10 Biggest Benefits of Digital Onboarding for Restaurant Employees

With the high cost of square footage space for a restaurant, it becomes restrictive for any floor space to be used for things other than selling food and liquor to your customers.  That is, in part, what makes the food service industry one of the largest adopters of human capital management solutions.

One of the more underutilized benefits of outsourcing your payroll and employee onboarding is the option to shift to digital onboarding. The limited floor space in most restaurants makes both outsourcing employee payroll and onboarding to third party providers a cost-effective alternative to hiring and creating office space for a department dedicated to paying your people. After all, too many cooks may spoil the broth, but a single stack of timecards steeped in yesterday’s au jus spoils morale.

As a payroll provider with decades of experience serving the food service industry, Lift HCM knows a thing or two about offloading your onboarding experience. Let's dig a little deeper to learn what makes digital onboarding an increasingly attractive option in the restaurant industry to help you decide whether it’s time to make the switch.

Digital Onboarding Benefit 1: Efficiency and Speed

Electronic onboarding streamlines the hiring process by digitizing paperwork. This can help reduce the time between when a candidate accepts their offer of employment and their first day on the job.

Electronic Onboarding Benefit 2: Reduced Administrative Burden

Electronic onboarding relieves the administrative burden placed on restaurant management and HR staff. It’s harder to process, track, and store employee information by filling out physical paperwork. Manual data entry also makes it more difficult to maintain a single, accurate source of truth for important employee records.

Onboarding Benefit 3: Compliance and Accuracy

Electronic onboarding systems hold your staff accountable for completing the required forms and providing all necessary documentation for employment. This helps enforce compliance with labor laws and regulations. It also reduces the risk of having missing or incomplete paperwork slip through the cracks and lead to non-compliance fees or greater liabilities in the future.

Benefit 4: Remote Access Onboarding 

Digital onboarding systems give employees the option of completing their employment documentation from the comfort of their own homes. While this spares them from unnecessary commutes during the pre-employment phase, electronic onboarding systems also allow grant management staff to require certain portions of their onboarding documentation be completed onsite.

Digital Onboarding Benefit 5: Training and Orientation

Many electronic onboarding systems include modules for training and orientation. This can help new employees get up to speed quickly, making them more productive in a shorter amount of time. This benefit is particularly valuable in states like Illinois where restaurant-industry employees are required to complete additional, extensive and annual sexual harassment training by December 31st.

Employee Onboarding Benefit 6: Improved Communication

Electronic onboarding can facilitate communication between new employees and management or HR. It provides a digital platform for sharing important information, such as company policies, safety procedures, and benefits packages.

Digital Onboarding Benefit 7: Employee Engagement

Digital onboarding can make the process more engaging and interactive. Some systems include videos, quizzes, and other elements allow employees to better engage with the material. This promotes understanding and alignment with company culture and values. This is also significant, as a reported 82% of employees claim interactive learning material holds their attention more effectively than non-interactive videos.

Benefit 8: The Cost Savings of Digital Onboarding 

Reducing the need to store physical copies of staff members’ employment documentation frees up physical space. Restaurants can then reallocate that space for something much cooler, like storing napkins!

Digital Onboarding Benefit 9: Data Security

Electronic onboarding systems often come with robust security features to protect sensitive employee information, reducing the liability surrounding the secure storage of paper records.

Electronic Onboarding Benefit 10: Accessibility and Flexibility

Digital onboarding can be accessed from a variety of devices, making it more flexible and accessible for new hires. This is of particular importance to the reported 32.4% of the US population that doesn’t own a desktop or laptop computer.

Is Digital Onboarding Right for You?

Let’s be honest: juggling the physical storage of paper records while trying to maintain secure and accurate employment documentation for an ever-shifting restaurant staff is a nightmare. That’s exactly why so many businesses in the food service have “woken up” and embraced the benefits of digital onboarding systems.

In doing so, they’ve streamlined the completion of paperwork and submission of documents prior to employment. This efficiency reduces administrative burdens on restaurant management and HR staff while sparing all parties from pesky logistical headaches and bureaucratic fatigue.

If you’re ready to implement an electronic onboarding solution, reach out to our team to schedule a demo of Lift HCM’s best-in-class platform.