4 use cases for AI in employee onboarding

3 benefits of using AI in employee onboarding

Using AI for employee onboarding can help improve HR operations. Here are a few ways.

1. Reducing new hire paperwork

AI can identify which forms the new employee must fill out based on their job title and location, which ensures the new worker doesn't complete unnecessary paperwork.

AI can also generate recommendations for a new employee based on their office location. These could include nearby restaurants to visit for lunch or the most convenient parking options. AI can also automatically add a note from the new employee's department head to personalize the employee's welcome.

2. Improving employee paperwork

Once a new employee has filled out their forms, AI can check employee paperwork to confirm that the data appears to be complete and accurate.

AI can also recommend that a new employee add certain optional information, such as a brief profile that can help their co-workers become better acquainted with the employee and their interests.

3. Facilitating employee training

AI can help improve a new employee's learning experience. For example, a company chatbot can answer questions for the new hire when the employee is learning the software. These tools can make the learning process go more quickly for the new hire, leading to improved employee productivity.

However, HR staff must ensure that the tools are supplying accurate information. A new employee will stop using a chatbot if it continually gives incorrect answers, and the chatbot could negatively affect the employee's training if the chatbot is telling the employee wrong information.

4 use cases for AI in employee onboarding

AI is most helpful for employee onboarding in some specific scenarios. Here are several.

1. New hire setup

HR must set up a new employee in the company's HR information system, which the new employee then uses to complete forms and provide required data. Often, HR staff must manually choose the correct onboarding package for the new hire based on the employee's home address and must reenter the employee's data at various points in the onboarding process.

AI and automation can eliminate the need to reenter data and can automatically assign the right onboarding package to a new hire based on the employee's data. These capabilities eliminate steps for HR staff.

2. Automated reminders for new hires

New employees must complete various forms and courses, and some new hires may lose track of deadlines or forget to fill out certain required paperwork.

AI can remind new hires that a deadline for a particular training course is approaching or create a to-do list for a new employee if the worker feels overwhelmed by their onboarding tasks.

3. Summaries of employee performance data

A new hire who is managing other employees needs to get acquainted quickly with their direct reports' performance data. AI can summarize employees' performance information and save time for the new manager.

However, AI may not include certain information in its performance summaries, so the new manager should manually review employee data as well to make sure they're not missing important context.

4. Summaries of onboarding data

One or more employees in HR are often responsible for tracking the completion of onboarding tasks and may track the effectiveness of the onboarding process as well.

AI can summarize onboarding data to make this analysis easier. For example, an AI summary may note that 70% of new employees in the last year were late submitting their onboarding paperwork. HR staff can then decide how to improve this metric.

Eric St-Jean is an independent consultant with a particular focus on HR technology, project management and Microsoft Excel training and automation. He writes about numerous business and technology areas.