Designing a unique onboarding experience

With thousands of new starters being hired, the client wanted to make their first year really stand out with a new engaging onboarding programme… 

Both retention and quality hiring can be tricky to get right at the best of times. In the wake of the ‘great resignation’ during COVID-19, employing and retaining employees is harder than ever. With spiralling hiring, onboarding, and training costs, something needed to change. As a fast growth business, our client was expecting up to 1000 new colleagues to join their global business each year, they realised, now was the time to act. 

The metrics

12 cohorts each year 

1000+ participants to date

60 events per annum

88% of participants would recommend this onboarding programme

Challenge

We all know first impressions count. A good onboarding programme can lay the foundations for an employee’s career within the company, ultimately determining whether they stay long term. While there will always be the necessity for admin, lanyards and laptops, this onboarding experience needed to go beyond delivering basic tasks. Creating connections, a sense of belonging, and immersing new starters in the company culture is vital when it comes to retaining people in the long term. The client wanted a programme designed that focused on their core values and they set clear objectives for the programme: 

• Inspire long term careers — to develop a deep understanding of the organisation  and the opportunities for growth and development. 
• Knowledge transfer — understanding the organisation’s values and vision and becoming committed to working towards the strategy and goals. 
• Energy — maintain and enhance the “new starter” energy and enthusiasm. 
• Skills — equip the new starters with the skills and knowledge they would need to succeed in a global landscape. 
• Building connections — establishing a network that will support them in their work and enhance their role. 
• Fostering a sense of pride and belonging — being proud to work for their new organisation and feeling valued and supported. 

Solution

• With up to 1000 new employees to onboard each year and monthly cohorts of c.80 participants “kicking off” at the beginning of each month we knew they would need a blended learning approach to access and embed all aspects of the programme. 
• Central to the design of the onboarding programme, was a series of virtual events each with a laser-focus on the client’s vision — building connections, belonging and immersion. Company experts became guest speakers providing insight into all aspects of the company — from benefits to sustainability — as well as introducing the participants to the company vision and goals. 
• Building the learning experience outside the virtual events was essential; pre/post learning topped and tailed each of the sessions. Interactive, fun and engaging, these were designed to introduce new concepts prior to the events. They also helped embed learning through “on-the job missions”. We wanted participants to leave events curious to find out more — our extra learning materials gave them “deep dives” from articles, podcasts, webinars and learning nudges. 
• Finally, we wanted to measure the success of the programme. We are committed to continuous improvement, and gathering feedback and results meant we could iterate the programme to ensure it continued to deliver maximum impact for our client. Measuring how the participants responded to each aspect of the programme and providing insights from participants for senior leaders was also an important aspect of our reporting. 

Result

• Global onboarding programme delivering world class experiences for new joiners. 
• Retention has risen demonstrably since the inception of the onboarding programme. Hiring costs massively reduced.