“Does onboarding have to be boring?”

INNOVATION | ONBOARDING | CORPORATE TRAINING | UX | INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN | AR | EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

How might we transform the onboarding process to create an engaging, experiential journey that equips new hires with essential skills and fosters team cohesion?

Role.

UX Lead | Instructional Designer | Workshop Facilitator

Challenge.

A newly formed 60-person team faced significant onboarding challenges due to the merger of three teams with different onboarding practices. The primary issue was the lack of a cohesive onboarding process, with fundamental skills scattered across various platforms (e.g., Confluence, SharePoint, desktops), resulting in a disjointed experience.

Goals.

Develop an innovative onboarding program that activates employees and creates business impact.

Ensure new hires quickly gain proficiency in critical new skills such as Design Thinking, agile methodologies, and Lean UX.

Foster a sense of connection and camaraderie among new team members.

Process.

  • Identified the greatest onboarding problem through team backlog analysis.

    Researched corporate innovation practices and found Adobe Kickbox, an open-source innovation toolkit, and decided to pivot it to solve the onboarding problem.

    Aligned each day’s Kickbox “features” with an onboarding activity, learning objective and gamification dynamics.

  • -Downloaded and modified Adobe Kickbox materials to create an "onboarding-in-a-box" week-long experience.

    Secured sponsorship from senior leadership to test the new onboarding approach as a proof-of-concept that could be scaled across additional teams and departments.

  • Used Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey framework to map and align the entire onboarding experience to his framework.

    Created a public leaderboard to display the new cohort’s achievements to the entire office for shared recognition.

    Conducted a capstone workshop at the end of the week where new hires presented their learnings in a Shark Tank-style pitch to the entire team.

  • Leveraged Instagram and created a private, new team group for global, social participation.

    Aligned company values with team-wide activities that existing team members and new team members participated in equally.

  • Day 1. Connection and camaraderie through icebreaker activities, using a passport signature-collection system to earn charity donations.

    Day 2. Design Thinking education with IDEO videos.

    Day 3. Innovation principles from the Innovator's DNA and Method books.

    Day 4. Product and agile training from experienced team members.

    Day 5. Showcase of knowledge with a 2-hour workshop and 1-hour Shark Tank pitch.

  • Implemented NPS (Net Promoter Score) at key onboarding milestone moments to gather feedback.

    Used Happy Or Not terminals in strategic locations in the office.

Results.

A mindset shift from onboarding as a “program” to a “product” ignited cross-department demand for an Onboarding Kickbox.

Increased Demand. The success of the onboarding experience led to interest from 6 other managers who wanted to adopt the "onboarding Kickbox" for their teams.

High Engagement and Proficiency. Achieved a World Class NPS rating, with all 7 new hires becoming proficient in critical skills and methodologies in less than a week.

Positive Feedback. Received exceptional feedback ("This was, hands down, the best onboarding I've ever had in my career.") from an employee with experience at major companies (e.g., Disney, Apple and Affirm).

Extended Impact. The program's success led to adoption by Capital's DE&I communities for creative internal training.

Provided tangible solutions to existing problem statements, accelerating existing team’s work through the onboarding cohort's contributions.