QR Codes for Employee Training and Onboarding: 12 Smart Uses

By: Ashley P.Update: March 19, 2025

Using QR codes for employee training and onboarding is a fresh and flexible approach that can make this process seamless and engaging for new hires and senior employees.

Employee education is very important when running a company of any size. Consistently upskilling your teams lets them grow, boost their performance, and love their work, helping you achieve your business goals.

As a manager, you must constantly search for a handy management solution to deliver effective and interactive learning opportunities for employees. If yes, then this blog is definitely for you.

We’re sharing practical ideas for training and onboarding employees using QR codes. We will also teach you how to make one using our free QR code generator with logo integration.

Table of Contents

Effective ways to use QR codes for employee training and onboarding
How do I create a QR code for my employees?
Why should you use a QR code for training employees?
Employee training statistics that prove the usefulness of QR codes
Companies leading the way in using QR codes for recruitment, employee education, and more
Make QR codes work for your team with the help of QR TIGER — the best QR code generator
FAQ

Effective ways to use QR codes for employee training and onboarding

Consider these 12 strategic uses of QR codes to facilitate employee training and onboarding:

1. Present an engaging onboarding process

The onboarding process for new employees can involve endless documents and orientations that can get tedious.

To make your welcome less daunting, you can use a video QR code that directs new hires to an introductory video showcasing their new workplace, its community, and the company culture.

2. Provide instant access to educational resources

Part of a new employee’s journey to becoming an experienced worker at the company includes learning how it works and runs. Training them is essential to this process, which is why learning materials should be ready.

However, the information a new hire may need to learn might require a lengthy document to explain. While this can’t be helped, it does mean that your employee or team member will take a while to go through it all, which can slow down the onboarding process.

Here’s where QR codes can be handy. You can create a file QR code to store all the necessary documents and include it in a welcome kit. You can also share it at the end of an orientation so new hires won’t be overwhelmed.

Besides sharing onboarding documents like handbooks and forms, you can use QR codes to give instant access to essential educational resources.

With your company policies, benefits guides, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) available digitally, sifting through them for specific information makes training easier.

QR codes for employee training and onboarding can also direct workers, both new and veteran, to video guides, speeding up the training process.

3. Prepare quick tutorials for equipment and software

If your business uses special tools, software, or machinery, having video tutorials or a manual is essential in an employee’s education.

While you can print out a copy of each manual for your trainees, you can save your business money by embedding QR codes with links to these files.

If your codes are strategically placed close to your equipment, you also provide quick access to these educational materials.

4. Offer interactive virtual office tours

Part of an employee’s training is to familiarize themselves with your facilities. Touring the premises does happen on the first day, but what happens when they can’t remember where a specific room is?

Asking shouldn’t be a problem. However, you can also supplement their training with QR codes that offer interactive virtual office tours.

QR codes are more than capable of directing scanners to virtual experiences. When located throughout your office, your employees will know your facilities like the palm of their hand in no time.

5. Connect employees to company portals

Most companies upload key informational resources on the internet that anyone in the company can access. While your employees can access these on their computers and mobile phones, sometimes they need to access company resources immediately.

While they could simply go through the process of entering the company’s URL into their browser, they can also access it with a single scan with their phone’s camera.

How can they do this? With a QR code, of course. By linking your company portal to your QR code and making it easily accessible, your employees can look up company resources at their leisure.

6. Offer on-demand FAQs and support

There will be moments during your employees’ training when they ask questions that have come up several times before.

Just in case your HR can’t accommodate them immediately, having a list of frequently asked questions can provide the kind of support your trainees will need. What better way to link them to your FAQs than with an easily accessible QR code?

7. Simplify attendance tracking

Tracking the attendance of new employees during their training period helps promote accountability and to break bad habits.

However, manually tracking attendance can lead to errors in time tracking, preventing the HR team from monitoring the employees’ presence and absence during working hours.

With a QR code attendance system, employers can rely on reliable time tracking to monitor their trainees. This system is more convenient since all an employee has to do is scan a QR code upon arrival.

QR codes for attendance tracking also allow companies to focus on other aspects of the training and onboarding process.

8. Identify learning gaps in employees’ actions

During training, spotting gaps in your employees’ progress can help keep them on track. While it’s possible to do this by having them report to you at regular intervals, you can supplement this by using different types of QR codes in the office, specifically dynamic ones.

Besides being editable, dynamic QR codes also track the time and place of each scan. You can use this feature to assess how well your trainees perform during their routines.

For example, your new employee is expected to submit their work at a certain time every day. To monitor their work, you can have them scan a QR code every time they submit.

With a single code, you can spot inconsistencies in their work when they prop up, thus giving you the chance to provide support.

9. Gather feedback about the onboarding or training experience

Feedback is essential to every business. While customer feedback is what most people think about when it comes to running a business, feedback from your employees, especially the new ones, is just as important.

Facilitating the feedback process shows your trainees that you desire a positive work environment that supports professional development.

To help your new employees express their thoughts more easily, learn how to create a QR code for a Google Form and place it throughout the facility.

10. Include gamification in employee training and development

Training someone to fulfill a role in your business is a serious endeavor, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it fun and engaging.

To bring this level of engagement into your training process, you can introduce gamification elements to their lessons.

One way you can do this is by offering rewards to employees who finish tasks quickly or answer questions correctly. You can even take it a step further by having a small-scale treasure hunt that helps trainees familiarize themselves with your facilities.

11. Share updated information with employees

As the saying goes, the only constant in life is change. As society, technology, and the economy change, your company will always change with them. This will inevitably affect the information your new employees will have to learn.

If your learning materials are all printed, updating them may be costly and result in paper waste. QR codes for training purposes can help by digitizing all essential information, allowing instant access, and updating them when needed.

Editing the information embedded in a QR code can only be done with a dynamic QR code.

How do dynamic QR codes work exactly? This type of QR code is embedded with a short URL that directs users to the information you want to share. This contrasts static QR codes, which embed the actual information into the code.

This short URL allows you to change the information encoded within the code and removes the need to generate a new code.

12. Create a QR code for training records

The versatility of QR codes allows them to be useful for almost anything as long as they are used for digital information. Because of this, training records can be embedded in QR codes as easily as any other type of content.

Training records hold information on an employee’s training history and competencies. With a QR code, you and your employees can easily track their progress and make adjustments when necessary.

How do I create a QR code for my employees?

Now that you know the benefits of training QR codes and how to use them effectively, it’s time to learn how to create one yourself.

1. Open QR TIGER’s QR code generator with logo integration and select a QR solution from the menu.

2. Fill in the necessary information to generate your QR code.

3. Select the “Dynamic QR” for editability and tracking.

4. Click the “Generate QR code” button to generate your QR code.

5. Personalize your QR code by customizing its eyes, colors, and patterns.

6. Add your company logo for brand recognition and a frame to include a call to action.

7. Test your QR code by scanning it with different devices. If it works, click “Download” and start printing.

Why should you use a QR code for training employees?

QR codes are so versatile that you can use them for virtually anything, even the training of your workers. Aside from creating an effective workforce, there are a few more benefits to using the humble QR code.

It streamlines communications

Because of the importance of training employees, communications should be as accessible as you can make them. Fortunately, QR codes are more than capable of facilitating this for your business.

With an email QR code, you provide employees with the means to quickly reach you without the hassle of typing your email address. Do you prefer communicating through SMS? There is a QR code solution for that as well!

It makes important information more accessible

Essential company resources are stored digitally, so new employees can access them anytime. This is especially helpful when trainees need to check something in the company handbook or one of your SOPs.

Streamlined communication with a QR code email also allows employees to easily reach out to their mentors, which can ease their training without spoonfeeding them.

Engagement is higher

Higher levels of engagement can help trainees learn the company's details much faster. It also improves morale in the workplace and cements your company as a great place to work.

Easily monitor the progress of employee training

By using a dynamic QR code generator online, you can easily monitor the progress your trainees make as they go through their training. Keeping an eye on them allows you to assess their performance and provide support when necessary.

It contributes to data-driven decisions

Thanks to the nature of dynamic QR codes, you can identify areas of improvement in your trainees with the help of data you collect every time they perform a scan. This data can help you make decisions to improve your training procedures.

Employee training statistics that prove the usefulness of QR codes

QR codes have many uses, education being one of them. While they are easy to generate and incorporate into the workplace, are they worth the effort? Here are three statistics that prove it.

70% of employees want technology that simplifies work

According to a study by Deloitte in 2022, 70% of employees want to use technology that streamlines their work.

Because QR codes were invented for this purpose, work-related actions like project submissions, scheduling, and communication can easily be facilitated by using them.

Companies are 17% more productive when their employees are offered training

A Gallup report revealed that companies are 17% more productive and 21% more profitable when they offer training to their engaged employees. Unfortunately, only 15% of full-time workers claimed to be “highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work.”

QR codes can change this by introducing a dynamic and engaging way of completing tasks and communicating with the team. You can even create a QR code for training records to make progress tracking more convenient.

Employees learn 70% of their skills on the job

A Docebo report says that employees learn the most (70%) when learning on the job. Additionally, 20% of this learning comes from mentoring and interaction with coworkers, while 10% comes from formal training.

Because employees learn a lot while working, QR codes are great tools for accessing information digitally on the fly.

Companies leading the way in using QR codes for recruitment, employee education, and more

Want to see how employee-focused QR codes are put to use? We found two excellent examples that demonstrate how effective these barcodes can be when recruiting and training your workers.

Blackbridge

Blackbridge Communication and their Munic-based partner, Grapevine, have taken TK Maxx's recruitment advertisements to the next level by using QR codes from the brand-trusted QR TIGER generator.

The hiring posters encourage locals to visit the company's official career website page, where they can browse for job openings and submit their applications.

According to Dan White, Blackbridge's client partner, the campaign was well-received in Germany, enabling them to show clients that there is a return on investment for print advertising when you add a digital dimension to it.

Skechers

This footwear industry giant had the genius idea of using QR codes to recruit job seekers to the company.

They used these recruitment QR codes in two ways. One was by embedding the QR codes with a link to a job posting complete with everything a potential employee needs to know before applying.

The second use of a QR code was to direct applicants to a webpage listing all available positions at Skechers.

What’s great about recruiting employees this way is that the company itself makes the job vacancies available to those looking to work, making the application and hiring process more convenient.

Coca-Cola

The beverage company utilizes QR codes for employee education by embedding their plant’s standard operating procedures into the barcodes and placing them on equipment and machinery for easy access.

With these QR codes distributed across the facility, Coca-Cola’s employees can continue to learn as they work while safety managers simplify operations and quality control.

Make QR codes work for your team with the help of QR TIGER — the best QR code generator

With QR codes, the training process for your employees becomes a simpler but engaging endeavor.

This warms new hires up to the company while also enabling their productivity and effectiveness. For senior employees, QR codes can be the change they need in their work lives to stay motivated and effective.

Try incorporating some of these ideas into your company’s training strategy, and watch as new hires transition more smoothly into their roles.

Using our top-notch online platform, you can create highly-quality and secure QR codes for employee training and onboarding. Join over 850,000 brands today by signing up to our freemium plan and creating your first 3 dynamic QR codes for free!

FAQ

Can I generate a QR code for free?

Most QR code platforms allow the free generation of static QR codes. However, generating dynamic ones will need a subscription to the best QR code maker online.

How do I create a QR code for my organization?

To create a QR code for your organization, simply visit the homepage of a QR code-generating platform online. From there, you can choose what type of QR code you wish to generate and fill in the necessary information.

How do I create a QR code for recruiting?

QR codes for recruiting can be created by choosing a URL QR code to direct scanners to a job listings page where job seekers can view available positions. You can also use QR codes to provide more details about a job when advertising on printed materials.