Overwhelm vs overload with new hires
Starting any new role can be like drinking from a firehose. Yet this initial onboarding window is also critical to ensuring new hires understand what’s expected of them — especially when it comes to a topic as important as safety. Onboarding isn’t just about helping new hires understand and apply their learnings, it’s also an opportunity to help them to become safety advocates.
We partnered with one of the world’s most highly recognised brands to redesign their workplace health and safety onboarding program. The goal: create an immersive learning experience that would not overwhelm new hires with so much information that it’s forgotten in their first week. And by redefining the safety experience, right from Day 1, we were able to ensure new hires felt empowered and capable, not overwhelmed. In addition, we were able to reduce the overall time required to complete the onboarding by 50 per cent, further minimising the cognitive load. Here’s how we did it.
Background
From Melbourne, Australia to Manhattan, USA; from Mumbai, India to Manchester, UK, and everywhere in between; our collaborator serves millions of customers every day through its products and services. And it’s the team of more than a million employees that pick, pack, sort, stow, sell, and deliver who make it all possible.
But before this team can do that effectively, they need to be onboarded in a way that ensures they know exactly what’s expected of them so they can keep themselves and their teammates safe, while working on a busy site alongside quite a few potential hazards.
So the question was: how do they onboard new hires to work as safely as possible without overwhelming them with so much information that it’s forgotten in the first week?
And, as if that’s not challenging enough, this was all being pulled together during a global pandemic of unprecedented proportions, which meant the onboarding experience had to also include the strictest health measures the world has ever seen, which were constantly being updated due to regional requirements.
The analysis
Our first step was a deep dive analysis of the onboarding process our collaborator was using at the time. We found it was:
Constructed in Word documents and PowerPoint presentations, which had to be printed out or read on screen
Made up of long eLearning modules, requiring large blocks of time to complete
Built in a linear progression, with only one way through
Overloading new starters with too much information at one time — some likened it to “drinking from a firehose”
Not leveraging adult learning principles — creating content that is relevant and meaningful, addressing the audience’s past experiences to aid their learning, problem-solving, involvement and, most importantly, investing the new hire in the experience by showing them how it will help them succeed in their role
Developed for desktop computers only, which had to be accessed from one of our collaborator’s office spaces — problematic for many who were working at operations facilities
In need of significant changes to bring it up to date, and to incorporate modern features of flexible learning
In need of important COVID-safe updates.
The opportunity
That list might seem like quite the challenge, but what we saw was a prime opportunity to reconstruct the process, reconsider content, and — most importantly — put people at the heart of the experience.
We made it our mission to reimagine the safety onboarding experience in a way that embeds safety as a core value for new hires through an informative, engaging, structured, and clear onboarding experience.
We defined our key success criteria as delivering:
A virtual, self-led onboarding experience that incorporated human connection and a sense of community
A micro-learning experience that delivered all content required to meet WHS regulatory and legislative requirements to keep people safe
Bespoke learning experiences in which messaging was tailored to each new hire’s role across different business units and geographies
A highly engaging adult learning experience that demonstrated how seriously our collaborator takes health and safety
An easily accessible experience that is also secure and compatible with our collaborator’s systems
An experience with a measurable impact.
The solution
First, we built out a brand and identity for the program. This ensured each touchpoint and experience felt congruent and considered — with each module building upon one another. From here, we developed a series of self-led, online micro-learning courses, a manager toolkit, and structured job shadowing activities.
The course content was developed into our collaborator’s secure learning management system. We used mobile responsive technology which meant the experience could be accessed via PCs, Kindles, tablets, or mobile phones, so it was available any time, anywhere. And to ensure new hires felt welcome, supported, and connected to the team, every module included video messages from colleagues with their own relevant learnings.
The structured onboarding experience was created as a series of micro-learning modules, delivered over a number of weeks, to ensure all required content was covered in a way that was manageable and not overwhelming.
We also ensured the core messaging was consistent across all modules, but also built ‘logic’ into the user experience, so new hires could navigate by business unit and geography, to ensure information was relevant and tailored.
In reducing the overall time required to complete the onboarding by 50 per cent, people were able to spend less time on training and more time out in the field getting the job done — with corresponding improvements to the bottom line.
Onboarding is such a critical time in an employee experience and ensuring an immersive and informative experience right from Day 1 is critical to continuing to embed safety as a priority. By putting ‘human’ at the centre of this communication strategy, the onboarding experience made safety an integral part of the company culture — and the response continues to be overwhelmingly positive from both learners and stakeholders.
If this article has made you think differently about how you onboard new hires, get in touch and we’ll offer some insight as to how you could enhance this experience for your people.
