Background
A global company was facing a challenge of decreasing employee satisfaction and increased churn at an early stage of employment. In an industry characterized by rapid change driven by digitalization and automation, attracting and keeping the right talents is critical for continued success. Action had to be taken to ensure talents wanted to stay and grow within the company.
Survey results highlighted onboarding as a problematic area, indicating that new employees were struggling to integrate effectively. Following the pandemic, new challenges had arisen with on-site onboarding elements being paused and remote work creating distance among team members and managers.
In order to understand how to turn the negative trend, the company decided to apply design methodology to drill down in the employee experience and needs to understand why onboarding was problematic. Influence was brought in to lead the project, that also served as a pilot for an employee experience approach within the People and Culture division.
What we did
Gathering a fusion team
To properly pilot the employee experience approach, a cross-functional team was established. A mix of representatives from IT, digital strategy and People and Culture departments ensured the right competences were involved from the start – bringing different important perspectives to the table. Working in a cross-functional setting was a new experience for several of the project team members, posing both opportunities and challenges as the work started. Consequently, it was important to work on the team’s collective intelligence (read more here) to ensure we could integrate the individuals’ diverse competences and knowledge.
A deep understanding of why, before addressing the how
The project team initially had their own hypotheses regarding the reasons behind the declining satisfaction with onboarding. However, by applying design methodology, we dared to stay in the problem space and develop a deep understanding of the challenge from the employee’s perspective. Once we were confident in our understanding of the underlying why, we focused on addressing how to resolve these challenges. To gain this understanding, we conducted in-depth interviews with newly hired employees, hiring managers and assistants within selected parts of the organization.
Onboarding journey and insights
The substantial qualitative research provided the project team with a comprehensive understanding and empathy for new employees, managers and assistants throughout the onboarding phase. Their experiences were documented and visualized in an onboarding journey, along with actionable insights.
The results were packaged to foster empathy and understanding of the employee experience during onboarding, guiding decisions and prioritizing improvement initiatives moving forward. To build empathy, the findings were communicated in a way that brought them to life, using stories and the employees’ own words.
Turning challenges to opportunities and MVPs
The efforts to enhance the onboarding experience started immediately after the findings were established. The most critical pain points identified in the onboarding journey were prioritized for solution development. Embracing the design methodology, challenges were reframed to inspire innovative solution ideas, effectively addressing the how. The fusion team proved to be a critical success factor in the solution phase, ensuring the involvement and expertise from various parts of the organization while working iteratively towards implementing MVPs.
Result
The way of working turned out to be successful in many ways. All project team members became strong ambassadors for working with employee experience, leading to a sense of ownership and great spread of the results. The project’s success led to more initiatives in the same spirit, focusing on employee experience. This achieved the project objective of piloting the employee experience approach within People & Culture, effectively paving the way for a new way of working.
The project resulted in several solutions to improve the employee experience during onboarding. The solutions varied in nature, ranging from re-establishing important pre-pandemic onboarding elements to integrating a new digital platform for increased efficiency and clarity in the collaboration between managers, assistants and newly hired employees. The team felt confident in their prioritization, as understanding what caused the most pain and brought the most joy to employees made navigation easier.
Initially, the cross-functional team setup was perceived as challenging. However, by the end of the project, the team members expressed a strong preference for this way of working, stating that they always wanted to work this way moving forward.
