Onboarding isn’t just the first day. It’s a full process. We share how your LMS can better serve you to support your onboarding process.
You might hear the words, onboarding process, and think, that’s not L&D’s job.
And for the most part, you would be right.
But while onboarding is about signing contracts and setting up HR tasks, it also includes training.
For some organisations, onboarding can take up to 3 months in total.
So, when you’ve got a new hire in your team, how are you supporting them?
Keep reading to learn:
- What onboarding is
- Why you should use an LMS to onboard new starters
- Key features of an LMS you can use in onboarding
- And how to measure your onboarding success
Let’s get started.
What is onboarding?
You likely already know what onboarding is but here’s a quick definition:
Onboarding is the process of integrating and acclimating new employees, customers, or users into an organisation, product, or service.
Related: Onboarding best practices you need to try
It involves providing the necessary information, tools, training, and support to help them become comfortable, productive, and engaged.
Why should you use an LMS for onboarding?
A learning management system (LMS) is a platform that allows you to create, manage and report on eLearning content.
It’s a vital tool in any organisation and can be incredibly useful in onboarding,
Let’s look at why you should be using an LMS for onboarding:
- Streamline and standardise training
- Save time and resources
- Track progress and compliance
- Enhance employee engagement
Let’s look at each one in a little more detail.
Streamlines and standardises training
When you’re getting started, you need to get new hires up to speed quickly.
With a sleek onboarding platform, training and onboarding tasks can be automatically assigned and then tracked and completed with ease.
This quality experience lets the new hire know that they’re in a supportive working environment.
But it also ensures all new hires receive consistent, high-quality training materials, reducing variability and improving knowledge retention across teams.
Saves time and resources
By automating onboarding tasks and delivering content online, an LMS minimises the need for repeated in-person sessions, freeing up HR and managers.
Plus, this can easily be scaled as your organisation grows.
Tracks progress and compliance
Compliance isn’t a particularly sexy part of an induction, but it is vital.
Mandatory training needs to digested by your new starter quickly, so that they can be best placed to complete their job safely and securely.
With an LMS, you can set a precedent of how compliance training will be delivered.
An LMS allows companies to monitor employee progress, quiz results, and completion rates, ensuring all required training is completed and documented.
Enhances employee engagement
Offering new starters a hub of learning content sets a precedent.
Especially if your onboarding content contains interactive modules, videos, and quizzes to make it more engaging, and helping new hires feel more connected and confident in their roles.
Learner engagement is only ever a good thing.
Better engagement means better learning retention and a more successful learning experience.
Key LMS onboarding features you need
A well-designed onboarding experience sets the tone for an employee’s journey with your organisation
And the right LMS plays a pivotal role in making that experience effective, engaging, and scalable.
An LMS tailored for onboarding does more than just deliver training content; it creates a structured, supportive environment that helps new hires feel informed, confident, and connected from day one.
So here are some features that are essential for maximising the impact of your onboarding process and ensuring every new team member gets off to a strong start:
- User-friendly interface
- Automated learning paths
- Content hosting and management
- Progress tracking
- Assessment and quizzes
- Integrations
- Gamification
- Welcome dashboard
- Social and collaborative features
- Certification and compliance tracking
- AI
Let’s look at each in more detail.
1. User-friendly interface
An intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface is essential for onboarding, as it ensures that new hires can quickly become comfortable with the system without needing additional support.
First impressions matter, especially when someone is just starting a job, and if they struggle to access training modules or find key documents, their learning experience (and perception of the company) may suffer.
A clean dashboard, clear labeling, and responsive design across devices contribute to a smoother transition into the organisation.
💡 Pro Tip
On that note, mobile learning is always a key one. Your learners want to be able to train on the move and in their own time.
2. Automated learning paths
Automated learning paths allow HR teams to set up customised onboarding journeys that are automatically assigned based on a new hire’s role, department, or location.
This streamlines the onboarding process and removes the guesswork for both the employee and the trainer.
As the employee completes each section, the system can unlock the next relevant module in sequence, ensuring a structured progression through the onboarding experience.
This keeps the learner focused and ensures consistency in how new hires are onboarded across teams.
3. Content hosting and management
A robust LMS enables companies to host, organize, and manage all necessary onboarding content in one centralised place.
Whether it’s company policies, product tutorials, welcome videos, or interactive walkthroughs, having all these resources easily accessible ensures that new hires can learn at their own pace and revisit material when needed.
For organisations with frequent updates to training materials, version control and modular content updates make it easier to keep the onboarding process current and compliant.
4. Progress tracking and dashboards
Progress tracking tools provide real-time insights into what training has been completed and what remains.
For employees, this visibility helps them manage their time and expectations.
For HR and managers, dashboards allow for easy monitoring of onboarding status across individuals or teams, ensuring no one falls behind.
This feature is especially critical in regulated industries or high-compliance roles, where training completion may be legally required within a set timeframe.
5. Assessment and quizzes
Built-in assessments and quizzes are valuable for reinforcing learning and ensuring that new hires understand critical concepts.
During onboarding, these can be used to test knowledge of company policies, job-specific systems, or safety procedures.
More importantly, they give immediate feedback to learners, which aids retention, and also allow managers to identify any knowledge gaps that need to be addressed early in the employee’s journey.
6. Integration capabilities
An LMS that integrates seamlessly with other tools in the company’s tech stack (such as HRIS platforms, calendar systems, messaging apps, or SSO providers) can dramatically streamline the onboarding process.
For example, once a new hire is added to the HRIS, they can be automatically enrolled in the appropriate training path in the LMS.
Integration with communication tools like Slack or Teams can also enable reminders or support requests directly within the platforms employees already use.
7. Gamification
Incorporating elements of gamification, like points, badges, and leaderboards, adds a level of engagement that can make the onboarding process more enjoyable and motivating.
This is particularly effective in reducing the cognitive fatigue that sometimes comes with absorbing large volumes of new information.
For example, awarding badges for completing a module or hitting a learning streak can encourage continued participation and provide a sense of accomplishment.
8. Welcome dashboards
Personalised welcome dashboards serve as a friendly digital “front door” for new employees.
You can create these dashboards to act as a bit of a welcome portal, just for new hires’s eyes that include introductory videos, team org charts, welcome messages from leadership, and interactive guides to company culture and history.
Including this content at the beginning of onboarding helps new hires feel connected to the company’s mission and values from day one.
It also creates a more human experience by showing that the organisation is thoughtful about how people are welcomed.
9. Social and collaborative features
Social elements like discussion forums, peer messaging, or comment threads encourage interaction among new hires and existing employees.
These features promote a sense of community, especially in remote or distributed teams.
They also provide a low-pressure way for new employees to ask questions, share ideas, and get support without waiting for scheduled meetings.
Collaborative learning builds confidence and fosters relationships across departments early on.
10. Certification and compliance tracking
Many onboarding processes include legally or operationally required training, such as compliance modules, data privacy rules, anti-harassment policies, or industry-specific regulations.
An LMS with certification tracking ensures that employees complete these requirements on time and receive verifiable proof of completion.
This not only protects the company from legal risk but also demonstrates a serious commitment to accountability and ethics.
What about AI?
AI-driven features in LMS platforms can significantly enhance the onboarding experience by personalising learning journeys and providing real-time support.
For example, AI can analyse a new hire’s role, background, learning behaviour, and performance to tailor training content recommendations, prioritising what’s most relevant to them.
It can also adapt pacing, suggest additional resources, or automatically reassign content if someone struggles with a topic.
AI chatbots integrated within the LMS could act as virtual onboarding assistants, instantly answering FAQs, guiding users through the platform, or helping them find policies, team structures, or training deadlines.
This reduces the dependency on HR or managers and creates a more responsive, self-serve onboarding environment.
However, the reality of AI use cases in an LMS looks a little different. Still powerful, but a way to go yet.
Measuring the success of employee onboarding
A successful onboarding programme is not just about delivering content efficiently; it should also produce measurable outcomes.
While a well-designed LMS can enhance the onboarding experience, it is important to assess whether it is actually helping new hires succeed.
Measuring onboarding success enables HR and learning teams to make evidence-based improvements, demonstrate return on investment, and ensure every new starter receives the support they need to thrive.
Here are three key ways to evaluate the effectiveness of your LMS-enabled onboarding process:
1. Track engagement and completion data
Your LMS provides a wealth of data that can offer insight into how engaged new hires are with the onboarding material.
Reviewing completion rates, average time spent on modules, and drop-off points helps to reveal how compelling and user-friendly the content really is.
If employees consistently take longer on certain modules or avoid them altogether, it may indicate unclear instructions or disengaging formats.
Many systems also allow managers to identify which content types—such as videos, quizzes or interactive elements—are the most popular, helping inform how future training is designed.
2. Gather direct feedback from new hires
In addition to quantitative data, it is essential to collect qualitative feedback from new employees.
Their first-hand experience can reveal usability issues, content gaps or emotional responses that metrics alone might miss.
Ask them how easy the system was to use, whether they felt supported during the process, and what improvements they would suggest.
Their responses will not only help improve the onboarding journey but also contribute to a more inclusive and responsive training culture.
3. Evaluate early employee performance
The ultimate goal of onboarding is to prepare new hires to perform well in their roles.
To measure this, managers should look at whether employees are demonstrating an understanding of the information covered during onboarding.
Are they able to recall and apply key concepts?
Are they performing tasks effectively and confidently?
Many LMS platforms include testing features that assess knowledge retention and identify learning gaps.
Analysing assessment results can highlight recurring areas of difficulty, allowing training teams to adapt the programme and ensure better outcomes for future employees.
Set up your new starters up with the BuildEmpire LMS
Measuring the success of your onboarding programme and getting the right features is just the beginning.
With the right LMS, you can transform onboarding from a checklist into a powerful, data-driven experience that sets your people up for long-term success.
BuildEmpire’s Edition is designed to do exactly that—combining intuitive learning journeys, built-in analytics, and engagement tools that make onboarding effortless for teams and impactful for new starters.
Book a demo to see the platform in action and how it can help you create a more impactful starting setup for your learners.