It’s coming into the busiest time of year for hospitality, especially pubs and bars. Your bar staff have been working extra shifts, they’re fatigued, it’s just the right time to recruit a new casual bartender.
The jobs market is super competitive, it takes some time, and likely more than you had wanted to pay, but you finally find a suitable candidate, Jacob and offer him the job. You’ve been so busy getting the business back on track that you haven’t had time to reach out to Jacob. “That’s ok, I’ll catch up with him when he starts and get the ball rolling on all the required paperwork”, you think to yourself, “just no time to chase for that stuff now”.
Jacob’s first day comes around, and he’s a no-show! He accepted another job at a pub that started the onboarding process as soon as he accepted their offer. He commented that the experience was professional, he felt a part of the team immediately and it gave him peace of mind that he’d be scheduled from day one, paid accurately, and on time.
Staff shortages in the UK hospitality sector are well publicised. At its peak in December, there were 7.8 positions open per 100 hospitality jobs, according to the Office for National Statistics — the highest level on record. This fell slightly to 7.5 per cent in March, but hospitality vacancies are still higher than any other industry, with an estimated 164,000 posts unfilled.
So it’s never been more important for businesses, especially hospitality, to attract great staff by upping their new-starter onboarding game.
What exactly is ‘onboarding’ you ask?
The onboarding process begins as soon as a candidate accepts a position. It involves the manager requesting, and the new hire providing, various details and documents for compliance or legal requirements, including payroll purposes. Relevant workplace information that helps the new team member to get settled faster, such asemployee handbooks and training modules, can also be shared during this process.
By removing the headache of constantly chasing up the long list of tasks on your onboarding checklist ahead of time, you free up your new team members on the first day to focus on more meaningful things like getting to know the team, interacting with customers and learning more about the job.
Research by Brandon Hall Group found that organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent.
The stakes are high to make a good first impression.
Now you’ve lost Jacob, you’re thinking ‘there has to be a better way’
You’re not the only one. Many of our customers shared that they use manual pen and paper in the onboarding process, and have an inconsistent approach to communicating with new hires — a combination of email, text, phone calls, and WhatsApp messages. They found they were spending hours chasing missing, inaccurate, or incomplete information, resulting in new employees not being able to start on time or get paid quickly enough. Or in Jacob's case, not starting at all.
Our customers also shared that they were consciously looking to minimise the number of tech solutions they use to run their business.
Introducing Deputy’s new and improved Employee Onboarding
As well as capturing basic details like bank account, P45s and National Insurance, managers will now be able to:
request an employee upload any documents they require, for example driver’s licence, from any device and straight into the employee's new Deputy profile
share important documents with employees, like an Employee Handbook or Code of Conduct, and request the new hires signature or acknowledgement
create templates for frequently used forms like Employment Contracts to standardise the agreements that are in place for full-time, part-time and casual workers and reduce ambiguity around entitlements - new hires can review these contracts and digitally sign within Deputy, from any device
track and manage the status of each of the items mentioned above, so you’re not cursing yourself for missing an important step in the onboarding process
ask custom onboarding questions, like "What size uniform do you require?''
As a manager, you will love our new streamlined paperless onboarding feature — it will save you hours in fiddly admin, and take the stress out of onboarding new hires. The Boathouse Group have tested it out and here’s how Simon described the change it made for them:
"With Deputy, you can get through all the onboarding paperwork on Tuesday, and include them on the pay run the very next day"
Bruce and Luke's Coffee also rate the product. "We love the feature. The admin time, equipment saved will be worth it alone. This feature will also empower mangers to take ownership of onboarding completely removing reliance on other party's speeding up the process," says Bruce Brown, Company Director.
The fact that all employee documents and details are stored securely in one place, and in one workflow, that both you and your new team member can see, as opposed to somewhere in a filing cabinet, will give you enormous peace of mind and build trust with your new team member from day 1.
Maybe you could even call Jacob back and try your luck again with the new Employee Onboarding experience.
See for yourself the difference paperless onboarding can make.
You can try out our Employee Onboarding feature by starting a 30-day free trial. If you’re already a customer, read this helpful guideon how to use this feature.
