UX DESIGN | STRATEGY
Transforming remote onboarding making it 75% faster, healthier and more effective
The project
This project was born from the need of TCS to improve its employee onboarding experience. In 2020, the company’s infant attrition rate was higher than the average in the UK, and the current process was causing major losses due to unproductivity.
Moreover, there was a need for an experience that resulted in improved employee wellbeing and increased brand awareness.
MY ROLE
UX designer, Product Owner, Program Lead Manager, Full-stack Developer, Content Designer
THE TEAM
I led the design and worked through design problems from beginning to end, conducting research and translating insights into concepts
that shaped the product and features.
Impact
£400K of estimated savings a year
in recruitment and onboarding costs, by increasing new hire retention and reducing the onboarding and orientation period.
75% cut in completion time
through gamification of tasks and increased efficiency in onboarding process.
Increased new hire enthusiasm
through improved satisfaction with their onboarding experience and promoting a sense of belonging.
Understanding the problem
In this stage, we interviewed key users: experienced hires, HR team members, line managers and admin team.
The aim was to understand how the ecosystem players interacted with each other, and understand the current user journeys and key challenges.
This resulted in the creation of user personas, as-is user journey maps and ecosystem map.
10
Experienced graduate hires
3
Line managers and HR team members respectively
2
Admin team members
“You feel dropped off a cliff into a huge machine and don’t feel quite prepared when you hit it.”
“We’ve found that keeping everyone in the loop has been essential to speeding the process up.”
In order to re-think the onboarding experience we had to make sure we had a deep understanding of all actions that needed to be taken by the different stakeholders.
Identified pain points
By focusing on key jobs and motivations behind our users, we were able to generate fundamental understanding and identify key pain points.
New hire
LACK OF VISIBILITY OF THE EXACT ONBOARDING PROCESS
LAPTOP SET-UP IS CHAOTIC
INFORMATION IS EVERYWHERE
Staff
HAVING EVERYTHING READY ON DAY 1 IS IMPOSSIBLE
NO TRANSPARENCY BETWEEN DEPARTMENTS
TIME WASTED IN MANUAL PROCESSES
Exploring potential solutions
As the onboarding process was very complex, we engaged continuously with key stakeholders to validate our assumptions and journeys.
We also facilitated an ideation workshop to brainstorm possible solutions that worked for all.
Ideating and iterating the onboarding app
Tracking your missions at a glance
One of the key challenges of the app was to show users their progress and to encourage them to continue completing the tasks.
We decided to gamify the experience and give users more visibility of the different tasks and progress at a glance.
Gathering feedback
Each mission was a key task. As this new journey transformed various steps in the past onboarding process, HR needed to receive timely feedback so that they could keep learning and improving the experience.
We introduced feedback pop-ups to ask user for feedback after each mission and provided them a form field to elaborate on their positive or negative reaction.
Tone of voice
Another aspect we explored was the content to include in each screen.
When starting a task, the aim was to encourage and motivate users to complete the task. That’s why we changed the tone of voice to be more friendly i.e. mission rather than task.
We also removed the due date so that the users didn’t feel obligated or in a constant feeling of pressure caused by the need to complete the task.
Increasing transparency across stakeholders
A key ask in this project was to add transparency in the process. With this dashboard, we allowed staff to keep track of the progress of each of the hires, both with an overview and a task-by-task completion status.
We also provided the admin team with a section in the dashboard where they could view all the feedback provided by new joiners. This would allow them to easily gather insights on which steps were rated the lowest, read what new hires commented about the difficulties they’ve had, and be able to take action on improvements immediately.
The solution
Single point of information
A mobile and desktop platform that shows all information needed for onboarding.
Transparency on progress made by new joiners
A dashboard to provide managers and HR with visibility of the progress.
