While onboarding sets the stage for an employee’s success, traditional methods can be time-consuming and inconsistent. What if AI could make the process smoother, more efficient, and even more engaging?
In this article, the Sereda.ai team will explore how automated employee onboarding helps organize workflows, reduces manual work, and creates a structured experience for new hires.
What is Employee Onboarding?
Employee onboarding is all about setting new hires up for success. It’s the process of welcoming them into the company, and giving them the tools, support, and guidance they need to feel confident in their role. From training and orientation to helping them understand the company culture, good onboarding makes employees feel like part of the team from day one.
Brief History of Employee Onboarding
In the new tech era, it’s easy to take automation for granted. However, the onboarding process hasn’t always been this advanced. In this section, let’s explore three key phases of onboarding evolution:
- Early 20th Century – Informal & Unstructured Onboarding
Historically, onboarding has always been unstructured. New hires were expected to learn by themselves, by tailing whoever was more experienced. So, in the 1900s the onboarding was mostly just an observation of senior specialists without any standardized training programs. Hence, the productivity of new employees was lower and the results were not always consistent.
- Late 20th Century – The Rise of Structured HR Programs
Through trial and error over the past century, in the late 1980s and 1990s, companies finally started to recognize the need for onboarding as a separate process. So, here we could see the rise of training manuals and more effective mentorship programs.
- 21st Century – AI & Automation Transform Onboarding
While in the 20th century, most efforts went into enforcing HR as an important department for companies and employees, the 21st century is all about optimization of the processes. This is not a surprise, largely because we live in an era of constant tech advancement. In the year 2025, automated employee onboarding became a strategic necessity in maintaining efficiency and employee satisfaction.
Key Benefits of AI for Onboarding
Now, what are the benefits that drive AI onboarding, and what makes it so special? Let’s take a closer look:
Enhanced engagement & retention
Artificial intelligence can personalize learning, making it more appealing. AI is inherently interactive, so the learning process becomes engaging with new learning strategies, real-time feedback, and automated support.
As David Morel, Founder of Tiger Recruitment, states: “Almost two-thirds of employees are likely to leave a new job within their first year if they have a negative onboarding experience”.
It’s proven now that onboarding can make or break the employee experience at new workplaces. So, investing in automated employee onboarding will be highly beneficial for your retention rates.
Access to actionable data
HR-platforms that are enforced by AI can also provide companies with real data on:
- Employee engagement levels;
- Training progress;
- Employee feedback on curriculum.
This data is amazing for management because it helps improve the training process and optimize onboarding strategies.
Faster compliance & risk management
AI automates compliance processes, ensuring that new hires complete required training, certifications, and legal documentation on time, reducing legal risks and improving regulatory adherence.
Use Cases Of Employee Onboarding Automation
While the benefits of automated solutions are great, how exactly can the company apply them? In this section, we invite you to discuss the best use cases of automated employee onboarding:
Personalized learning paths
By analyzing the new employee’s experience, AI can create a tailored learning path that will have specific milestones. Different people require different approaches for their onboarding: some are ready for action from day one, others – need more time to get acquainted with new environment.
This, in turn, helps to build expectations for the new hires and creates accurate milestones for them to achieve.
AI assistant for instant support
Digital employee onboarding also has a strong benefit in the form of AI assistants. They serve as mentor, who can answer simple questions and pull out information based on your query. This is a great feature for companies because it takes some of the responsibilities from real-life mentors, freeing their time for more in-depth employee training.
AI-powered translation for global onboarding
Your new hire is in France, while your onboarding documentation is in the Ukrainian language? AI solves small challenges like these by automatically translating all necessary training documents and guides. This is a great use case for companies that have international teams or aim to acquire more foreign workers.
AI-powered knowledge base
This point is more about how you can centralize your information for any potential new hire. Knowledge bases are great hubs that can store necessary information like training materials, regulations, and instructions. Some knowledge bases like Sereda.ai not only centralize but also automate the implementation, document updates, and employee notifications about the publication of materials.
Best Practices for AI in Onboarding
Artificial Intelligence is not the key to automated employee onboarding – it’s only one of the ingredients. Here are some of the simple practices that will help to maximize the success of your onboarding process:
Setting clear AI objectives
What do you need AI for? Will it automate paperwork and training, or will it serve as a simple virtual assistant to your new hires? Before buying new tools or integrating automated employee onboarding, take your time to identify where the AI fits in your processes.
Balancing AI with human touch
While AI is great for improving tedious tasks, it shouldn’t be a substitute for human connection. So, keep in mind that digital employee onboarding should also include real 1:1 mentor sessions and senior specialists should be available to assist with more complex parts of training.
Continuous feedback loops
Do not forget to track new hire’s progress, while also collecting the general sentiment. Is your new employee satisfied with the pace of training? Is it too quick/slow for them? Does AI help them with tasks or information gathering?
These questions will help you refine your onboarding process and enhance automation for future hires. To assess new employees’ sentiment, incorporate surveys at key stages of their training, allowing them to provide feedback throughout the process.
Automated Employee Onboarding with Sereda.ai
Sereda.ai is a smart platform that can make employee onboarding easier and faster. Our platform brings all your key regulations, guidelines, and instructions together in one unified knowledge base, that ensures new hires quickly access everything they need to succeed.
Why Choose Sereda.ai?
- Convenient document editor: With our platform, you can ensure your employees always have the latest information, by easily creating, editing, and updating onboarding materials in an intuitive editor.
- AI Research Assistant: with Sereda.ai, an employee can enter any relevant work query, and our AI assistant responds with a link to the source of the information in the knowledge base. From there, the employee can also receive a brief answer or click the link to access the full document for more details.
- Flexible document access levels: on our platform, access to data is configured according to the employee’s position, department, or group of users. That, in turn, ensures higher internal confidentiality.
- Integration with messengers: connect with Telegram to use our AI assistant from any device of your choice.
- Business document translation: instantly translate business documents and onboarding materials to support multilingual teams, ensuring consistency across global offices.
- Automatic notifications: with Sereda.ai, users won’t miss new documents assigned to them, due to an in-built multichannel notification system.
Conclusion
Onboarding is more than just a process – it’s the foundation of an employee’s journey within a company. AI is reshaping this experience, not by replacing human connection, but by removing inefficiencies, ensuring consistency, and allowing HR teams to focus on what truly matters: guiding new hires toward meaningful growth.
With Sereda.ai, onboarding becomes more structured, adaptive, and scalable – helping organizations build a culture of continuous learning from day one. As workplaces evolve, those who integrate automated employee onboarding will not only streamline operations but also create environments where employees can thrive from the start.
Curious about what this could look like for your team? Book a demo with our Growth Manager and explore how with Sereda.ai you can ensure the best employee onboarding experiences.