LUCIE BOLÉ
An onboarding experience reimagined to increase retention

Role
Responsible for conducting an extensive 6 weeks shadowing phase, I experienced this client's new hire onboarding first-hand. I helped build interview guides for stakeholder interviews and conducted employees focus groups to understand the gaps in their experience. My primary role was to lead the creation of the experience's interactive journey map, as well as a future experience blueprint.
🔨
Capabilities
Organisation Design
Employee Experience
Journey Mapping
Experience Design
Strategy
🔥
Team
Lead Designer
Interaction Designer (me)
Strategists
Product Manager
🏠
Industry
Call Center
Insurance
Challenge
With more than 5000 customer support new hires each year, too many were dropping out when the real work began. Their 12-week intensive onboarding experience had to be reimagined to increase engagement and improve retention.

Impact
I created an interactive experience blueprint of the future onboarding experience including a high-level overview and daily schedule breakdowns, which accompanied the +60 page recommendation deck delivered.
Outstandingly, based on a business case provided by the client, the new onboarding model could potentially deliver over $15M in annual new hire onboarding cost savings!
"The team gave us transformational tools to understand the current state of our new hire onboarding experience. We use them as an everyday motto now for all operations team. The blueprint was the North Star of the project. It allowed us to start putting the puzzle pieces together for implementation."
Yukari, Client's Director of Analytics and Process


Approach
After talking to over 40 employees through interviews and focus groups, and shadowing the new hire onboarding for 6 weeks, I produced an interactive journey map which highlights the new hires emotional journey and opportunities throughout the onboarding experience.
Key aspects were also revealed through the 4 new hire archetypes identified and a +150 page Talent Observation document that included themes, observations and opportunities to understand the current experience and areas of opportunity.





🤔
Interactive Journey Map
After conducting a co-creation session to ideate on new experience principles and creating 3 distinct experience models with over 30 improvement ideas, the client chose to prioritize different learning preferences and emotional support to help new hires feel confident, connected and supported.








🤩
Interactive Future Experience Blueprint
To effectively highlight the future onboarding experience model, I created an interactive experience blueprint, which included a high-level overview and daily schedule breakdowns.
Ethics
I led my team through an internal ethics kickoff workshop where we reviewed the client's sustainability and DE&I reports, and ideated around ethical strategies to identify what negative impacts could be mitigated or avoided, and what positive impacts could be amplified.
We presented tips around ethics in our deliverables, made sure to represent a diverse range of people with illustrations and pronouns, and followed accessibility guidelines for all deliverables.
After the project, I guided my team through the application of green IT best practices with an "after project digital cleanup".

HMW use tech to improve the physical and mental health of employees?
Could flexibility in scheduling lead to a more diverse workforce?
HMW create flexible schedules to match employee needs?
HMW introduces a set of digital green IT guidelines for all employees?

HMW make sure all training materials are accessible?
circular solutions for all the tech equipment used by their remote employees?
HMW allow employees to show their whole selves at work?
HMW celebrate different cultural backgrounds of employees?

🤓
Key Takeaways
As I helped strategists and researchers with the user research process, I challenged myself to improve my interviewing skills, by taking feedback from other team members.
I implemented a new and innovative way of visualizing user experiences by moving away from the typical 'paper/poster' journey map, and instead I delivered interactive maps that were more relevant to the new era of remote working.
In addition, I pushed for more sustainable, inclusive and accessible processes and deliverables, which inspired me to explore more ways to apply ethics in my work.

© 2023 Lucie Bole