CHALLENGE
TEAM
1x Design Director
1x Senior Business Designer*
3x Interaction Designers
1x Visual Designer
1x Project Manager
The new leadership of a large bio-pharmaceutical company redirected the organization’s vision, outlining a large-scale transformation and a refocus toward its core competencies. As a result, reliance on strategic partnerships increased, while employees’ roles and responsibilities changed.
The rapid changes had significantly impacted the HR department and its processes, causing inconsistencies (and resulting frustration) across locations, departments, and managers. As the organization continued to evolve and obtain new and differentiated talent (both partners and employees), it was clear that onboarding had, and would, become increasingly important.
We turned our focus to reimagining the onboarding experience in a way that would deliver delight to new hires while embodying the core values of the organization and supporting their transformation objectives. We set out to create a consistent experience across the organization globally, discovering and articulating the value of the initiative in order to effectively guide investment.
SOLUTION
We approached the project using experience design methodologies and defined the “moments that matter.” As we reimagined the future state, we designed for flexibility, ensuring the concepts could adjust to both global and local needs, as well as balance staffing and technology solutions.
Research
An extensive primary research plan was developed, and we set to work conducting one-on-one interviews, focus groups, surveys, and site visits. Over 80+ interviews were conducted at five different locations; participants included new and recent hires, hiring managers, stakeholders, and SMEs.
COMPETITIVE ASSESMENT
Secondary research and a thorough analysis of the competitive landscape uncovered the “talent war” realities and broadened the organization’s definition of competition, leaving the leadership team aware of the gaps between the organization’s employee experience, that of direct competitors, and new “highly sought after” Silicon Valley titans.
Synthesis + Concept
Beyond learning where systemic issues arose, evaluating and synthesizing research allowed us to uncover two critical insights that would impact the success of implementation, as they spoke to the organization’s culture.
1. Poor onboarding experiences were seen as a badge of honor and compared among employees
2. A focus on budgets and cost cutting led to internal solutioning that was extremely labor intensive and inefficient
Business Case
The business case was a major component of our deliverables and ultimately functioned as a comprehensive report of the entire project with a heavy focus on secondary research (landscape analysis, trends, etc.), shaping the organization’s perspective on the importance of onboarding and connecting these points to financial impact to guide their investment discussions.
PATH TO PRODUCTIVITY
Onboarding had been strictly defined for the organization through a focus on administrative tasks, technology provisioning, compliance, and other terms of employment. While this approach satisfies the most basic enablement and risk management needs, it does the bare minimum to ensure that a new hire’s contributions can make a maximum impact. We set out to prove why moving from a checklist mentality to a focus on employee experience would be financially and culturally beneficial: improving the path to productivity would lead to empowered and productive employees.
Hierarchy of Needs
Redefining the term ‘onboarding’ meant broadening the definition to include 'everything that must take place in order to get a member of the workforce fully integrated and in a position to make meaningful contributions.' This meant streamlining administrative and provisioning tasks and increasing the focus on activities that help new hires acclimate to their teams, feel empowered to make meaningful contributions in their roles, and, gain a sense of purpose and connection to the impact of their work.
Based on our research, this framework depicts the five tiers — or ‘need states’—that an employee must have satisfied to be considered fully integrated and thus positioned to maximize their levels of engagement and ability to make meaningful contributions to the organization.
THE VALUE OF ONBOARDING
We found that employee turnover and onboarding practices were having a significant negative impact on productivity. A high number of average days of open roles and lengthy integration periods were ‘leaking’ productivity. Quantifying these leaks showed that even marginal improvements in the onboarding process would speed a new hire toward a ‘path to productivity’ and would add up to significant savings in lost productivity for the organization, savings that could be recognized for both hiring managers, their teams, and new hires.
Onboarding has the potential to improve productivity by affecting two dimensions
1. Reduce the severity of the ‘Productivity Dip’ for hiring managers
2. Reduce the amount of ‘Time Spent at Less Than Full Productivity’ for new hires
Deliverables
CURRENT STATE GAME
JOURNEY MAP
Future State Concepts
Roadmap
IMPACT
CHANGING CULTURE
Discussion about these new ways of working quickly spread within the halls, inspiring them not just to move forward with different onboarding initiatives but also to employ new ways of sharing knowledge within their company.
GREATER OPPORTUNITIES
Stakeholders and Project Sponsors are pursuing funding for prioritized initiatives, as well as additional work with the design team.
“Savannah and the Fjord Design Director worked tirelessly to turn out one of the most impressive business cases I've ever seen. The work product gave the client tremendous confidence in the evidence - backed recommendations. The strength of the recommendations have opened up new opportunities for us to continue growing the relationship with the client. Her work exceeded all of my expectations.”
-Internal Client