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The sooner a new hire is settled, the sooner they can begin their work.
The same way that onboarding new customers makes them feel at home with your bank, onboarding staff members can make them feel comfortable on the team. Getting a newly hired loan officer settled in quickly is all about giving them the tools they need to start doing their job. The better the onboarding process goes for the employee, the happier they are in the company. In fact, employees who go through a structured orientation program are up to 69% more likely to be with the same company three years later. That makes for a sound investment in human capital.
To ensure that your new hires are happy and quickly settled, here are 5 tips to boost the onboarding process at banks and credit unions.
- Work with IT
A smooth onboarding process for a bank or credit union takes coordination from HR, key team members, and IT. Though some managers forget about IT until the last minute, thanks to cybersecurity considerations, the technical aspect plays an important part in getting settled at financial institutions. Access to sensitive customer data is a highly controlled and regulated part of the finance industry. Banks and credit unions have complex systems that review authorizations at every access point. Be sure to work with IT well ahead of your new loan officer’s start date so they can access work software without any glitches. So much of bank and credit union officers’ work relies on digital systems these days. The more a new loan officer can see their daily work environments on screen, the better they will capture job orientation instructions.
- Integration with Key Team Members
Integrating new hires into the company culture is an important part of helping new hires fit in quickly. Beyond introducing them around at the all-staff meeting, schedule 30-minute meetings with key team members so they can get to know each other in the first weeks. Make sure to include instructions on the agenda for current team member to explain the scope of their work and how they interacted with the new person’s predecessor. Getting to know key people one-on-one will help the new employee move effectively within the company sooner.
- The Right Amount of Structure
The first week for a new hire is critical. If you schedule every free moment with training, they are likely to feel overwhelmed. If you leave their time unstructured, they will feel aimless and unproductive. The right amount of structure is a combination of scheduled time and free time to complete tasks at their leisure.
- Take Cues from Their Personal Work Style
Be clear about the individual and group activities they are expected to attend. Make them a calendar and give them a checklist of new hire tasks so they can make use of their unstructured time. Given time to themselves, watch to see what they do to naturally fit in. Do they visit their neighbors and introduce themselves or stay in their office waiting for visitors? This is a good way to gauge how much a new loan officer will need you to step in.
- Go High-Tech
If your bank or credit union is interested in increasing their ability to retain quality employees, consider investing in robotic process automation (RPA) onboarding. RPA is a high-tech solution that streamlines system authorizations. Instead of jumping through multiple hoops with IT, this automated onboarding technology allows a new user to enter verified access information once. The RPA solution uses that data for all the ancillary platforms, making sure the system recognizes, creates, and authorizes the new user’s profile in every company platform.
A process that used to take hours is completed in minutes and eliminates the roadblocks that typically cause frustration in those first days. Long available to commercial enterprise, RPA onboarding was recently developed specifically for the mortgage industry. With all the security compliance of modern financial institutions, this new option reduces onboarding time and headaches at the same time.
The proper onboarding process, will shape the long-term attitudes and behaviors that each new staff member brings to the team. This starting point affects the development of your team dynamics and is a crucial time to make sure things run smoothly. Once a new loan officer can focus on their daily work instead of being stuck in orientation mode, everyone benefits. The new hire feels settled with their team and they can begin to work as an efficient and seamless part of the company.
Do you need better integrated systems with quality cybersecurity solutions? Check out ABT to find out more about software developed specifically for banks, credit unions, and mortgage companies.
Image: Unsplash
