Successful onboarding is a branded experience
I’m new to digital learning. I’ve spent 20 years in brand strategy, design and language, digging deep into companies to explore and define their purpose and essence; finding ways to reach audiences with a compelling, distinctive brand. Perhaps that’s why I see a clear connection between brand and the digital L&D Desq creates for clients – as an employee experience, it should be the epitome of a brand.
Shifting the focus from an external to internal audience, and to internal brand, I’m interested in what brand principles can bring to the design of the learning experience. The employee experience should live, breathe and impart your brand. But how?
One report suggests that staff retention can be improved by up to 82% by a great onboarding experience. The same report references Gallup research that states only 12% of employees would say that they had enjoyed a great onboarding experience*. That’s 88% who are feeling let down just weeks into their new career.
Companies can’t afford to compromise the goodwill they have built by delivering poor onboarding, which is cited as a reason for leaving within 6 months in over 70% of cases.
So how can companies get onboarding right, and what can brand principles teach us? Here’s some key lessons from the world of brand:
Protect your reputation – it’s old news, but bears repeating. If the word ‘brand’ doesn’t hit home, replace it with ‘reputation’, and you get a sense of how much it matters. It’s how people see, feel and relate to your company, your offer, and how and why as employees, they advocate for it.
Be consistent – brand equity is damaged with every little experience at odds with expectations. The average onboarding will consist of over 50 activities, from form filling to introductory meetings. Every one of those needs to sustain brand belief – you’d expect (sometimes, at least!) onboarding at Lego to feel playful, Meta to feel social, Apple to feel seamless. These valuable brand essences should be as alive in onboarding as they are in customer or client interactions.
Be purposeful – the hook of every brand is a clear purpose – what they want to change, save, stop, start, be. If that sense of purpose lives in onboarding, and makes clear the part your new hire will play, it can help improve productivity by up to 70%. We are motivated by shared purpose – as a new starter, we’re asking ‘what am I now part of achieving? And ‘how can I use my skills to make the greatest difference?’
There are other features of successful onboarding too – and these should be considered at the outset so that they can built into the core of the experience:
Ask for feedback – asking for feedback is rare – only 26% of employees recall being asked for their reflections on onboarding*, but those who were asked said it significantly strengthened their relationship with their new employer. Which leads on to…
Demonstrate your values – Don’t just say it, be it, because onboarding is the perfect place to demonstrate and not just state your values – and culture more broadly. Values feel arbitrary until shown in practice, so for any organisation with words like caring, listening, or human in their values, demonstrating this by asking ‘how did we do?’ is vital.
Measure the impact – there will be obvious ways to measure impact – good onboarding should of course lead to fewer resignations. But what else? Are you going to improve speed to proficiency? Or reduce the amount of post-onboarding support required? How will these things be monitored and measured? These are objectives that should be discussed at the outset of your onboarding design, so measures can be built in.