Tech learning hub improves new hire onboarding
Snapshot
Digital technologies have radically transformed the workplace over the past couple decades, and this transformation is only accelerating with the advent of artificial intelligence. 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. The organization brought in Kalles Group experts to connect the “last mile” of IT’s technology, process, and capability to their staff by creating a centralized hub for accessing various educational resources, including surfacing the top items a new hire needs to know throughout their onboarding journey.
Challenge
Decentralized tech learning resources disrupted productivity and confused new hires
When employees are unsure of how to use an organization’s technology tools and processes, their ability to do their jobs may be 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 to build deeper levels of digital capability as they integrate further into their organization.
At the nonprofit, the technology educational 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
The discovery phase: Analysis of existing resources and new hire learning needs, identifying and implementing quick wins, and developing recommendations
Given that tech learning is particularly important for new hires’ speed to productivity, Kalles Group initiated a “Tech Learning Strategy” that specifically examined the situation through the lens of the new hire journey. During the discovery phase of this project, the KG team focused on three primary activities:
- 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 KG team is using the results of these discovery activities to inform the detailed design of the new hire learning path and centralized tech learning hub, identify appropriate tools, update and create learning content wherever necessary, create a prototype, and begin user testing.
Implementing a “one-stop shop” for easier access to tech learning resources
Once the design is approved, the KG team will build and deploy the centralized, self-service learning hub, offering educational content, tech tips, and communities of practice across the global organization. Kalles Group will identify success metrics, develop a change management plan, as well as create an operational plan for ongoing sustainment and governance of learning content before moving into a sustain-and-maintain phase where they will track success metrics and conduct feedback loops for continuous improvement.
Steps in this phase can be summarized as follows:
- One-stop IT portal creation: Providing a single experience with multiple channels and setting up the foundation for long-term capability development.
- Journey management: Creating a sequence that surfaces the top items that a new hire needs to know and provides relevant content based on their journey over the course of their first year.
- Data-driven insights: Leveraging insights to drive learning and build a deeper level of capability with tools and process as new hires integrate into the foundation.
- Informed recommendations: Creating an enablement and program strategy to map out existing information and capabilities and point out ways to improve ongoing communication around the IT learning experience.
Results
A roadmap for improving productivity and new hire onboarding
Go-live for this project will be at the end of the second quarter of 2024, with an ongoing sustain phase throughout the second half of the year. Although the project is not yet complete, the organization has already benefited from the insights Kalles Group has been able to provide into the new hire journey and overall tech learning experience. These insights form a roadmap for further improving the new hire onboarding process and providing up-to-date and relevant tech learning content in a sustained, consistent manner to enhance productivity and strengthen their staff’s technology learning experience.