Building an Effective Onboarding Journey
Overview:
The onboarding process is a critical aspect of any organization, especially for creative teams, where cohesion, collaboration, and creativity play significant roles in achieving success. When I joined the Creative Leadership team at Rocket Mortgage, I noticed a lack of formal onboarding process for new creative team members. Despite having a company-wide onboarding process, we struggled to maintain consistency, thoroughness, and structure at the sub-team level. In this blog post, I will explore how I identified and addressed this issue by holding focus groups and leveraging our work management system, Adobe Workfront, to create a seamless onboarding experience for new creative team members.
Identifying the Onboarding Challenges:
Recognizing the disconnect in the onboarding process within the creative team, I took a proactive step by conducting focus groups with team members. These focus groups provided valuable insights into individual experiences and allowed team members to voice their thoughts on what could be improved. Through candid discussions, several key challenges were identified:
Consistency: Different sub-teams had varying onboarding practices, leading to confusion and a lack of unity among team members.
Thoroughness: Some team members felt that certain essential aspects were overlooked during their onboarding, hindering their ability to perform at their best.
Structure: The absence of a structured onboarding plan made it challenging for new members to adapt quickly and understand their roles within the team.
Creating a Comprehensive Onboarding Experience:
Armed with the feedback from the focus groups, I set out to revamp the onboarding process and create a consistent, thorough, and structured experience for all new creative team members. Here's how I achieved this:
Designing a Standardized Onboarding Plan: The first step was to develop a comprehensive onboarding plan that encompassed all sub-teams. This plan included essential communication, technology set up and access, training, and meetings to ensuring that each new member had a seamless and consistent experience.
Customizing Onboarding for Sub-teams: While the core onboarding remained consistent, creative leadership recognized that sub-teams had unique requirements. As a result, they introduced tailored templates for each sub-team, covering specific tools, processes, and best practices relevant to their roles.
Leveraging Adobe Workfront: The focus groups uncovered that using our existing work management system, Adobe Workfront, would be best to host the onboarding experience. This decision not only provided a seamless transition for new team members but also allowed them to become familiar with the tool during their onboarding, enhancing productivity from the start.
Mentorship and Support: To foster a sense of belonging and support, mentors are assigned to each new team member and have their own onboarding tasks in Adobe Workfront. Mentors guided their mentees through the onboarding journey, answering questions and providing assistance when needed.
Surveys and Feedback: I created a set of three surveys for team members to complete at various stages of their onboarding journey. This encouraged team members to provide ongoing feedback on the onboarding process, allowing for continuous improvements.
Outcomes:
A consistent, thorough, and structured onboarding experience is the foundation for building a successful creative team. By actively listening to team members and leveraging existing tools like Adobe Workfront, I was able to implement a cohesive onboarding journey. Through this proactive approach and commitment to improvement, I not only enhanced productivity and collaboration but also set the stage for long-term success within the creative team.