When a new employee starts, there’s limitless information and context they need to learn to be successful in their role.
- Enter: onboarding design.
Why it matters: Nine times out of ten, when you ask someone who has just started a new job how onboarding is going, they’ll say something like, “It’s good, but a little overwhelming.”
I recently read Lindsey Caplan’s (of The Gathering Effect) post about improving onboarding design and thought some of her rules of thumb were especially spot on.
- Below are my favorite takeaways (with permission from Lindsey)
Separate learn vs. do
- From Lindsey: “We revised all asynchronous communication to clarify and distinguish between what required action and what was FYI and need to know only.”
- My two cents: If you give a new hire a 50-page handbook and don’t mention they need to sign it, not just skim it at their leisure, you’ll end up having to send a lot of reminders.
Match the message to the moment of need
- From Lindsey: “What do employees need to learn on day 1? It’s likely not how to file an expense report. Instead of cramming all learning into one day or week, we spaced out sessions to the moment of need.”
- My two cents: As a new hire, one of the most frustrating things can be staring at a list of 50+ onboarding tasks and documents and trying to determine which ones can sit for a few weeks and which ones need action ASAP.
Give employees one place to go
- From Lindsey: “No longer did employees need to sift through multiple documents and folders to find what they needed to get up to speed quickly.”
- My two cents: Yes, new hires will need to set up many different spaces, software, and tools. But having one hub that connects to all of those spots can help prevent onboarding items from getting lost. This is similar to the rationale for having one single source of truth for employee-facing information that I talked about a few months ago.
Focus on integration > information
- From Lindsey: “People can easily consume information on their own time. Therefore, what’s worth coming together for isn’t information, it’s to integrate that information via the sharing of perspectives, reflection, and peer learning.”
- My two cents: It’s not worth bringing people together just to distribute information that they could read about and ask questions about on their own time. Any synchronous sessions should have some connection value, helping new hires get to know their peers and leaders.
The bottom line: Thoughtful design can improve a new employee’s experience and ease them into the new role without creating information overload anxiety.
Go deeper: For more onboarding tips, read Lindsey’s onboarding case study here.
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