How to Onboard Your Employees, Customers, and Partners Using an LMS

Onboarding training lays the groundwork for future success in your organization and business growth. By building and developing a strong team and setting them up for success, you’ll see impactful results. Creating impactful onboarding workflows requires a clear knowledge of your team and predetermined learning objectives. Whether your onboarding training program serves the purpose of bringing new hires up to speed on company processes and policies, or it exists to provide partners with in-depth knowledge about your products, you need the right technology for onboarding training.

An LMS platform enables companies to distribute boundaryless training to every audience type from a single system. With an LMS, learning and development processes are streamlined and efficient. This means faster delivery of onboarding materials and, as a result, teams that are equipped more rapidly.

What is onboarding training?

Onboarding training is the process of providing knowledge and information for key stakeholders within an organization, including employees, partners, and customers. An onboarding training program is a strategic initiative through which companies equip their network. It requires a set of initial courses that introduce stakeholders to the company, its products, and its mission. Onboarding training can be conducted online, in person, or with a hybrid program.

Benefits of onboarding training

The benefits of an onboarding training program are numerous, from improving retention and engagement to extending the reach of your brand. With an onboarding training program, companies can deliver essential learning and knowledge so that teams can be more effective.

Here are a handful of benefits of onboarding training:

With an onboarding training program, you can set clear expectations and goals for your team members so that they know what is required of them at work.
Onboarding training streamlines a new hire’s first few days at work and provides a clear path forward.
For partners and customers, onboarding training clarifies the company’s mission, vision, and products.
Onboarding training is an effective way to distribute baseline product knowledge that will be essential for any stakeholder to know before they can begin work.
Onboarding training can improve job performance.
Effective onboarding training programs increase employee engagement and satisfaction by reducing workplace stress, communicating clear objectives, and equipping team members to be successful in their roles.
Onboarding training increases productivity by ensuring that basic knowledge needs are met before employees get to work, reducing productivity delays caused by searches for information about products or processes.

Employee onboarding training

Perhaps the most well-known form of onboarding training is employee onboarding training. Depending on the company, this can take different forms. Some companies may choose to conduct extensive onboarding programs with multiple courses about the company, its culture, values, and even job-specific certifications or responsibilities. Other companies may prefer to provide high-level employee onboarding training and save other learning initiatives for later periods in the employee’s tenure at the company.

Some onboarding training examples include:

Company culture training
An overview of the organization and its different teams
Processing of essential files, forms, and documents
Information about pay and benefits
Breakdowns of company processes
Company policies about safety, workplace harassment, etc.
Introduction to workplace tools, technology, and facilities

An onboarding training program should last a few days, at the very least, but it can also be an ongoing process. We’ll dive into best practices later in this article.

Why do customers and partners need to be onboarded?

With so much focus on employee onboarding training, some companies forget that partners and customers need to be onboarded as well. These partner and customer onboarding training programs will look different from employee onboarding training. While it may still be beneficial to provide high-level training about the company and its culture and customers, partner training should include information that helps customers and partners succeed alongside your company.

Partners need onboarding training so that they can sell more effectively and distribute products with greater authority. One example of partner onboarding training would be the use of a specific product. For a company that manufactures a specific mechanical tool or piece of equipment, a course that breaks down the makeup of the tool and how it should be used makes an effective onboarding training course.

Onboarding training best practices

To create an onboarding training program that yields results, there are a few best practices to follow.

Set the tone with preboarding.

Before launching into highly detailed courses, get the administrative side of things sorted out first. Create profiles for new team members within company systems, specifically the learning management system, and gather all essential documentation. Preboarding is a great time to informally introduce new team members or partners to other stakeholders that they will work with regularly.

Showcase the company and its values.

Whether you’re training new employees or new partners, the first order of business with onboarding training should be to showcase the company as a whole and highlight its values. This is key for retention, both from the employee side and the customer side, and helps build trust with new stakeholders. You can do this by providing digital learning courses about the company’s history, its values, or its organizational structure.

Enable new team members to learn on their own time.

Onboarding training can get overwhelming, even if your company has devised the best strategy possible. Make it easy for your stakeholders to learn at their own pace and in their own time. Determine learning pathways and objectives that must be met in the early stages of onboarding training. Provide team members with a digital LMS software for onboarding so that they can access training when it works for them and refer back to learning materials as needed.

Make onboarding training part of a longer, ongoing training program.

This might sound counterintuitive, but this is the most essential part of onboarding training. Team members need opportunities to learn new skills, refresh their training, and gain cross-departmental knowledge to thrive in their careers. Onboarding training should be their first learning experience in a long line of learning opportunities.

LMS features that help with onboarding

A digital LMS is the best platform for onboarding training. Here are the LMS features that make onboarding more effective.

LMS rapid-authoring tool

ExpertusONE’s rapid LMS authoring tool enables training managers to add interactive, engaging elements to courses so that learners stay engaged with training for the entire duration of the course.

LMS mobile app

With an LMS mobile app, learners using the ExpertusONE platform can train anytime and anywhere, ensuring that they are onboarded promptly and given the flexibility that they need to thrive at work.

Live meetings

The ExpertusONE LMS offers a live meetings feature so that learners can engage with managers and other stakeholders to further their knowledge, make meaningful work connections, or participate in coaching sessions.

LMS reporting and analytics

Your onboarding program is only as successful as the data says it is. LMS reporting and analytics are critical parts of a successful onboarding program. Learn which courses are resonating with your learners and which pieces of information they are struggling with, and adapt accordingly.

Gamification on an LMS

Need to incentivize your learners? LMS gamification can help. Add badges, achievements, and a leaderboard to your training platform so that your learners feel a sense of healthy competition as they engage in training.

Ready to learn more about using the ExpertusONE enterprise LMS for onboarding training? Contact us today for a free demo.