4 Applications that New Hires Need in Order to Excel

4 applications that new hires

Based on research by Gallup, just 12% of employees believe that their employer onboards new hires successfully.

To ensure that your organization falls into that small bucket, you’ll need to adopt a variety of onboarding practices that leave employees feeling happy and productive. One such practice involves giving them access to several applications they need right from the get-go. 

Which apps qualify for your shortlist? To help you brainstorm and identify the best options, we’ll walk you through 4 apps that your new hires likely want—and need—the most. These include:

  • Namely
  • Slack
  • Greenhouse
  • Zendesk

Related: 5 apps your HR team needs to manage employees effectively

1. Namely

The human resources information system (HRIS) is a fundamental application for your employees. Using Namely, your colleagues can request time off, enroll in benefits, look over performance reviews, review signed documents, etc. 

Plus, they can use the HRIS to learn about their colleagues and the organization more broadly. For example, it allows you to look at the company’s org chart, as well as learn when it’s an employee’s birthday or work anniversary.

2. Slack

The workplace chat app lets your new hires communicate with their new team members as well as join channels that enable them to learn about topics of interest. For example, if you hire a recruiter, they can join a Slack channel like #newjobs. There, they can see the jobs that have recently been posted and keep tabs on any that get added over time.

Slack also works great in that it allows employees to warmly welcome new hires. For instance, you can use a channel like #employeeannouncements where hiring managers can introduce a new hire, and colleagues can respond with friendly messages or fun emojis.

3. Greenhouse

Your new hires have a network of talent that your organization can tap into. 

If you can tap into it effectively, you’ll not only improve your organization’s recruitment efforts, but also improve the new hire experience. How? Because it gives new hires a chance to earn a referral bonus and bring on former colleagues or friends they’d like to work with.

To help any new hire refer a candidate they think is a good fit for an open position, you can provide them access to the applicant tracking system, Greenhouse. There, the new hire can submit a referral and track the status of that referral throughout the recruitment process.

4. Zendesk

As your new hires receive access to a variety of equipment and applications, they might come across a few issues. You can help them address any by providing them access to Zendesk.

Using Zendesk, they can file tickets easily, find answers to questions via a self-service knowledge base, or even use Answer Bot to get their questions answered in real time.

Zendesk also provides analytics capabilities that allow you to identify specific issues that tend to come up for new hires. This can prove valuable as your team tries to prioritize the areas that need to be addressed.

Get More Out of These Apps by Building Workflow Automations

As valuable as these apps are on their own, their utility amplifies exponentially once your organization builds end-to-end workflow automations around them.

Take incident management for example. You can use an enterprise automation (EA) platform to build an automation that works as follows:

1. A new hire files a ticket via chat (e.g. Slack) because they can’t access a certain app.

2. This triggers a workflow where the EA platform’s chatbot (e.g. Workbot) goes into Zendesk and begins creating the ticket. As it does this, it asks the employee for more information via chat, like a description of the issue.

3. The ticket gets created, and the employee is kept in the loop throughout the ticket’s lifecycle—from when it’s assigned to an agent to when it’s resolved—via chat.

By allowing new hires to file tickets in Slack (versus Zendesk), and by keeping them abreast of  the ticket’s status, you’ll deliver a delightful experience that saves them time.

Wondering how else employee automation can transform your organization’s new hire experience? You can discover more options by speaking with an expert at Workato, the leading enterprise automation platform.

About the author
Jon Gitlin Content Strategist @ Workato
Jon Gitlin is the Managing Editor of The Connector, where you can get the latest news on Workato and uncover tips, examples, and frameworks for implementing powerful integrations and automations. In his free time, he loves to run outside, watch soccer (er...football) matches, and explore local restaurants.