Chapter 1: Reduce Onboarding Overload

Smart ways to streamline and simplify

Challenge #1:

Everything, everywhere, all at once

Onboarding overload is the first, and potentially greatest, challenge faced by new employees. It happens when companies overwhelm employees with too much information in too little time.

A 2023 report found that 81 percent of surveyed employees felt overwhelmed by information shared during their company’s onboarding process—and this percentage will likely grow. Increasing job complexity and the constant influx of new technologies mean that new hires have more to learn than ever before. From evolving company policies to sophisticated AI-driven tools, the learning curve is steep.

The result? Employees struggle to absorb and apply what they need to know, ultimately slowing their path to productivity. In the following pages, discover solutions to simplify and streamline the onboarding process for both employees and managers.

Solution #1: Space out e-learning materials

Frequent meetings aren’t time- or cost-effective, which is why live onboarding tends to frontload learning all at once. Online programs don't have this constraint. Here are a few ways to boost ramp-up times by strategically spacing onboarding e-learning materials.

Send an electronic pre-boarding packet

Get low-lift onboarding tasks out of the way before a new hire starts. Send new hire documents, gather electronic signatures, or assign an online course introducing the company’s mission, vision, and values.

Develop an onboarding drip campaign

Instead of having one giant onboarding course, try breaking it up into a series of shorter full-length or microlearning courses. Separate courses by learning goals.

Add quick-access job aids

Make it easy for employees to quickly revisit training at a later time by adding quick-reference job aids—e.g., interactive checklists, flashcards, clickable Q&As, and short video demos.

Articulate learning paths help you create stepping stones in the onboarding journey. Use this feature to organize multiple courses in a single collection or guided curriculum for learners.

While it’s important to get your new hire ramped up and productive quickly, you also need to make sure you provide on-the-job training in a manageable flow.”

Ben Peterson, CEO of BambooHR

Solution #2: Lighten the cognitive load

Make onboarding materials easier for employees to digest with the following digital strategies.

Unlock course navigation for self-paced learning

Self-paced learning enables employees to fit onboarding into their schedules without disrupting daily tasks, minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity. Employees can accelerate training by focusing on the areas where they need improvement and skipping past the content they already know.

Consider adding a progress tracker to help keep new hires oriented and motivated in self-paced onboarding courses, like this example template.

Create a digital repository

New hires often struggle to keep track of what resources exist and where they live. Make it easier by organizing digital onboarding materials in one easy-to-access place, such as an e-learning course library or intranet site. For better searchability, create course titles that clearly indicate learning takeaways.

Break up text with media or click-to-reveal content

Avoid overwhelming new hires with a wall of text. Multimedia elements like videos, images, infographics, bullet points, and interactive click-to-reveal content make information more engaging and easier to absorb.

The following GIF shows how easy it is to do this using Articulate’s AI Assistant.

Articulate’s AI Assistant allows you to instantly convert text paragraphs into interactive elements. It can also quickly generate images in the style of your choice.

Solution #3: Reduce manager overload

Employees aren’t the only ones feeling the heat from increased job demands. 50 percent of managers report experiencing burnout. With so much on their plates, employee onboarding tasks can easily slip through the cracks.

This poses a serious issue, considering that employees are 3.4 times more likely to report a positive onboarding experience when managers are actively involved.

That’s why manager enablement is crucial. On the next page, explore three steps to promote and streamline manager involvement for better onboarding outcomes.

Streamline manager involvement in three steps

1. Identify

Map the onboarding journey from the manager's perspective. What main steps and touchpoints require their involvement?

2. Create

Create short digital resources to support managers at each of these touchpoints.

3. Automate

Set up automated, just-in-time reminders that “nudge” managers with the right resource at the right moment.

For example:

Near the time that managers need to make team and company introductions, you might automate the reminder: