The Best Employee Onboarding Software For New Hires [2023]

Here’s a riddle for you:

What involves legions of paperwork...
Hours of straining to remember passwords...
Heaps of fumbling with unfamiliar computer systems...
And an embarrassingly large number of forgotten coworker names?

Yep, you guessed it, the joys of employee onboarding from the perspective of your new hires.

Truth is, many employees find the onboarding process uninspiring. For example, Gallup found that just 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a stellar job of onboarding new employees.

So, with 88% of new workers unimpressed by their experience, there has to be a better way to onboard new hires, right?

Enter employee onboarding software.

Good onboarding software enhances the employee orientation and employee onboarding process by creating a fast, streamlined, and valuable experience for both you and your new hires. 

Your onboarding software essentially lays the foundation from which the rest of your onboarding experience is built. 

And as renowned chef Martin Yan put it; ’You can do almost anything with soup stock, it's a strong foundation. When you have the right foundation, everything tastes good.’

To that end, we spent hours scouring the web to put together the definitive list of the best employee onboarding software as we get ready to enter 2023.

If you’re time-pressed and want to launch right into the action, feel free to skip ahead to the reviews right away:

• Helpjuice
• Scribe
• Continu
• Zelt
• BambooHR
• Talmundo
• Eddy 
• Zenefits
• Click Boarding
• CakeHR
• FactoHR
• Kin
• Lessonly
• Trello

If you’d like to learn more about why employee onboarding is important, why software should be part of your employee onboarding best practices, and how to choose the right software for your business, then buckle up and let’s get going!

Why Good Employee Onboarding is Important

“Look,
If you had
One-shot
Or one opportunity
To keep the employees you always wanted
In one moment
Would you capture it
Or just let it slip?...”

While we’re not sure that Eminem is an expert on customer onboarding, his (slightly edited) intro to ‘Lose Yourself’ serves as a fantastic reminder for HR departments around the world about the importance of onboarding for employee retention.

See, employee onboarding is a prime opportunity to win the hearts and minds of your new hires. It’s the perfect window to impart your organization's culture and can make a real difference to how those fresh faces feel about your company.

Without good onboarding, you risk losing your new staff quickly. In fact, Digitate found that employees who had a poor onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for other career opportunities in the near future.

(Source)

And as if losing staff wasn’t already demoralizing enough, the ensuing turnover costs can wreak havoc on your bottom line. 

Glassdoor reported that the average US employer spends $4,000 and takes 24 days to hire a new worker. 

That means if your employee decides to give the slip, your hiring costs could effectively be doubled. And that’s not even counting the loss of productivity.

The good news is that when you do employee onboarding well, you can replace most of these pesky statistics with much more encouraging ones. 

(Source)

The benefits of a successful employee onboarding process has the power to seriously boost the engagement, satisfaction, retention, and productivity of your workers.  For example:

• Glassdoor found that organizations with great onboarding increase new hire retention by 82% and boost productivity by more than 70%.
• BambooHR reported that employees who felt their onboarding was effective were 18x more likely to feel committed to their organization.
• What’s more, The Society for Human Resource Management showed that almost 70% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for at least 3 years if they experienced great onboarding.

(Source)

So, the evidence is clear; when you get employees aligned with your mission, engaged with their work, and invested in your company for the long haul, they’ll be happier and you’ll find it easier to achieve the success you’re looking for.

How Can HR Onboarding Solutions Help?

Traditionally onboarding is riddled with inefficiencies. But great employee onboarding software is helping HR departments and hiring managers to reduce their workload and better handle the needs of their new hires.

Here’s how:

1. Less Heavy Lifting, More Onboarding

Whereas old-school onboarding involved oodles of manual work such as filling out and filing drab forms, employee onboarding software removes the bulk of the heavy lifting. 

This gives HR teams more time to focus on the stuff that really matters such as face-to-face contact and providing new hires with what they need to succeed.

2. All Your Information in One Place

No more mucking about trying to find an employee agreement that was stashed away three years ago.

Employee onboarding software centralizes all of your information into one secure location so it’s never more than just a few clicks away. Not only that, but it makes mother nature a solid by removing paper waste from the equation.

3. A More Consistent Experience

How do you know if your new hires are covering all of the aspects of your employee onboarding process?

Onboarding software streamlines and standardizes the process, which increases compliance, saves mountains of time, and ensures everyone gets the same valuable employee experience.

4. Increased Productivity From Day One

Flip the onboarding script from being a process that new hires have to endure to a process they’re actively involved in. Self-service capabilities mean that new hires can undertake onboarding before they ever set foot in the office. That means faster settling in a shorter time to reach full productivity.

How To Choose The Best Employee Onboarding Software

So you need an onboarding system but you’re not sure where to start.

Don’t worry, in this section, we’ll lay out what you need to consider to make the best decision for your business.

1. Start With The End in Mind

Things work best when you know what you’re trying to achieve. So, write down the main objectives you want to reach by using an employee onboarding tool.

Perhaps you want to slash the costs of manually updating information. Maybe you’re looking to speed up the time to competency for new employees. Whatever you hope to achieve, knowing what you want will help you decide the best onboarding software for you.

2. Determine How Much You Want to Spend

Different onboarding systems come at varying prices. In addition, lots of them have different payment models: some are subscription-based, some are pay per user while others are quote-based.

So, knock heads with the finance team and settle on a budget. Then rank the types of payment-models in order of preference from most desirable to least desirable.

3. Identify The Features You Need

Using your goals as a guide, identify which features will give you the power to achieve them. 

Some tools come with a myriad of features that you won’t use but will pay for. So, zero in on must-have features that’ll directly help you reach your goals and cross anything else off the list.

4. Think About Integration

If you’re using other HR software, such as an employee portal or HRIS system, you may want to look for onboarding solutions that can integrate with your overall HR software ecosystem. 

Seamless integration reduces the stress of having to navigate between multiple apps and helps create a consistent user interface for a better onboarding experience.

5. Consider Installation

Depending on the size of your organization, the time frame to implement a new onboarding software can vary greatly. 

Software vendors might be able to offer larger companies a dedicated implementation consultant to manage the roll-out. 

For smaller businesses, vendors might offer an out of the box cloud-based solutions that can be implemented in a few simple steps.

6. Make Sure It’s Easy to Use

This one seems obvious, but user-friendliness is key. The last thing you want to do is add complexity to the very process you’re trying to simplify. Skip software that’s going to frustrate you and your new employees by asking vendors for a free trial.

Ok, we’re making awesome progress here! Putting all this information together should leave you in a much stronger position to determine the best onboarding solution for your needs.

So without further ado, let’s jump into the top employee onboarding software solutions you should think about using for 2023 and beyond.

The Best Employee Onboarding Software Solutions for 2023

Below are some of the best tools available to effectively and efficiently bring new employees on board, while providing a positive experience for new hires and helping them to get up to speed quickly and start contributing to the organization.

1. Helpjuice

Helpjuice's cloud-based knowledge base software lets you centralize all your onboarding documents in a single, organized place. 

"We are an engineering company and regularly bring on student interns in the summer. We needed a place to save training videos, company standards, and how-to articles to help onboard our new employees. With Helpuice's knowledge base software, we have been able to make all of our company resources available to all employees in a searchable way, allowing them to get up to speed quickly. We estimate that we've saved around 40 hours per employee during the onboarding process with Helpjuice." - Jeremy Dye, Engineer, Epic Engineering

One of Helpjuice's key features is its Google-like search which makes it easy for users to find the information they're looking for when they need it. This allows new hires to self-serve during the onboarding process so that they can learn at their own pace.

Plus, the software’s analytics capabilities help you filter data and improve your onboarding process through valuable insights and actionable data.

Highlights:

• Incredibly easy to use
• Powerful analytics
• Complete customization
• Google-like search

Ready to see how Helpjuice can help your organization improve its new employee onboarding process? Get started today by signing up for a free 14-day trial (no credit card required).

2. Scribe 

Scribe is a tool that streamlines the process for creating employee onboarding documents and makes it easy for new hires to find out how to do their jobs. 

It’s a Chrome extension or desktop app that captures a workflow you want to document and turns it into step-by-step instructions and screenshots. For HR teams and hiring managers, gone are the days of pasting screenshots into Word documents – Scribe instantly creates these guides for your team. 

These guides can be shared with individuals, made public to a team or company, or embedded in a help center or wiki.

Scribe’s extension is free with unlimited use. Its desktop recorder along with some other features, such as image redaction, are available with the Pro plan at $29/month per user.

Highlights:

• Free Chrome extension
• Instantly creates work instructions, SOPs, and other internal documents
• Guides embed into knowledge base, wiki, project management tools, CMS
• Instantly updated guides

3. Continu

Continu is a modern learning platform built for enterprise organizations to save time and money by automating repetitive onboarding tasks, ramping up new hires much quicker, improving training ROI, and boosting learner engagement. Through deep integrations with the tools your business already uses, Continu makes it a breeze to import or author content directly within our platform, meaning less time creating content and more time empowering your learners.

Pricing is based on a custom quote broken down by the number of user seats. Tiers include "Starter" at 150+ user seats, "Professional" from 1,000+ user seats, and "Enterprise" for anything over 5,000 user seats.

Highlights:

• Create entire training courses using powerful eLearning authoring tools
• Host virtual instructor-led training workshops
• Generate insightful reports on learner behavior
• Deliver critical training materials to internal and external users
• SCORM compliant
  
  

4. Zelt

Zelt is an employee platform designed to help your team do great work. It offers everything they need, including pay, benefits, software, hardware, time off, feedback, and more. And it's all delivered in a user-centric, automated, and simple way that makes it easy for your team to access what they need.

They offer two tiers for any of their product modules with their basic tier being free to use and their more premium tier costing anywhere between £3 to £5 per user per month depending on the module.

Highlights

• Run payroll end-to-end in under 60 seconds
• Integration between their payroll and payments module allows organizations to make all salary, pension, and HMRC payments in bulk and at once
• Ability to automate the onboarding and offboarding process
• 
  

5. BambooHR

One of the most popular all-round HR solutions on the market, BambooHR packs powerful onboarding capabilities behind a no-nonsense user interface.

The software allows you to leverage powerful features such as e-signatures and application tracking to create slick onboarding processes that your new employees (and your hiring managers) will love.

BambooHR is available in two tiers: ‘Essentials’ and ‘Advantage’. 

Unfortunately, only the more expensive ‘Advantage’ package offers full onboarding functionality. Pricing is a quote based so contact the company to get a price tailored to your specific needs and budget. 

Highlights:

• Electronic signature software to complete paperwork for new hires more quickly 
• Custom workflows
• Open API
• 7-day free trial

6. Talmundo

Talmundo was built with the specific aim of revolutionizing the employee onboarding process.

One of the best things about this software is how fast to implement it is. Programming and customizing your employee’s roadmap is super straightforward so you’ll be up and running in no time.

What’s more, the interactive to-do lists and the fun quizzes do a great job of digitizing the onboarding process without losing the lovely human element.

Talmundo also offers valuable feedback and analytics that’ll help you identify sticking points across the onboarding cycle so you can remedy them quickly. Pricing is subscription-based - contact them directly to find the best rate.

Highlights:

• Fun onboarding quizzes
• Interactive to-do lists
• Detailed analytics
• Great customizability

7. Eddy

The onboarding process with Eddy is completely paperless. All of your HR documents can be created, sent, signed, and stored 100% digitally helping to streamline the hiring and employee onboarding process.

What’s more is that Eddy makes it so intuitive, new employees can onboard themselves. Everything from creating their own Eddy profile to digitally signing documents can be done by the new hire on their own. That’s roughly 5 hours per new hire that you can spend elsewhere. Eddy also makes your new-hire onboarding tasks trackable. No-fuss, no awkward emails, just a silky smooth onboarding process.

Your new hire probably has little experience with your company other than interviews. There’s a lot about working with you that they don’t know. You can send them all of this info through Eddy before they come.

Highlights:

• All-in-one HR platform
• Specializes in deskless workers
• Trackable task list
• First day messaging

8. Zenefits

Zenefits is an HR platform that lets you manage processes such as hiring, onboarding, and employee records all in one place.

You’ll be able to design custom onboarding flows, send job offers, run background checks and let new hires complete their own onboarding before their first day of work. 

The best part? All information is synched with payroll and benefits to ensure everything is up and running with just a few simple clicks. Pricing starts from $8/mo

Highlights:

• All-in-one HR platform
• Custom offer letters
• Background checks
• Easy sync with payroll

9. Click Boarding 

Click Boarding is a purpose-built onboarding tool that creates memorable onboarding experiences that engage employees and provide them with the information they need to get off to a flying start.

The software comes loaded with pre-designed templates and content that let you set up your onboarding flow with ease. You can also go rogue and use the drag and drop builder to create your own flow, just the way you like it.

One of the best features is the ability to track employee progress through the onboarding flow, while seamless integration with most of the major HR software platforms is a breeze too.

Highlights:

• Simple design
• Easy to use
• Manage employee progress
• Nice offboarding feature

10. CakeHR

CakeHR is another all-in-one HR product that boasts impressive employee onboarding functionality.

The powerful workflow builder lets you create and automate onboarding tasks according to your own rules. At the same time, smart reporting lets you see each employee’s position in the onboarding flow.

Other features include a leave management tool, an expense tracker, and a recruitment solution. With flexible pricing starting at just $7/mo CakeHR is certainly a tool you don’t want to overlook.

Highlights:

• Reasonable pricing
• Good onboarding templates
• iOS & Android mobile apps
• Slackbot integration

11. FactoHR

FactoHR offers a complete HR solution including expense and payroll management, leave management, and a dynamic onboarding solution that makes creating standardized and automated workflows a piece of cake.

The powered-up self-service process offers a range of customization options while the software’s chatbot can be used to help your new hires get answers to their questions for smooth sailing inductions. Pricing starts at $14/mo.

Highlights:

• AI-powered chatbot
• Document expiry reminder
• Direct to email functionality
• Employee self-service through mobile app

12. Kin

Kin is a fantastic choice of HR software for small businesses without an HR department. Especially if you’re a founder who might be spinning multiple plates at the same time.

The software's impressive onboarding offering includes checklists, personalized welcome pages with linked tasks, and secure digital signatures. 

The best part? Kin is beautifully designed and a pleasure to use. It’s a piece of software that you’ll delight in using at every available opportunity. Pricing starts at $99/mo

Highlights:

• Beautiful clean design
• Customized welcome pages
• API & integrations
• Co-worker bios

13. Lessonly

Lessonly is simple (but powerful) e-learning software that helps train your new employees by letting them tap into courses and resources that you create.

Lessonly’s unique process claims to cut onboarding time in half while delivering an incredible experience. 

Other useful features include intuitive lesson creation, insights to track metrics, and coaching functionality to give feedback at scale.

Highlights:

• Quick lesson creation
• Customize with your branding
• Easy assign lessons/paths
• PDF lesson exporting

14. Trello

For the bargain hunters reading this post, Trello is an awesome free tool that can help you meet your employee onboarding needs too.

Trello is easy to use and flexible enough to manage just about any project. Plus, a specialized new hire onboarding template is available too.

Trello’s smart template acts as an interactive to-do list where you as the admin assign your team tasks and due dates. 

While not as streamlined or feature-rich as some of the other onboarding programs, Trello does a solid job of inducting new members into your company. Especially when you consider it’s free.

Highlights:

• Free to use
• Pre-made onboarding template
• High user familiarity
• Easy to adjust on the fly

Go Forth & Onboard

There’s no doubt that employee onboarding software is the only way forward when it comes to creating easy, automated and helpful onboarding experiences.

But even still, new hires often get bombarded with mountains of information in the first few weeks on the job. It’s a lot to take in. 

A knowledge base offers the antidote to information overload by allowing your new staff to get the answers they need, in their own time.

That’s why using robust knowledge management software such as Helpjuice for onboarding (or in conjunction with another onboarding software) will supercharge your organization's employee onboarding efforts.

So, why not give your new hires a step-up by creating a knowledge base in under 10 seconds today?

Sign-up for a 14-day free trial today.