Standardizing Employee Onboarding

Prudential is a major financial institution, welcomes an average of 500 employees each year. In late 2020, Prudential brought together a cross-functional team to standardize the onboarding approach and embrace the agile methodology.

As design lead, I coached the team through research planning, service design, measurement, design artifacts, and workshop facilitation. I also served as a backup owner, driving sprint goals, leading sprint reviews, and mentoring the team cross-functionally.

An Agile Scrum Team (Product Owner, Business Analyst, 2 designers, 4 developers, 2 security infrastructure) was formed and fully dedicated to this initiative from November 2020 through July 2021. The team was coached by consulting partners.

I. Current State Evaluation

  1. Process Map (right) - Work with Talent Acquisition and Technology teams to map out the onboarding process from a technical and operational perspective. We learned:

    • Admin does not have enough time to adequately prepare for new employee’s workspace

    • Errors or international components in a candidate application cause substantial delays

    • Communications are triggered by different systems such as background verification, or applicant technology

  2. Data Review - Reviewed historical hiring trends

    • Found the highest concentration of new hires in the 10-8P over the last few years

    • Determined certain populations would be out of scope for phase 1 (international, PGIM, interns)

  3. Survey Review - Reviewed sentiment from annual employee survey

    • many employees don’t feel fully onboarded within their first year.

Pre-boarding Process Map - technology integrations are critical here as experience needs to support acess as candidates transition to employee.

Onboarding Process Map - emphasis on decluttering content

 

II. Build Empathy

Based on data collected, we created a sample of 30 employees and hiring managers across the organization in the domestic US

Through our interviews and data review, we identified several unique onboarding experiences: intern, call-center/cohort, experienced-hire, executive, and hiring manager.

Findings:

  • employees overwhelmed with communications and resources

  • lack of welcome experience

  • We determined certain groups out of scope due to strong existing onboarding programs, due to specialized roles (Call Center, Financial professionals, Execs)

III. Prioritize

Based on previous research activities, our objective emerged: Ensure all US employees were onboarded within their first two months (defined as an employee having a complete workspace, understanding of resources and role, and developing relationships).
With this in mind we edited down our list of 80 features:

  • Ideation Session - we brought leaders, process stakeholders, employees, hiring managers together to reflect on the personas and journey maps and solve for some of the major pain points. The group came up with 80+ ideas

  • Desirability Interviews (right) - We met with employees to get their reactions to some of the ideas generated. The design team created high-fidelity mockups for participant review

  • Feasibility Session - The greater product team came together to prioritize ideas based on feasibility, desirability and impact

  • MVP Session - Product owner decides focus of team based on what is most impactful. Product team prepares for sprinting.

IV. Future State

The new onboarding process objective is to onboarded new employees within their first two months:

  • workspace, technology set-up

  • understanding of role, resources, benefits

  • relationship building

Key components of the future state include:

  • consolidated inbox

  • consolidated digital touchpoint for candidate and new hire experiences, including checklist to keep track of critical tasks

  • coordinated meetings for new hire to form relationships

  • orientation event

Portal Initial Wireframe

Before sprinting, I put together design concepts to align the team with where we wanted to be at the end of 12 sprints. This wireframe reflects the initial solution to consolidate information, give progress feedback, and create a cultural welcome.

Other non-technical features, such as orientation, emails, and scheduling, were also prioritized for the end of the 12 sprints.

Employee (Candidate) Portal

Employee Day 1 Portal

Manager - Candidate Tracker

Manager - Employee Tracker

Measurement

To collect some of the measurements, we coordinated with the Insights team for a 30 and 90-day onboarding survey.

Some key measures include:

  • Number of employees in scope for standard onboarding

  • Duration for an employee to reporting “fully onboarded”

  • Number of technical/process issues

V. Sprinting

Due to the complexity of the original wireframes, we provided simplified designs that were less dynamic (remove checkboxes, progress, cultural welcome).

The team determined the triggers for when different portal phases occur:

  • At Verbal offer accept, the candidate enters Pre Hire experience.

  • At background clearance, the candidate enters Prepare for Day 1 experience.

  • Upon the first day, the employee enters Day 1 experience.

The team also solved a work-around to grant the candidate permission to enter the portal (on an employee-only SaaS instance)Consolidate content and resources to a single website.

We conducted usability tests every two weeks with 5 participants per instance.

Pivot - Return to Work

Around Sprint 8 the pandemic hit and Prudential would soon begin onboarding employees remotely.

We shifted our vision to prioritize the remote employee and prioritized cultural features such as the orientation and welcome groups.

VI. Outcome

Journeys and the new onboarding process continue to welcome Prudential employees. It is supported by an agile team.

  • At Launch, 80% US employees brought in through new Onboarding Process

  • Employees reported feeling onboard within their first 30 days on Onboarding Survey

  • “Journeys is Excellenent! Very Concise and straight forward.” - Chief Marketing Officer, Prudential

 

Day 1 Experience

Benefits Resources

Events

Workspace Set Up

Appendix II. Executive Onboarding Service Design

I was brought back six months later to help the Talent Team standardize their process for a more simple employee experience. We complimented the existing Journeys portal with low-effort high-impact artifacts for the Talent Team.

Next

Enterprise-wide Recognition Program (2021)