Welcome to Thalia DRS
2019 – 2022 • Optimizing the Onboarding Process
Overview
Over the span of several years, I was involved in optimizing various parts of the onboarding process with the help of design. There were different outputs that came out of it, that I will present here.
Problem 🔥
Starting a new job is overwhelming in itself and in addition, new colleagues receive the right information at the wrong time and lack information that they need altogether.
Solution 💡
Create an onboarding process, that takes the new colleague by the hand, ensures a great start and provides all the relevant info’s when needed.
Create Welcome Screens
The welcome screens were assigned to me by my design lead, Nicolai Fleischhauer. The idea behind them, were to inform our teams about new colleagues joining. The welcome screens were initially presented on a big TV in our office, during Corona shared on Slack and later on also used for LinkedIn posts.
Output:
Outcome:
It created a welcoming environment for the new colleague and made it feel official. The team would already know what the new colleague would look like and could greet them by their name. This makes the company feel prepared and leave a positive impression on the new arrival.
The Onboarding Workshop(s)
In one of our team retrospectives, we talked about our onboarding and generated an action item to improve parts of it. I organized a workshop with the entire team. We gathered in a room with lots of post it’s and proceeded as follows:
Step 1: Recall problems & struggles of one’s onboarding & write it down on post-it’s
Step 2: Present to the team & cluster them together
Step 3: Think of possible solutions & divide the team up to work on each solution
Step 4: Come together after 3 weeks and present how far the topics came along
First Week Plan
The first cluster of problems led to the creation of a confluence checklist, that depicted a plan of what needed to be done & shared with the colleague at what time. The target audience was the person, assigned to onboard the new colleague.
Documentation
Another cluster dealt with the struggles of finding certain information on your own. We expanded the existing digital documentation and improved the physical office handbook. In addition, we created a questionnaire that encourages the colleague to playfully obtain information.
B2B Onboarding
The third cluster raised the need for a more detailed onboarding about our clients & the stakeholders. A keynote about our client was created at a later time, though.
Outcome:
The confluence checklist, in particular, helped our team make sure that all the relevant information about the project is shared with the new colleague and helped keep the onboarding organized.
Expanding the digital documentation was helpful, yet it needed continuous improvement & maintenance, which without a dedicated person in charge was difficult.
The employee’s guide to Thalia DRS helped give a great overview about the office.
The Design Onboarding
As part of the onboarding, design was asked to give the new colleagues an overview about the project and it’s designs. At the time, I was the only designer in our app team and created a plan on how to approach the onboarding. It was an iterative process, that extended and improved based on questions I’ve received from developers, managers & designers I’ve onboarded. Thanks to additional tasks I got from my design lead, I was able to incorporate its outputs in the onboarding as well.
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I created a checklist, on how to approach the new colleagues, what to share during the onboarding meeting and what to share after.
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The new colleagues get an insight about the design team, our process, and the agreements we established with the team. In addition, an introduction about our client, the project and if needed, an introduction to Figma.
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I was assigned to create an onboarding keynote about our client, that can be used by various disciplines. It helped me introduce the stakeholders, the team setup and history during the onboarding meeting. It also gives an introduction about the product our team was working on, it’s vision, mission, personas and features.
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For the colleagues who have not worked with Figma before, I would give an introduction to the tool during the onboarding. Right after, I would share a summary of the Figma-Intro with the most relevant functions explained.
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Even though the onboarding keynote would be shared after the meeting, I created a tl;dr version. It lists the main facts about the app our team was working on. It also includes a list of terms we use in our teams and their meaning to help ease the struggle of having to ask what various abbreviations mean.
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As I shared more and more links after each onboarding, I created a cheat sheet in notion that would give a good overview containing all relevant design resources, but also project & company related resources.
Outcome:
The design onboarding really helped build rapport with the new colleagues and established that the design team is willing to look holistically and beyond just their silo. It gave an opportunity to explain why certain agreements with the team are important for us designers and how they impact the product. Outlining the design process showed, that the work of a designer is not limited to making visuals, which in turn helps increase UX Maturity in the company.