to engage and assimilate new hires? Which metrics do you consider most important in measuring the effectiveness of your
onboarding process?
41%
41%
40% 41% Business Feedback
33%
80% 70% 68% 66% 58%
Orientation Day 1 Engaging during Constant Assigning 41% Employee productivity rate
program organization pre-boarding communi- a buddy/
experience (Training & cation mentor 40% Attrition rate
Mentoring)

33% We don’t measure the impact

e) Average current & desired duration of onboarding program

On an average, what is your current and desired duration of a formal onboarding
program in your organization?
g) Challenges in an onboarding program
Time Current Desired What are the top three challenges you are facing in your current onboarding programs?
Less than 1 month 72% 37%
Challenges Fresh Lateral
1 – less than 3 months 21% 49%
Learner engagement 42% 31%
3 – less than 6 months 4% 13%
Managing business expectations 36% 40%
More than 6 months 3% 1%
Getting the hire accustomed to company’s culture 44% 42%
Involvement of manager in onboarding 44% 47%
Leveraging technology to streamline the process 25% 23%

Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 9

2) Accelerating a new hire’s learning:
Onboarding Technology
The overall adoption of technology solutions in onboarding is yet to reach critical mass a) Have you adopted onboarding technology?
in India. Currently, 24 percent of the organizations responded that they are utilizing a
dedicated onboarding technology solution. In fact, according to one of our previous Does your organization
researches4 State of the Recruitment Technology in India, it was found that only a handful utilize a dedicated Yes 24%
of mature Indian MNCs are making use of onboarding technology. One of the reasons onboarding technology
for this resistance could be lack of a defined onboarding process or over-dependence on solution? No 76%
human resources to conduct the onboarding process.

The top three reasons quoted by organizations to adopt onboarding technology were:
a) Technology speeds up the skill-readiness of new hires
b) Technology provides better content delivery in training programs, and b) Top five areas where onboarding technology is used
c) Technology offers a seamless learning experience What are the different stages in onboarding where you are using technology?
Stressing further on the need of acquiring emerging digital skills in the constantly chang-
ing business environment, our previous research5 in partnership with Simplilearn on Skill
Acquisition for the Digital Age, highlighted that, online learning has an edge when it
comes to acquiring a new skill quickly, because online content can be made available
faster than designing a formal classroom training program.
57% 46% 45% 44% 36%
Sanjay Dutt, Global Head - Capability Development at EXL shares, “For building the best Orientation Constant com- First-day Goal setting Training &
onboarding program, it is essential to integrate the latest tools and technologies with munication dur- experience & expectation assessment
desired cultural aspects to deliver an everlasting onboarding experience.” ing pre-boarding management and during on-
and onboarding communication boarding
With a near-unanimous consensus among industry, educators and the government alike,
there is a need to accelerate efforts to equip the future workforce with the skills to remain
competitive and effective. In this effort, they need to leverage technology for better
content, enhance learners’ engagement, reduce the time taken to make them job ready
and also create a stronger employer brand.
c) The top three reasons to adopt onboarding technology:
(In order of preference)
Currently, the top areas where technologies are being leveraged in an onboarding
process include Orientation (57 percent), Constant communication during pre-boarding a) b) c)
(46 percent), First-day experience (45 percent), Goal setting and expectation manage- Technology Technology Technology
ment (44 percent), and Training & Assessment (36 percent). speeds up the provides better offers a seam-
skill-readiness content delivery less learning
of new hires in training pro- experience
4 https://www.peoplematters.in/research/talent-acquisition/state-of-recruitment-technology-in-india-research- grams
18391?utm_source=peoplematters&utm_medium=interstitial&utm_campaign=learnings-of-the-day&utm_
source=peoplematters&utm_medium=interstitial&utm_campaign=learnings-of-the-day
5 https://www.peoplematters.in/research/hr-technology/skill-acquisition-for-digital-age-people-matters-
simplilearn-study-16014

10 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

3) The way-forward to make onboarding
programs more impactful
Employees today are expected to deliver right from Day 1 and with speed. But this is a) Satisfaction level of organizations with their onboarding
possible only if employees are equipped with the right skills, whether technical, func-
tional or behavioral. However, the current dynamic business ecosystem is driven by digi-
program
Rank Response
tal transformation and is compelling organizations spanning all sizes and industries to On a scale of 1-5 (1 being the
train their fresher hires and lateral hires in emerging technologies and to continually lowest and 5 the highest), 1 6%
accelerate their businesses’ profitability. how happy are you with your
current onboarding program? 2 21%
The participating organizations have identified new-age technologies like Artificial Intel-
ligence & Machine Learning, Cyber Security, Cloud Computing, Big Data and Software 3 47%
Development as the most critical areas where new hires require skilling. During the study,
experts revealed that it takes 3-6 months to train campus hires and make them produc-
4 22%
tive in a project. Hence, it is necessary for organizations to begin their onboarding right 5 5%
from the time the campus hire accepts the offer, i.e. Pre-boarding. Pre-boarding can be
explained as the period that begins once an offer has been accepted by the new hire and
lasts up to the first day of employment. Training and assessments during the pre-board-
ing phase lead to reduction of training time and make the hires job ready ahead of join-
ing. b) Top technical domains of upskilling: (In order of preference)
When asked about the pre-boarding programs, 58 percent of the organizations confirmed Which are the technical domains where your new hires need upskilling in?
having a planned engagement during pre-boarding. Moreover, 44 percent of the organ-
izations said that they begin pre-boarding the new hires while they are still on campus.
It was unusual to find that while Indian organizations have expressed their discontent
Rank Rank Rank Rank Rank Rank
with lack of highly skilled talent available to perform the jobs, only few organizations (32
percent) are implementing skilling and training initiatives for new hires while they are
1 2 3 4 5 6
Big Data AI and Cloud Program- Cyber Data Science
still on campus. The other top practices included in the pre-boarding program include Machine Computing ming Security & Business
continuous interaction with the candidates (61 percent), new hire documentation (54 Learning Intelligence
percent), inviting them for sessions delivered by leaders or team managers (34 percent),
training and assessments (32 percent) and engagement activities like hackathons, coding
challenges (20 percent).

Sharing the case of Cognizant, Saransh Agarwal, AVP- Learning & Development, Cogni- c) Do you have a formal pre-boarding program?
zant Academy, stressed on the need to train the campus hires before they actually join Do you begin pre-boarding the fresher hires while they are still on campus?
the organization. He says, “Our pre-boarding program is called Early Engagement (EE),
which is primarily an online self-learning program and its core intent is to build learn-
ing agility among graduate hires. The primary purpose of this EE program is to create a Yes - 44% No - 56%
homogeneous learner base, so that all the students are at par when they are onboarded
in the organization.”

Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 11

Prabhunandayya Kotur, Head- Global Freshers Engagement Program, Wipro says,
d) Top six practices included in a pre-boarding program:
“Engaging freshers from the ‘Date of Offer’ to the ‘Date of Joining’ requires attention to
soft skills and technical training. We have a self-directed, mentor-model, project-based What does your pre-boarding program entail of?
learning (PBL) approach which is delivered through an in-house application. It hosts busi-
ness requirements and brings together the TA team and freshers for skill building.” Continuous interaction with the candidates 61%
Hence, aligning training goals with pre-boarding comes across as an opportunity for
organizations to access a steady stream of job-ready candidates who are ready to make
New hire documentation 54%
an impact to the business from Day 1.
Inviting them for sessions delivered by leaders or team managers 34%
Mentoring, classroom training, and online training were quite popular among organiza-
tions to fast-track the skilling processes during pre-boarding and onboarding. According Engagement activities (Hackathons, Code Challenges, etc.) 20%
to respondents and the experts, online delivery of learning offers fresh hires a great user/
learner experience, and gets them immersed in a hands-on, and personalized learning Classroom trainings 17%
experience. Online trainings are supplemented with projects and assessments, without
the time and physical boundaries of a traditional classroom, leading to faster adoption Online skill training and projects 15%
to new skills.

On the mode of delivering training, experts share that there is no one-size-fits-all pattern
for designing a learning program. They shares that each employee has a varied learning
curve and organizations must decide how to make their training modules and sessions
e) Top five skill onboarding delivery mediums: (In order of preference)
that appeal to all and everyone can benefit from the course. This signifies there is an inev-
itable need to adopt technology in order to make training result-driven. What methods are you adopting to fast-track the skill onboarding of your new hires?

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5
Mentoring Onboard- Onboard- Pre-board- Pre-board-
ing class ing online ing online ing pro-
room training training jects
training

12 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

CONCLUSION
A
s businesses continue to get disrupted and the demands for the skilled talent
continue to evolve, it is critical for organizations to leverage structured onboarding
and pre-boarding practices that enhance the speed of the overall training and assim-
ilation process of new hires. With digital transformation and newer technologies chang-
ing the business dynamics, companies are investing in upskilling their existing employees
like never before. However, we observed that there is still a lag in new-hire training as part
of the onboarding which is critical for new joinees to be on-track with their new-age skills
required for the job.
The pace, at which organizations function today, requires accelerated and holistic learn-
ing for employees. Simply put, employees need to hit the ground running. However,
this is possible only when they have the desired skill set to do so. A well-thought
onboarding and pre-boarding strategy by leveraging technology can address the most
important skills and competencies required to make new and existing talent take off in
their given roles.

This study provided key insights into the current landscape of employee onboarding with
a focus on bridging the skill gap by leveraging technology and utilizing the pre-boarding
phase as a period to fast-track the upskilling process of new hires while they are still on
campus.

While most organizations appreciate the advantages of a formal and structured onboard-
ing process, pre-boarding still persists to be a new concept among Indian organizations.
According to the survey findings, 58 percent of the organizations confirmed having a
planned engagement during pre-boarding. However, the pre-engagement activities
primarily included communication and new hire documentation. It was also unusual to
find that while Indian organizations have expressed their discontent with talent availa-
ble to perform the jobs with new technologies, only few organizations (32 percent) are
implementing skilling and training initiatives for new hires while they are still on campus.
Hence, this could be one of the reasons that only 27 percent companies are satisfied with
the outcomes of their onboarding program.

The report also noted that slowly organizations have started turning to online learning
to make the new hires job ready with relevant technology skills (24 percent). These initia-
tives enable companies to democratize their learning as new hires can learn, and during
periods most convenient to them. Online learning is already touching upon a lot of pain-
points of classroom trainings like longer training period, lack of interactivity among learn-
ers, disengagement and lack of flexibility. On the other hand, online learning technology
eases learning and development goals by enhancing learners’ engagement, allowing
anytime learning. These technologies are cost-effective, decrease the overall time and
deliver outcome-centric learning by offering customized learning to address different
learning styles.

Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 13

APPENDIX
Respondents Profile
The People Matters-Simplilearn Survey on “Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding” saw Employee Size
participation from 106 companies. The survey was aimed to evaluate and determine how
Indian companies are approaching Employee Onboarding & Pre-boarding and the use Less than 1000 55%
of technology in these processes.
1001- 5000 25%

Industry Type 5001- 10,000 11%

10,001- 20,000 3%
IT & ITeS 25%
More than 20,000 6%
Manufacturing & Heavy Engineering 22%

Services 8%

BFSI 6%

Retail 3%

Telecom 3%

Hospitality 2%

Pharmaceuticals/Lifesciences 4%

Automotive & Ancillaries 2%

Other 25%

14 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

EXPERT VIEWS

Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 15

 Focus on T
echnology is increasingly being shaped by artificial intel- • Seamless integration of new hires into the organization
ligence, algorithms, bots, and big data. Programming • Increased ROI

learnability to
languages are becoming commonplace and compa- • Work-readiness
nies must build new customer experiences and automated • Reduced early attrition
processes that are secure and scalable. • Continuous redefinition of associate experience

speed up the One of the key challenges due to the ongoing big shifts in
• Engaged workforce

onboarding
Technology can play a paramount role in
accelerating the new hires’ assimilation
into the culture and skill acquisition
Saransh Agarwal
Assistant Vice President,
Learning & Development,
Cognizant Academy
technology and innovation is the ‘driving through rear-view
mirror’ phenomenon. As students, we all have the tendency to
connect with seniors to understand the organization’s expec-
tations. We look for success stories and identify role models
and emulate their journey. Lateral hires also try to understand
the expectations through their professional network in the new
organization. Unfortunately, these stories and success journeys
may not help as the business scenario is changing. Following
are some of the key changes in expectations in the ever-chang-
ing business landscape:
1. Staying relevant: With technology changes happening
simultaneously and rapidly, even what were learnt by a
college student in the campus may not be relevant within
the next one year of joining an organization.
2. Time to learn and apply new technology is shrinking: Given
the rapid changes; it is learning-on-the-go. Being an agile
learner is the key.
3. Experience is no more defined in number of years: Be ready
to learn from a performer who is half your age.
4. Steep learning curve: Join work–ready and keep up-to-date
by being a lifelong learner.
For graduates who are starting their career in IT, technology
skills are the default expectation, in addition to logical reason-
ing, problem-solving and communication skills. Increasingly,
how fast professionals acquire and apply new technology
knowledge is becoming more important than what they know.
Today, skills are being used less in isolation and more in combi-
nation with functional and engineering aspects.
At Cognizant, onboarding is typically triggered in three differ-
ent scenarios – new hiring (lateral or campus hire), new employ-
ees through M&A, and international relocation. In all three
scenarios, the program aims at addressing the psychological
need for empowerment, relatedness and competence, focus-
ing on seamless change management and integration. We
believe an onboarding program leads to:
Our onboarding program starts with a virtual Welcome
Center to initiate the e-onboarding process. This center helps
complete all the paperwork online, saving time; helps in data
privacy and supports the cause of our go green initiative. The
Day 1 virtual gamified induction program helps new joinees to
connect with fellow associates and gives them an opportunity
to connect with leaders across locations.
Our pre-boarding program is called Early Engagement (EE),
which is primarily an online self-learning program, as the core
intent is to build learning agility among graduate hires. This
program uses PARC framework as a building block to roll
out gamified learning campaigns called Technology Premier
League (TPL). Through TPL, we conduct a series of learning
contests to harness the learner’s skill level. The primary purpose
of this EE program is to create a homogeneous learner base,
so that all the students are on par when they are onboarded in
the organization. The Top 20% learners within EE get a chance
to be part of the Champions League, where the entire internal
training on programming and database skills is offered virtually,
even before they join Cognizant. To create sustainable impact
upstream, we also work with partner educational institutions.
We run programs such as Cognizant Capstone Engagement
wherein students in the final-semester learn how to build tech-
nology solutions to industry-specific problem statements, with
guidance from industry mentors.
We are clear that one learning model is not possible for an
organization like ours. We need to offer interactive content
with hands-on labs, gamification, mixed reality, video-based
learning as well as structured role development plans with
micro-learning goals, on always-on access through mobile plat-
forms.
Our vision is to Accelerate Learning Agility, by creating Inno-
vative, Immersive and Relevant learning solutions that help our
associates perform to their full potential.

16 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

 Employee F At the employee-end, successful
reshers are seldom acquainted with the culture, customers,
and tools and technologies of a new workplace. There is
Onboarding:
a 25-30% gap in skill requirements - campus versus corpo-
rate. This gap extends to knowledge gaps in processes such as
code of business conduct, intellectual property, data protec-
From Freshers tion, work day culture, diversity, etc. Onboarding can foster this
mandatory alignment between fresher-hires and company.
to Fresh Wipro has a three-pronged approach suiting different talent
categories:
Successes • Pre-joining (3 months): Engaging freshers from the ‘Date
Onboarding is a key success-enabler for of Offer’ to the ‘Date of Joining’ requires attention to soft
not only the employees but employers too skills and technical training. At Wipro, this is done through
a self-directed, mentor-model, project-based learning (PBL)
approach delivered through their in-house application. It
hosts business requirements and brings together the TA
team and freshers for skill building. Thousands of students
are thus engaged in their campus-locations through seam-
less access to web-hosted, project-based content 24*7
(video-based, PowerPoint-based, internal websites, discus-
sion forums, etc.). The content is curated from the customer
requirements and is divided into learning projects with
defined learning outcomes. This online onboarding is
complemented by online projects and mentoring and a
remote proctored assessments.
• Post-joining (1 week): Once a fresher joins, it is essential to
Prabhunandayya Kotur build a sense of connect and pride. Leadership connects,
Head - Global Freshers En- visits to “Proof of Concept” centers, insights on latest tech-
gagement Program, Wipro nology and innovations, and introduction to processes
and go-to people foster this connect. A well planned
Campus-to-Corporate program is administered.
• Post-induction (Up to 6 weeks): An onboarded fresher-hire
is then allocated to the project in a respective business.
The project placement officer, who interacts with both
employee and the project manager on a monthly basis
to advise on suitable project opportunities. Learning too
continues during this phase, especially for specific niche
business needs which require additional training.
onboarding means instilling a sense
of pride and confidence in one’s career
growth and success and trust in the
organization. At the employer end, it
means higher productivity, reduced
training cycle, early deployment and
successful customers.
This three-pronged approach ensures that the onboarding
objective is met at both the employee and employer ends.
Wipro believes in preparing project-ready talent through contin-
ued learning. The TalentNext Program engages professors in a
two-month intervention as part of the CSR and provides them
the necessary emerging technology skills training program.
Wipro-curated learning content is delivered through self-di-
rected modules, in-classroom modules, mini-project modules,
and assessment modules. Post this, they qualify as TalentNext
and pass it on to students. 250+ hours of anytime anywhere
hands-on focused learning creates industry-ready candidates.
Onboarding innovation at Wipro is ongoing. Wipro has a
crowdsourcing platform that hosts numerous learning assign-
ments and live project challenges with a crowd consisting of
1.2 million global users and Wipro employees. The company
wishes to extend this platform to its freshers with unique reward
offerings. Assimilating internship students through PPOs and
PPIs on a larger scale to get ready talent in large numbers is
another priority. A structured onboarding strategy helps, but
the baseline must always be to create warmth and make new
hires feel that they grow with the company, with their compe-
tence and diversified exposure and opportunities.
Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 17
 Personalization A
ccording to a study, the cost of replacing an entry-
level employee is 30-50 percent of the person’s annual
is the key to
salary. For mid-senior level employees, it can reach up
to 150-400 percent respectively. The study also found that a
new hire’s decision to stay with a company long-term is made
onboarding within the first six months of employment. Hence, it is crucial
to relook at our onboarding strategy. A strategic onboarding
success program offers you a platform to make an impression that stays
with new employees for the duration of their careers.
Help every new hire to learn quickly and An effective onboarding program can make or mar an
effectively, so as to deliver the defined employee experience and therein organizational performance,
outcomes and hence, onboarding must gain its due importance in the
talent strategy. It is fundamentally about mentally getting
new employees prepared for life at the new organization and
setting them up for success early on. Ideally, onboarding does
not start from the day the person joins, but from the day the
offer is made.
Given the scale of organizations today, it is crucial to design an
intuitive and effective organizational process - simplified, auto-
mated and paperless to the maximum extent possible. Some
of the critical activities that go into designing and delivering a
great onboarding experience at Philips are:
• Pre-onboarding: Background verification, manager connect,
Deepak Shetty buddy connect, etc. go a long way in building the employ-
Senior Director & Head er-employee bond.
HR , Philips Innovation • Day 1 and Day 2 onboarding: Form-filling, senior manager
Campus interactions about the company brand, history, business
strategy, leadership, culture, values, desired behaviors, etc.
New hires are eager to know what makes for successful
careers in the company.
• Post-hire role-based onboarding: A general business induc-
tion is followed by more intensive functional and role-
based trainings and core values trainings. For example,
mandatory people-manager training for employees in a
people-management role.
The onboarding program should thus, be a blend of general
and personalized modules, suited to bring out the best in new
hires.
18 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding
A good idea is to start this training on
campus, by establishing tie-ups with
vendors specialized in the same. This
approach can help make campus-hires
productive from Day 1.
Personalization is the key to onboarding success. For example,
freshers are used to a particular campus-lifestyle and hence,
need to adapt to a corporate environment as also learn special-
ized skills to get up to speed. Intensive training in technical and
soft skill areas through a 3-month campus-to-corporate boot
camp program ensures that freshers build a strong foundation
and are ready to start work in the business.
With the advent of new-age technologies like, Artificial Intelli-
gence, Machine Learning, we train campus hires on these tech-
nologies before assigning them a project. Through our boot-
camp program, we upskill our new hires on these technologies
by various mediums like online platforms, on-the-job training,
and classroom trainings delivered by our experts.
Lateral hires, having worked in other companies, are used to
a particular culture and hence need to understand their new
employer’s work practices, policies, cultural norms, etc. Hence,
they need not go through such boot camps but may need more
Business Onboarding with regards to their particular business
including technical understanding, architecture, etc.
An ideal timeframe for these activities is around 3-6 months to
enable people to assimilate completely for full productivity.
Hence, onboarding programs should be built so that employ-
ees can learn fast, as per their own pace and their skill levels.
This will not only help new hires build confidence and give a
jumpstart to their careers, but also help them assimilate well as
a happy and productive organizational asset.
 Onboarding:
Bringing vision
into reality
While the employee-employer relationship
begins with the acceptance of job offer,
the employee joins several weeks later.
In a digital economy, the time between
these two events plays a very important
role in strengthening this new relationship.
Therefore, onboarding at EXL begins with
the acceptance of job offer
Sanjay Dutt
Senior Vice President &
Global Head of Capability
Development, HR
Transformation & HRSS, EXL
O For building the best onboarding
nboarding has significant importance in bringing vision
into reality, both for the employee and the organiza-
program, it is essential to integrate
tion. Onboarding is critical to aligning new hires with
the strategic objectives, goals and the culture of the organi-
zation.
the latest tools and technologies with
An effective onboarding process should focus on three
outcomes:
desired cultural aspects to deliver an
everlasting onboarding experience
First, the new hires should get excited about the organization
they are joining, the team they will be a part of and their role.
Second, onboarding should result in a high degree of align- self-projects, sandbox iterations are modern means to make
ment with the organizational priorities. And third, new hires this happen. Learning must also be much more integrated and
should be productive at the end of the program. on-the-job so that employees can apply the concepts in real
life in their jobs. Using the right blend is important. For exam-
This is possible only with a well-designed onboarding program
ple, instructor-led training can be coupled with collaboration
which includes an intuitive pre-joining program that meets the
methods such as bringing together global experts through
information needs and expectations of new hires and delivers a
video conferences and virtual-classrooms, so that employees
world class joining experience.
quickly understand and learn things without needing to travel
Perhaps the biggest challenge is to deliver a highly person- to those locations. This new approach to onboarding will help
alized experience, especially in larger organizations that hire satisfy employees’ growing “need for information” and enable
hundreds of people a month spread across several locations. them to get it quickly, on call, and in their own time - a critical
Aligning and streamlining onboarding for such a large distrib- organizational asset.
uted workforce makes this even more challenging.
Onboarding has traditionally been limited merely to induction.
The pre-joining dropout rate can be reduced by educating It needs to be looked at through a new lens - it is the forma-
people about the organization and familiarizing them with its tion of the foundation of the employee-employer relationship
culture. In a world where segments have reduced to ‘one’, and performance in a company. Traditionally, this area has been
onboarding experience has to be customized to the expecta- underestimated and this needs to change. Onboarding must
evolve as not only an HR practice, but an overall organizational
tion of each new hire. For campus hires, a campus-to-corporate
practice.
program and an intense training program around areas such as
technical skills, leadership skills, behavioral skills, interpersonal
skills, can go a long way in bringing freshers up to speed from
Day 1.
Above all, onboarding should aim at building an emotional
connection through leadership meets, buddy system and other
people-processes through a structured approach coupled with
a personal touch. This cycle may last up to 60-90 days generally.
Self-learning, skills-calibration, focused learning and self-paced
learning (for people to take up learning as per their capabilities
and time schedules), online learning platforms, self-reading,
Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 19
 Customized A
t PwC, our purpose is ’to build trust in society and solve
important problems.’ All our efforts are continuously

learning program
directed towards achieving this. So, the way we initiate
a new joiner’s journey in PwC is no different. Our Onboarding
program is also a reflection of these efforts where we take our

to accelerate new joiners to a journey filled with experiential learning, creat-

ing a sense of pride and aspiration about PwC, creating a sense

learners’ of belongingness and most importantly, feeling cared for.

We understand that no matter at what stage of their profes-

engagement
Our learning interventions are customized
right from the time of joining the
organization so that our employees
can decide what they want to learn
Jagjit Singh
Chief People Officer,
PwC India
sional journey, the decision to join a new organization can be
overwhelming in the initial few days. Therefore, we start our
onboarding program even before a new joiner enters our
offices. Throughout, the focus is on helping new joiners:
• Build an awareness of what PwC is and what impact we
aspire to make through our work (our legacy and Purpose),
• Understand about our lines of services (business orienta-
tion) and focus areas, know and understand the leadership
so that they can actively participate in our growth journey
(leadership engagement),
• Understand how they are cared for through our policies
and initiatives (flexibility program, D&I, R&R, wellness)
• learn about what makes a person successful at PwC and
how they can become leaders of the future (PwC Profes-
sional competencies), and
• Develop an understanding of things that matter most to
us at PwC – our Values, always being ethical and doing the
right thing (Ethics and Business conduct) and giving back
to the society (Corporate Responsibility).
The first window inside PwC is our onboarding portal, ‘Look
Inside’ which is a pre-hiring platform. This platform is helping
the offer holders and new hires understand the organization’s
culture, values, work-life balance opportunities, organizational
goals and other details that could help them adapt to the
organization better.
In the initial days of a new joiner’s journey, there is increased
focus on learning from peers and leaders who have been there
before; our buddy program makes tenured employees respon-
sible for helping the new joiners familiarize with the business
& firm (besides completing the administrative tasks) and break
the ice with the team. We have seen these relationships foster
a cordial working culture even after the buddy program ends.
We also conduct “Connect” program (2-day formal classroom
session) one month post joining for every new joiner where they
get to meet joiners from other lines of services. There are peri-
odic pulse surveys conducted to ensure that the new joiners are
getting comfortably assimilated in the firm.
Our learning interventions are customized right from the time
of joining the organization so that our employees can decide
what they want to learn. Our learning platform showcased the
various online/ classroom/ web-based training program availa-
ble for every employee and customized as per individual devel-
opment needs based on the PwC Professional framework. We
also run a separate campus program through PwC University
where we train people on specialized skillsets – both job-based
We have a Talent Link portal which
promotes skill/ competency transfer
across various PwC network firms. On
this portal, employees can build their
profile, showcase their experience
and any territory which requires
those niche skillsets can reach out for
an international opportunity to the
individual

20 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding

and soft skilling while giving them a chance to interact with the
larger teams.

Finally, we also accept that all these tools can only be success-
ful if they are utilized in the right manner in a culture that is
enabling. To do that, our leaders are expected to have authen-
tic career conversations, are invested in the success of their
teams, provide real-time feedback for development and take
care of everyone’s wellbeing. Since the success or failure of
our initiatives depends on genuine human interactions, most
of our efforts are directed on ensuring that we evangelize this
message throughout the firm.

One of our biggest strengths as an organization is our global

footprint and therefore, for all our people, creating your The underlying principle for us in
network within the firm is paramount to achieving success.
We instill this message from Day 1 when we assign a buddy driving our onboarding program
to every single new joiner. The relationships made during the
initial few days keep people in good stead throughout their
is to drive an enhanced digital
career with PwC and even beyond (through Alumni connects). experience for the new joiner’s
We also make sure that we support every new joiner in familiar-
izing them with their team and manager.
pre and post orientation. The
various digital avenues are being
We have a Talent Link portal which promotes skill/ compe-
tency transfer across various PwC network firms. On this portal, utilized to support our millennial
employees can build their profile, showcase their experience
and any territory which requires those niche skillsets can reach
population which forms more than
out for an international opportunity to the individual. 82% of PwC India
Finally, the underlying principle for us in driving our onboarding
program is to drive an enhanced digital experience for the new
joiner’s pre and post orientation. The various digital avenues
are being utilized to support our millennial population which
forms more than 82% of PwC India. This also aligns with our
focus to become a technology-enabled firm and helps people
orient themselves in that direction from the very first day.

Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 21

22 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding
About People Matters
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Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding 23

24 Trends & Best Practices in Onboarding
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