For growing agencies, nothing’s worse than having scattered, siloed knowledge you have to piece together when onboarding new hires. It might have worked when the agency first started. However, managing all the bits and pieces of information became more difficult as your agency scaled.
Not only does this feel unorganized to you, but new hires can feel it too, with 22% describing their last onboarding experience as disorganized (Paychex).
What’s the solution?
A well-documented, streamlined onboarding process. Below, we’ll look at the 5 best employee onboarding software for agencies you can use to create a lasting experience.
1. Whale 🐳
Of course, we’ll start this off with a strong contender. 💪
Whale is a standard operating procedure and training software that helps agencies streamline manual, time-consuming onboarding processes. Onboarding can feel tedious and like something to “get through” for you and new hires when it’s an endless source of paperwork and searching for information.
But Whale’s user-friendly interface makes onboarding and training more engaging than long email chains (key for hybrid and remote onboarding)! Also, our forever-free plan lets you test its capabilities and see whether it’s right for your agency at your own pace.
Key feature #1: Centralized location for onboarding SOP and training documentation
If your agency has more than one person, you know how easy it can be for silos to occur and for everyone to create their own version of a document. No standardized or up-to-date documents exist when someone has the information on their Google Drive (or in their head).
Stressful. 🫠
Our SOP and process documentation features make onboarding quicker than searching through Word and PDF files. You can embed your documents, get a jump start using one of our 100+ templates, create your documents from scratch, or let our AI Assist feature make them for you.
Our tool lets you organize your documents based on departments, also known as Boards. Then, you can break it down by levels until you’ve created a Card that will hold the most granular documents.
Plus, you can add videos, GIFs, and images to your documents and use the in-app screen recorder to create interactive content that’s easy for team members to consume!
Key feature #2: Save time with automated training journeys
If you’ve onboarded a new hire for more than two seconds, you know it’s exhausting (and sometimes impossible) to ensure they get access to the data they need without overwhelming them.
Our automated training flow lets you create custom training flows for each department so new employees only get the information they need, as they need it. So you won’t need to follow up constantly throughout the onboarding process. You’ll save time and only need to create a training journey once, and our system will handle the rest for every new member.
🤩 Bonus: Our custom training flows also let you automatically send out badges to motivate employees once they complete an action. You can also send quizzes to encourage team members to take the content seriously and make onboarding more engaging.
Key feature #3: Track progress with analytics
Not all employee onboarding software lets you track where your new hire is at in their onboarding process. This can make it hard for you to know where they are in the process or if they’ve finished it.
Whale’s analytic features let you keep track of assignments and see if they are completed or overdue. It also tracks quizzes’ completion rates and scores to see where someone is stuck in the course material.
Ready to standardize your onboarding experience and onboard new hires quicker? Sign up for Whale’s forever-free plan.
2. Trainual
Trainual is an SOP and training tool that helps you onboard new team members and document your processes. While they don’t have a forever free plan, they do offer a free trial and access to all their features on both plans.
They provide hundreds of templates to get started, let you import your documentation for onboarding, or use AI to create them for you. Trainual can help you systemize your processes. However, their tool can have a steep learning curve, which can push you past their 7-day free trial to understand it and see if it’s right for you.
Key features for agencies:
- Tests new hires’ knowledge
- Process documentation
- AI-powered search to help new hires find relevant information quickly
3. Process Street
Process Street helps you create, manage, and document your employee onboarding SOP and processes. They offer a 14-day free trial on all their paid plans, which gives you time to test the tool before committing.
Other SOP tools on this list have some type of workflow automation. However, Process Street has workflow scheduling, task dependencies, and conditional logic, which lets you control more of how your onboarding process is automated.
While those features add more depth to your workflow automation, they also can make getting started and understanding the tool more difficult. It can also take some time to get used to their user interface.
Key features for agencies:
- Team permissions to control who has access to certain data
- Checklist view for employee onboarding
- Automatically request feedback from new hires after workflow ends
4. Zavvy
Zavvy is a people enablement platform focusing on an employee’s entire journey with your agency. They offer process documentation via templates, AI, or from scratch. They primarily use automated workflows to streamline the onboarding experience.
Their workflows let you send messages through Slack, ask questions, and group messages when you need to onboard multiple team members simultaneously. It’s worth noting that they don’t offer a free plan or trial to familiarize yourself with the product before signing up.
Key features for agencies:
- Process documentation
- Collects feedback automatically to optimize the onboarding experience
- Dashboard to track task completion
5. Waybook
Waybook helps you streamline your training, onboarding, and documentation in one place.
They offer process documentation, team and individual task assignments, progress tracking, notifications on document updates, and quizzes, which you can test in its 7-day free trial.
Key features for agencies:
- Process documentation
- Multiple team permissions
- Overview of each new hire’s onboarding and training progress
Bottom line? Standardize agency onboarding with Whale
A solid onboarding process can improve employee retention by 82% (Brandon Hall Group). So, it’s safe to say that streamlining it with an employee onboarding software built for agencies is essential.
The tools listed above are great options for growing agencies to document their processes. However, Whale makes it easy to quickly create a single source of truth away from scattered Google docs that can also transform a new employee’s experience.
Create an onboarding process that’s easy and fun for your busy agency and new hires with Whale for free today.
Got questions on your mind?
Book a demo with our team today!
FAQs on Best Software for Creating Training Manuals
Why use employee onboarding software?
With onboarding software you can automate the onboarding process and automatically send onboarding tasks to new hires for them to complete on their own time, at their pace.
Why should we use onboarding software at our agency?
If you own an agency or work at an agency, you’ll know how fast paced it can be.
There’s client meetings, daily standups and ongoing deadlines.
Employee onboarding can improve talent retention and client experience with new hires. The faster you get employees up to date, the better their confidence will be. As a result the better client experience will be.
How long does onboarding last?
A typical onboarding process lasts three to six months, with 15% of companies continuing onboarding beyond six months. Most employees decide whether to stay within the first six months.
