How to Automate Your Employee Onboarding

with Office 365 Forms, Stream and Power Automate

If you are looking for a way to streamline your employee onboarding and training process, you might want to consider using Office 365 tools such as Forms, Stream and Power Automate. These tools can help you create and deliver engaging and interactive learning experiences for your new hires, without requiring a lot of manual work or coding.

In this blog post, we will show you how to use these tools to:

1. Create a form to collect feedback from your new hires on their onboarding and training experience
2. Create a video to introduce your company culture and values, and upload it to Stream
3. Create a flow to automate the sending of the feedback form and the video link to your new hires, based on their start date

1.If you want to improve your employee retention and satisfaction, you need to collect feedback from your new hires on their onboarding and training experience. A simple way to do this is to create a form that asks them about their expectations, challenges, and suggestions for improvement. You can use tools like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or Typeform to create and distribute your form. Here are some tips for creating an effective feedback form:

• Keep it short and simple. Don’t overwhelm your new hires with too many questions or options. Aim for 10 questions or less, and use multiple-choice, rating scales, or short-answer formats.
• Make it anonymous. Your new hires might not feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions if they think their responses will affect their performance or relationship with their manager. Anonymity can encourage them to be more candid and constructive.
• Ask open-ended questions. While closed-ended questions can give you quantitative data, open-ended questions can give you qualitative insights into your new hires’ feelings, motivations, and challenges. For example, you can ask them what they liked most and least about their onboarding and training, what they wish they had learned more about, or what they would change if they could.
• Follow up on the feedback. Once you collect the feedback, make sure you analyze it and act on it. Identify the common themes and issues that your new hires raised, and look for ways to improve your onboarding and training process. Communicate the changes you make to your new hires and thank them for their feedback.

2. One of the best ways to showcase your company culture and values is to create a video that highlights them. A video can capture the essence of your company, the people who work there, and the impact you make. You can use Stream, a Microsoft 365 app, to upload and share your video with your colleagues, customers, and partners. Here are some tips to create a great video:

• Plan your content. Think about what you want to say, who you want to feature, and what you want to show. Write a script or an outline to guide you.
• Choose a location. Pick a place that reflects your company culture and values, such as your office, a project site, or a community event.
• Use good equipment. Use a camera or a smartphone with a high-quality microphone and tripod. Make sure the lighting and sound are clear and consistent.
• Be authentic. Speak from the heart and show your personality. Don’t be afraid to be creative and have fun.
• Edit your video. Use a video editing software or app to trim, crop, add transitions, music, captions, and effects. Make sure your video is engaging and concise.
• Upload your video to Stream. Go to stream.microsoft.com and sign in with your Microsoft 365 account. Click on Create > Upload video and select your file. Add a title, description, thumbnail, and tags. Choose who can view and comment on your video. Click on Publish.

3.If you want to streamline your onboarding process and save time, you can create a flow to automate the sending of the feedback form and the video link to your new hires, based on their start date. Here’s how:

1. Create a SharePoint list with the columns: Name, Email, Start Date, Feedback Form, Video Link.
2. Populate the list with the information of your new hires.
3. Create a flow in Power Automate that triggers on a recurrence (e.g., daily).
4. Add a Get items action to get the items from the SharePoint list where the Start Date is equal to today’s date.
5. Add a For each loop to iterate over the items from the previous step.
6. Inside the loop, add a Send an email action to send an email to each new hire with the Feedback Form and the Video Link from the SharePoint list.
7. Save and test your flow.

In this blog post, we have shown you how to automate your employee onboarding process with Office 365 Forms, Stream and Power Automate. By using these tools, you can create a streamlined and engaging experience for your new hires, while saving time and resources for your HR team. You can also customize your workflow to suit your specific needs and preferences. We hope you found this tutorial helpful and easy to follow. Thank you for reading!