New employee onboarding today is associated with growing challenges in terms of knowledge transfer and information sharing. The increasing amount of data is accompanied by a dwindling overview in many companies. In addition to advancing digitization, lockdowns have also fueled this development: Many teams have had to change their working methods overnight and continue to work in a decentralized manner, usually combined with the use of new IT tools. This has created a large amount of additional data. New employees also suddenly had to be trained and supervised by remote guidance. This trend is likely to continue in the "new work world" even after the pandemic measures have come to an end.
As a result of all these developments, the learning curve that new employees must master is becoming increasingly steep. In addition to instruction on their immediate tasks, they therefore need further support on how to behave in certain situations. This includes, for example, questions about rules that apply in the company when dealing with IT, IT security, notifications to a works council or with the ordering of mobile devices.
Furthermore, modern workplaces require increasingly networked work. To master their work sufficiently well, new employees must also get to know and understand processes in neighboring departments and the tasks of colleagues - at least to some extent.
In addition, more and more employees are changing jobs due to the flexibilization of the working world. As a result, they leave the company more frequently and take valuable knowledge with them in their heads. This knowledge is rarely documented centrally, but rather scattered throughout the company in bits and pieces, making it difficult for new employees to find.
This can be counterproductive, especially when it comes to onboarding of digital natives, who now make up an increasingly large proportion of the workforce. Since this group of workers has grown up in the information age, uncomplicated access to information is a given for them and crucial to the success of their onboarding.
All of this goes to show that a lack of data and information can unnecessarily complicate the integration of new employees into the company. And this increases the risk that the onboarding process will take a longer time and be more expensive than planned. In the worst case, it can even fail and lead to dissatisfaction, lack of motivation, and even quitting.
Despite the challenges outlined above, many companies have not yet made a serious attempt to systematize and centrally organize access to their data. Data resides in silos and is stored and kept in various locations throughout the enterprise.
If users want to gain access to data, in many cases they must use different applications with different user interfaces and search for information in them. This involves unnecessary work, waiting times and the risk of overlooking important information or simply not knowing that this information even exists.
On the technical side, enterprise search systems provide a remedy for the problems described above. Modern enterprise search solutions offer a uniform and central search access to data from various internal and external sources. This can be reports, presentations, emails, social media posts, data on file shares or in the intranet, as well as video and audio files. The connection to the search engine is made via so-called connectors.
The search for information can be tailored to the needs of individual employees. Authorizations that ensure the best possible confidentiality and security of data are also considered. With AI, a central search ensures that new employees also find the information relevant to them in context at the top of the hit list or even in a Knowledge Graph, which further augments the knowledge from the hit list.
In addition, important data can be prepared for new employees in clear cockpits. This makes it easier for them to familiarize themselves with the system and enables them to focus on value-adding tasks and become productive in a timely manner.
