How to accelerate onboarding with AI
Frontline organizations face a constant challenge: high employee turnover and long onboarding cycles.
Research shows that 1 in 3 new hires will leave their job in the first 90 days, with the cost of replacing an hourly worker estimated at $4,000. For HR leaders, this means a constant burden of recruitment. For Operations leaders, it means persistent productivity gaps and costly errors from underprepared staff.
As job roles evolve and technology reshapes the workplace, organizations recognize the need for agile, continuous learning and skill-building. In fact, the World Economic Forum predicts that 44% of workers’ skills are expected to be disrupted within the next few years. Yet despite significant training investments, only 13% of companies believe they’re effectively building on-the-job skills.
The HR challenge: Retaining talent from day one
HR departments are constantly striving to overcome the hurdles of competitive hiring and the crucial task of retaining new talent from day one. AI is transforming talent management and recruiting, allowing HR to streamline processes and engage employees effectively.
Studies show that personalized learning programs, a core application of AI, can improve knowledge retention rates by 25-60% and improve performance by 24%. This directly addresses the need for solutions that improve retention from the very beginning of an employee’s journey.
The Ops impact: Boosting productivity and reducing errors
For operations, slow time-to-proficiency among new hires directly suppresses team productivity and can lead to increased errors. Frontline employees are the crucial interface between an organization and its customers or core operations, meaning their skills and knowledge directly influence customer experience, operational efficiency and the bottom line.
Manual processes and disconnected systems can burden frontline managers, limiting their time for essential tasks and coaching, further impacting productivity. AI-driven solutions are vital to reduce downtime, increase productivity and improve employee engagement on the production floor, especially for troubleshooting equipment and accelerating issue resolution at the source.
Practical AI to the rescue: Transforming frontline learning
Artificial intelligence offers a revolutionary solution, transforming corporate learning for frontline teams.
- Tailored, personalized learning journeys: AI systems can analyze individual employee skill gaps, career goals, learning preferences and past performance to create tailored, personalized learning journeys, recommending relevant courses and resources that align with their specific needs and objectives.
- Adaptive content: This adaptive content can dynamically adjust difficulty, format, and pace in real-time based on a learner’s performance, optimizing knowledge retention.
- Real-time feedback and coaching: AI-powered tools also provide real-time feedback and coaching, enabling new hires to identify weaknesses and make corrections promptly, accelerating the learning process and enhancing engagement.
- Automated content creation: AI can automate content creation, generate questions and facilitate translation and localization of training materials, making learning accessible to a broader, diverse workforce.
Axonify’s leadership in AI-powered onboarding
Axonify is uniquely poised to lead the way in accelerating new hire success through its advanced AI capabilities. Axonify is an early pioneer in applying AI to the learning space, with AI at the core of its platform for over a decade.
Adaptive learning algorithm: A decade of innovation
In 2012, Axonify was the first to deliver adaptive learning, winning the 2013 Bersin Delivering Innovation WhatWorks® Award. Axonify’s adaptive learning algorithm measures each employee’s progress over time—including knowledge growth, on-the-job performance, and confidence levels—and then delivers the right reinforcement at the right time.
This ensures that frontline employees are consistently served the most critical training they need, often in short 3-5 minute daily sessions that fit into their workflow. This personalized approach significantly accelerates the learning curve for new hires.
Axonify impact: Measuring what matters
Axonify was the first learning platform to measure the impact of learning. Axonify Impact uses machine learning to combine business results with knowledge and participation data, producing models to predict whether individuals or teams are on track to hit their targets for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
“We were able to finally see, down to the associate level, who was really understanding and demonstrating knowledge on the job.”
– Chad Mcintosh, Former Vice President of Asset Protection and Risk Management, Bloomingdale’s
Impact collects over 5,000 pieces of data on each user per year, providing critical insight into the value of training and allowing organizations to be proactive in fixing experiences that aren’t impactful before problems arise. This ability to link learning directly to business outcomes is crucial for demonstrating the ROI of accelerated onboarding.
Max, the AI assistant: Instant on-the-job support
In 2023, Axonify introduced Max, a conversational generative AI tool built specifically for frontline employees to get instant answers to on-the-job questions. Max uses an organization’s internal knowledge base, such as their Discover library, to provide verified facts and can translate answers into 60+ available languages. This support reduces downtime, increases productivity and improves employee engagement, particularly for troubleshooting and clarifying tasks, thereby alleviating the load on managers.
Co-Creator: Streamlined training content creation powered by AI
Axonify’s Co-Creator launched in early 2025 to streamline the creation of training content. Co-Creator empowers teams to generate high-quality Key Learning Points (KLPs) and diverse questions directly from internal corporate-approved documents. This solution saves 4-8 hours of creation time per topic, significantly accelerating content creation for essential materials like onboarding.
Built on Google’s LLM services and aligned with Axonify’s proven instructional design methodology, Co-Creator is designed to maximize the potential of frontline workforces by enhancing learning and development with cutting-edge, AI-driven technology.
Axonify streamlines onboarding with these AI-powered solutions, getting new hires contributing faster. For instance, a pharmacy chain using AI-driven microlearning achieved a significant reduction in in-class training time and faster onboarding for new employees. Axonify’s commitment to ethical AI, transparency, fairness and data protection further solidifies its position as a trusted leader in the space.
Beyond onboarding: Continuous growth and retention
Beyond the initial onboarding phase, continuous learning supported by AI is critical for career growth and long-term retention. AI fosters a culture of curiosity and continuous learning by providing on-demand, bite-sized learning opportunities directly in the flow of work.
As AI handles more routine tasks, frontline workers are empowered to focus on strategic responsibilities requiring critical thinking and human empathy, necessitating ongoing skill development. Axonify’s comprehensive approach supports employees throughout their career journey, ensuring they remain adaptable and highly skilled for evolving roles.
An operational imperative
Ultimately, a strong onboarding process, powered by intelligent AI, is not just HR’s responsibility. It is a critical operational imperative. AI is not merely an option, but a strategic necessity for organizations striving to maintain a competitive edge. By embracing AI strategically and leveraging platforms like Axonify, organizations can empower their frontline workforce to thrive, driving both efficiency and sustained business success.
This is achieved through AI-Driven Operational Intelligence, Automated Administration, and Personalized and Proactive Frontline Performance Support—the strategic pillars that guide Axonify’s vision.
Learn how you can put AI to work for your frontline in our free guide: A practical guide to optimizing frontline performance with AI.
Explore more blog posts in our AI series
Missed Part 1—From hype to frontline impact: Building trust through thoughtful AI, of our series? Check it out to see how Axonify thinks about AI as being foundational in our approach to building solutions that actually make a difference for your business.
Stay tuned for our next installment, Part 3—Operational excellence: Drive productivity with intelligent training, where we’ll cover how AI-powered onboarding leads to greater frontline efficiency.