Enhancing onboarding : evaluation and redesign through user-centric methods

Abstract

This research's main objective was to establish empirically the critical factors that would improve the onboarding user experience for the commissioning organization. The research suggested that improving the onboarding user experience requires onboarding plans to be better tailored to the needs of different employee types, to have more clarity in communication of job expectations, to include regular check-ins and feedback, and overall, to adopt a more user-centred comprehensive approach to onboarding. This research highlighted the importance of creating an inclusive environment, where supervisor engagement and organizational culture play a vital role in making employees feel welcomed and acknowledged. Survey, interviews, and participatory workshops were extensively used to uncover issues and generate solution suggestions. The interviews and workshops conducted with stakeholders suggested that a user-centred digital onboarding tool along with process changes would solve most user problems. The research employed service design methods such as user personas, empathy map, customer journey mapping, thematic analysis, benchmarking and prototyping throughout the process.