Tech learning hub improves new hire onboarding
Snapshot
Digital technologies have radically transformed the workplace over the past couple decades. While such technologies can elevate productivity to great heights, they can also be a source of confusion and frustration for both new and seasoned employees.
Staff of all experience levels — and especially new hires — working at a globally recognized nonprofit were having difficulty finding and leveraging the organization’s technology learning content, opportunities, and just-in-time resources. Kalles Group helped the nonprofit connect its “last mile” of IT resources with a centralized hub and new hire learning path, both of which brought immense value.
Challenge
Decentralized tech learning resources disrupted productivity and confused new hires
When employees are confused about technological tools and processes, their ability to do their jobs is temporarily put on hold. For this reason, it is critical that organizations find a way to quickly ramp up people’s familiarity with the technology they will be using on the job and make it easy to find ongoing learning resources. New hires in particular need to build deeper levels of digital capability as they integrate further into an organization.
At the nonprofit, the technology education experience for staff was inconsistent, disconnected, non-discoverable, and often confusing. Tech learning resources were housed on many different SharePoint sites within their intranet, and it was not always clear which site contained which type of information or which was the most up to date. These issues hampered productivity and led to missed opportunities to build capabilities through learning — and new hires bore the brunt of this problem.
The nonprofit sought Kalles Group’s help with centralizing their tech learning resources and taking a programmatic approach to delivering up-to-date and relevant content to new hires throughout each step of their onboarding journey and beyond. Rather than having a wide range of resources under the auspices of various owners, staff should have access to a “one-stop shop” that points to everything.
Approach
Discovery phase: Documenting existing resources, analyzing new hire needs, and implementing quick wins
Kalles Group zeroed in on the new hire journey during the project’s discovery phase. This human-centered design approach involved numerous interviews with new hires and managers leading to “day in the life” recommendations for the typical employee not yet reaching their first anniversary with the nonprofit. The KG team also had people keep diaries about the tech issues they were having in their day-to-day work.
To ensure that anyone searching for IT help would only encounter relevant information, Kalles Group performed a full audit of existing IT resources and cleaned up those that were duplicated or out of date. Easy fixes found along the way were completed during this stage.
The steps in the discovery phase can be summarized as follows:
- Identifying all existing IT learning resources and formulating recommendations for each one (e.g., which content needs updating, where are there gaps, what should be included in the centralized hub).
- Documenting the new hire technology learning journey through new hire interviews and diaries, human centered design sessions with managers of new hires, and data analysis of new hire service tickets.
- Identifying and implementing quick wins for learning resource improvement (e.g., cleaning up outdated and irrelevant learning content, fixing broken links).
The results of these efforts informed the detailed design of the new hire learning path and centralized tech learning hub.
Design and testing: Building a “one-stop shop” for IT help along with a new hire learning path
The KG team meticulously designed and constructed the new self-service learning hub that incorporated educational content, tech tips, and communities of practice in a centralized spot. Functioning as a “one-stop shop” for IT resources, the portal provides a single experience that guides users through multiple channels depending on their level of experience and the issue they are looking to solve.
The centralized tech resource portal addressed many of the difficulties new hires were facing, but Kalles Group took things a step further. The consultants developed an onboarding journey management capability that would point to the most important things that new hires need to know in their first few days, their first few weeks, and their first few months.
After the initial rollout, Kalles Group performed some usability testing. Staff members in the organization’s offices across the globe tried out the site based on a variety of scenarios, leading to improvements that the consultants then implemented.
Recommendations to improve ongoing IT communication and ensure long-term success
To guarantee that the new tech learning hub would be a very useful tool for years to come, Kalles Group identified success metrics, developed a change management plan, and created an operational plan for the ongoing sustainment and governance of learning content. The organization then moved into a sustain-and-maintain phase that involved tracking success metrics, such as the reduction of service desk tickets, the number of hits to the portal’s homepage, and new hire feedback.
Results
A solution demonstrating clear value with 95% of users saying they would recommend it
There is no shortage of indication that the new tech learning hub has been incredibly helpful to the nonprofit’s staff, especially new hires. The fact that they can find what they need at a glance — or at least get pointed in the right direction — makes it much easier for them to get past IT roadblocks in their daily work. People also love the new hire resources page, particularly its timeline format.
One major theme in the positive feedback alluded to the site’s “inclusiveness.” People have different levels of comfort with technology, and having a resource that supports all these comfort levels was a huge plus. There’s something for everyone — from the person who wants to simply look something up and put it into practice to the person who would like more hand-holding.
Metrics bore out the staff’s appreciation. On a scale of 0 to 10 of how likely people were to refer the resource hub to a colleague, the average rating was a whopping 9.45. The hub’s homepage showed a major jump in viewership compared to the previous homepage and then a steady increase. It is clear that Kalles Group’s work has resonated with the nonprofit’s employees and set it on a course for long-term capability development.