5 Amazing Ways to Make Onboarding Training More Fun and Engaging

Warm welcomes pave the foundation for lasting relationships. The same goes for your employees. An engaging onboarding experience is the first step to a long-lasting relationship with your team. Studies suggest that most new hires decide to stay with you or leave within the first few weeks of their joining.

Don’t confuse onboarding with orientation. As onboarding is not an event but a process. Good onboarding is about making a person feel welcomed and tracking their growth. This growth can be tracked at specific intervals like 30 days to 60 days, to up to 90 days. To understand their accomplishments in a broader sphere.

Let’s talk about ways to make your employee’s onboarding training more engaging.

5 ways to Make the Onboarding Training Engaging

1. Use the Power of Storytelling

Stories have always fascinated human beings. They are about overcoming conflicts and making the protagonist win. And human beings are wired in such a way that they want to look for solutions. They are curious to know what happens next and feel restless till the time the protagonist is not able to reach the goal. That is the reason stories with sad endings make us feel unsettled.

In corporate training, narratives can be woven around possible on-the-job scenarios, which can be presented as role-plays and case studies. Here stories can be created around relatable characters who run into possible issues while doing a particular task. Such narratives help inculcate problem-solving skills among participants.

2. Incorporate Microlearning for the Rescue 

Being overwhelmed with information will only stress the new recruits. Make sure to integrate microlearning nuggets into the training programme. Your training programme should be a space for a smooth flow of information and not a space where everyone is stressed over understanding large amounts of information.

With bite-sized modules, employees can be introduced to fundamental concepts with something as brief as a 5-minute short video. Also, they can carry the module along and watch a video or study an infographic at their convenience.

This way, participants who are not that tech-savvy won’t feel hesitant to interact with these modules. As it won’t take them much time to access the content. This encourages them to use technology and feel at par with others.

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3. Make Collaboration the Key

When it comes to achieving big goals, collaboration is the key. A healthy work atmosphere will only strive if there is a healthy collaboration among employees. This is not just limited to clarifying queries and giving process knowledge. To start with, you don’t need anything fancy, make it engaging by dividing them into groups and playing some ice-breaking games. This may sound cliché, but strong relationships start with quick talks. Interactive games and group activities are surely going to make the process more interactive.

In case of onboarding a remote team, assign them tasks in groups. For a virtual instructor-led training session, let the participants share ideas through break-out rooms. You can also set up polls and open discussion channels. The crux is to make the team members comfortable with each other.

4. Make it all Game

Games are a set of challenges that must be solved to reach a specific goal. Those challenges may seem simple, but if you are a gamer, you will know there is nothing simple about them. The only reason why a gamer keeps playing a game for hours and keeps improving at it is because of the way those challenges are laid out. Similarly, gamification in corporate training works amazing.

Games can also be designed in a challenging way for more engagement. Some examples are text-heavy modules to be presented with graphics as a drag-and-drop activity. This can work very well where product knowledge needs to be imparted. Where instead of telling the participant which tool to use for a particular task. Participants can be asked which is the right tool among a choice of few (4 to 5) tools. These games can be made more interesting by adding an element of time restriction to them.

5. Be Quick to Support

Everyone needs support, and when in a new atmosphere, employees don’t walk in with the knowledge of the culture of your organization. They might be equipped with a skill but not with what is expected from them at each level. In such a situation, they may feel alienated for a while. Introducing the buddy system can be your best bet there.

Pairing them with a buddy can help them come out of the hesitation of a newbie. With a buddy by their side, they may feel more comfortable to ask questions which they might otherwise disregard as stupid because they were not that open to walk up to their managers directly.

Also, buddies can work closely with these recruits and personalize their approach towards the needs of the individual. This creates a supportive network and opens a channel for communication.

A Quick Recap

The right onboarding experience can give you the benefit of creating a positive rapport with your team. Small things like providing training at regular intervals and regular team interactions can go a long way. What is important is that the employees should not feel abandoned after a big day of induction.

An open communication can make the recruits understand the work culture better. They understand what is expected from them and what are the opportunities for them to grow. This can help you form a long-term relationship with them.

With changing work dynamics, training needs are changing too. To make sure you understand the onboarding needs of your millennial workforce. Download our eBook to get expert insights.