Service Design
Employee Onboarding for A Global Telco
How might we create a memorable onboarding journey for employees joining one of the largest telcos in the world?
COMPANY & DEPARTMENT
Company: e& (parent company of Etisalat). e& is a technology and telecoms company, with a portfolio of brands across the world.
Department: Group HR
DURATION
December 2021 - March 2022 (design sprint & implementation).
PROJECT TYPE
Employee Experience (EX) and Process/Service Design.
THE CHALLENGE
Creating a new onboarding process and revamping the current recruitment process to give e&’s new joiners a seamless experience across all touchpoints.
MY ROLE & METHODOLOGY USED
Role: Service & Process Designer, working cross functionally with the group level Talent Acquisition, HR Strategy, Employee Relations, HR Business Partners, Learning & Development, and Legal teams.
Methodology: Design Thinking methodology with an 8 week design sprint.
Problem Setting
THE FOCUS
The focus for this project was Recruitment & Onboarding. This is the first interaction a potential employee has with a company, and first impressions matter!
THE REASON
Recruitment & Onboarding were the two areas where the HR department had scored the lowest in the past two years on the Internal Satisfaction Survey, which is why it was our key area of focus.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
01. Empathize
DISCOVERY WORKSHOPS CONDUCTED WITH
Frontline HR employees: to understand the current situation. From their insights, I drew the initial service blueprint.
New joiners: to gather qualitative insights about their experience. They highlighted all the pain points they faced during recruitment and onboarding.
HR leadership: to understand business priorities.
DATA GATHERING METHODS
Desk research: to see what best practices are and what other companies do for their onboarding process.
Stakeholder interviews and surveys: to gather qualitative and quantitative insights. Our main stakeholders were the Talent Acquisition team, the candidates, and new joiners.
Workshops: involving the entire Talent Acquisition and HR Leadership teams (including Group Chief of HR).
Data from discovery sessions and workshops were organized in an affinity diagram to uncover themes.
02. Define
Document requests
Candidates need to share a lot of personal documents for background checks and can feel frustrated if this happens on an ad-hoc basis.
Impersonalized onboarding
On Day 1 candidates complete more paperwork and formalities and feel unwelcome.
PAIN POINTS
Lack of a defined process
Things happen on an ad-hoc basis which is overwhelming for both the Talent Acquisition team and new joiners.
Lack of communication
During parts of the journey, candidates don’t hear back from the Talent Acquisition team which leaves them feeling anxious.
Problem Statement
Candidates and new joiners feel lost because they don’t have clear communication, and with no clearly defined process things are happening on an ad-hoc basis for the Talent Acquisition team.
03. Ideate
WORKSHOP ACTIVITIES
How Might We Exercise: all participants were encouraged to share their ideas no matter how bold.
Concept Cards: ideas generated were grouped into concept cards and each card had a corresponding theme.
Prioritization Activity: stakeholders mapped the concept cards into a 2x2 matrix according to business priorities.
All workshops were conducted on Miro.
THEMES GATHERED
Simplify: streamlining processes to make sure each step adds value.
Communicate: making sure candidates and new joiners are always kept in the loop regarding next steps.
Delight: going above and beyond to delight candidates and new joiners.
Data gathered was then mapped onto a roadmap with clearly defined tasks for each team and was presented to and signed off by the Group Chief of HR.
04. Prototype & Test
We prototyped by conducting a survey with 50 new joiners to ensure we’re on the right track with our ideas. Since the entire project was to ensure a smooth process for candidates and new joiners, it was critical to get their input.
Once we had approval from new joiners and HR Leadership, we started the testing phase.
All solutions were tested on a small scale before we rolled it out to the entire Group.
Final Deliverables
Email templates: with pre-written content aligned with our communication strategy.
Updated processes: for the Recruitment and Onboarding stage with KPIs and SLAs in place.
Welcome Packs: created for all new joiners with items they would need for work.
Onboarding surveys: to make sure we capture feedback at an early stage.
