Rethinking Employee Onboarding
Summary
As a result of landing a new account with a major telecom brand, a design consultancy was experiencing exponential growth on their design team. Additionally, newly hired designers would be embedded onsite with the client. The frenzy of a shotgun hiring process, combined with managing an client-side design team made hiring managers in the firm realize that their onboarding process could be improved. I, along with my team of researchers, conducted interviews and design workshops to understand the onboarding experience and why hiring managers thought it needed improvements.
Impact
As in many organizations, onboarding had always been a series of obligatory check boxes required to fill positions, but the actual experience was never fully considered. The insights that surfaced from this research highlighted gaps in process and gave HR employees a roadmap for closing those gaps and improving the onboarding experience, and ensuring candidates were fully empowered with the knowledge needed to make informed decisions through their transition to becoming employees.
Role
• Interviews
• Diary Studies
• Design Workshops
• Qualitative analysis
• Research artifacts
Employee Interviews
“It was very…ambiguous to me. I kind of learned as we moved a long. I would shadow one of the UXAs and sort of learned the ropes, and that was my on boarding.”
We interviewed 40 designers to understand their on-boarding experiences. Diary studies were conducted with those that chose to forego interviews. We learned that candidates often felt more confused than empowered throughout the interviewing and onboarding process…
Communication from HR and hiring managers was inconsistent and confusing
Printed training materials were often forgotten and invaluable for candidates
Candidates need support post-onboarding as they transition into their roles
Diary studies were supplemented for those that chose to forego interviews.
Qualitative analysis
An experience map reflects employee sentiment.
Design Workshops
Once we had an understanding of the employee experience, we used those insights to guide conversations with stakeholders. We held a multi-day service workshop with HR and hiring managers to understand their perspectives re: the hiring and on-boarding process. We combined the employee experience (front stage) with the experiences of HR and hiring managers (back stage) into a map that could be used to inform improvements to the onboarding process and track them over time.
Service workshop process.
Final service blueprint of the onboarding experience Sentiment from employees, HR, and hiring managers is highlighted.