Self Service Takes Centre Stage In Modern Onboarding As Automation Streamlines HR And Payroll Processes

The trick is to integrate it with your HR and payroll workflow, automate what you can, and provide maximum self-service and management visibility to everyone involved

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, December 10, 2025/APO Group/ --

Only 12% of employees think their organisation does a great job onboarding new people, according to Gallup (https://apo-opa.co/44PhYwk). Manual onboarding processes create many problems for the overall onboarding experience, such as incomplete information, time-sapping back-and-forth between people, and limited visibility of the enrolment journey.

E-onboarding changes this completely as employee enrolment joins the self-service era.

ESS for onboarding

Employee self-service (ESS) is a $2.5 billion market (https://apo-opa.co/44lS8zT) that has become crucial to companies. It provides employees with access to services like payslips and leave management. Administrators value ESS because it reduces rote tasks like manual data capturing and calculations, freeing them to focus on more engaging activities.

Now ESS is transforming the laborious and intensive process of enrolling a new employee, says Mignon Wolmarans, Product Manager - HR from Deel Local Payroll, which recently launched e-onboarding workflows on its platform.

"Employee onboarding is typically slow and complicated because of manual data capturing and processing, and constant back-and-forth between new employees, payroll, and HR. It consumes time and leads to errors and delays. Our customers really appreciate our payroll ESS features, so we wanted to provide the same value for onboarding."

Faster onboarding with fewer errors

E-onboarding is an integrated workflow where new employees use a secure portal to enter their details. HR staff monitor progress on a dashboard with real-time tracking and engage with crucial sections, and records are moved seamlessly to payroll systems. E-onboarding reduces administrative time, ensures data accuracy, and provides HR teams with full visibility over every new hire from start to finish.

However, such a workflow requires more than automation and self-service. Important features include a dedicated HR workspace to initiate and manage new hires, branded welcome messages with scheduled delivery, adjustable onboarding forms, review and approval tools, and visible role ownership for different enrolment sections.

"Self-service should be part of a larger feature suite. Otherwise, you just create more work for someone further down the process. You want a service that integrates with HR and payroll workflows, which is how you get proper automation and reliable oversight," says Wolmarans.

Why e-onboarding matters

Inefficient onboarding is a recipe for talent churn. Around 20% of employees leave a position within the first 45 days (https://apo-opa.co/4aIaor3), a trend that is especially common among ambitious young professionals. Very often, their departure resulted from tedious and poorly executed onboarding that prevented them from jumping into their new responsibilities.

E-onboarding has a lasting impact. It is a multi-faceted process that includes enrolment, orientation, provisioning office space and equipment, training, and introduction to processes. Improving onboarding speed and accuracy has a direct impact on productivity. Under normal circumstances, it can take up to a year for new employees to reach the output levels of established workers. Numerous studies and surveys indicate that e-onboarding improves that timeline between 25% and 50%.

"Positive onboarding has an enormous impact. It improves retention and engagement, it helps teams include newcomers in their culture, and it creates long-term job satisfaction. The trick is to integrate it with your HR and payroll workflow, automate what you can, and provide maximum self-service and management visibility to everyone involved. This is why we added e-onboarding as a standard feature to our platform, because this stuff really should be a standard in all businesses," says Wolmarans.

Businesses of all sizes are enjoying the value and productivity improvement from self-service and automation. These features are already crucial for effective HR and payroll management. Now the same advantages have arrived for onboarding, and it's such a baseline improvement that Deel Local Payroll makes it available as a standard feature.

"We debated if e-onboarding should be offered separately. But it's such a fundamental improvement to HR and payroll that we realised it should be a stock feature for all our users. E-onboarding is something every company should use."