Eli: Onboarding a global giant

Eli is a personalised, interactive, online tool designed specifically to support communication between businesses and individuals and/or groups going through the process of onboarding. It was developed to support the onboarding process, but most importantly, to create an onboarding experience - because starting a new job should be a one. A great one.

/A global challenge

Our client is one of the worlds largest insurance providers, operating in 16 countries throughout the world. With over 30,000 employees (16,000 in the UK alone) the process of creating a consistent and engaging onboarding experience was understandably a big business challenge.

/Our process

CA3 follow the same process for all Eli product launches. This process is hugely important because the insight gained, and decisions made, at one stage will have a bearing on the next.

Through experience we also know that every business is different, so this process also helps us ensure that every Eli system is personalised around the clients organisation too.

The process can be broken down into 6 key stages:

1. Pre-planning
2. Planning & sign off
3. Configuration & integration
4. Structure, content & creation
5. Training & responsibilities
6. Launch and review

1) Pre-planning involved key decision makers from the leadership team and senior HR Directors from around the business. We gained a detailed understanding of the clients current process and, most importantly, where they wanted to get to. We then explained how Eli would support that process, the potential challenges and key benefits.

2) Planning, or scoping as we often call it, involved a day long session with HR business advisors from all over the world. It was key that we understood the difference between onboarding a candidate in the UK and Spain. What onboarding information and content they currently had and what they may help producing. Who would be involved in the onboarding process and when. What internal systems Eli had to integrate with, and much, much more.

3) Armed with all this knowledge we were able to begin the process of configuration and integration. The standard Eli product can be up and running in around four weeks, but rolling Eli out globally had it's own issues. The first was integrating with the HR system which took time to achieve (even with our open APIs). The second was time zone and language - ensuring both were correct where ever you are in the world. This included giving Canada the option of English or French-Canadian.

4) As part of any Eli project we give a lot of support around the area content and experience new employees will go through. Globally this was a big challenge, but we started with something very simple - a site map.

This site map was key as it allowed us to understand what kind of experience the client wanted to create and how Eli could support it. Their site would be split into three sections (About us, Your new role, and Day one & beyond). Each of these sections contained content that was both generic (same for all) and personalised to the individual.

Eli personalises content very easily, allowing you to create a different experience for each person. And, for this project, we were able to personalise content based on a persons name, start date, grade, location, market, line manager and buddy.

We supported them in developing an internal process (who is responsible for what, and when), which led to the creation of a buddy system and market specific pages and checklists on Eli for line managers and buddies so they understood the importance of their role in the onboarding process (and didn't forget to do something).

We then worked closely with our client to source, and in some cases develop, content for the site, ready for launch.

5) Training involved two global conference calls via WebEx where all back-end users were shown how to use Eli in order to create a great onboarding experience for all new joiners. Our client had three types of back-end user, each with different permissions:

- Administrators, who has full back-end access and global permissions.
- Content admins, who could create and add content & media (but not publish it).
- User admins, who could assign buddies and manage user access on a daily basis.

It's worth pointing out that Eli can have any number of back-end users, each with their own permissions. Backing up the training, was the suite of Eli video guides.

6) Finally the launch. Eli was rolled out globally in stages, and now delivers a personalised onboarding experience to new starters in 16 different locations around the world. Every monththe onboarding team meets to

Better than that though are the results it has already achieved.

/Results and effectiveness

Internally Eli has been met with universal acclaim. Senior stakeholders around the world have praised the 'engaging, personalised and globally consistent' process Eli is delivering. The global brand team, who were involved in configuration, love the on-brand content and design. Their customers expect the personal touch and Eli delivers the same to their new employees.

Since it's launch in April 2015 Eli has changed the way our client onboards people all over the world, as well as achieving all of the challenging objectives set at the start of the programme. Direct feedback from new starters, buddies and line managers has been hugely positive, the latter highlighting more informed and ready for work employees. We are now tracking other benefits of Eli, such as dropout rates, retention and employee engagement.

Top level stats (taken 28/09/15)
• 1040 candidates onboarded
• 2679 sessions (2.57 per person)
• An astonishing 22,186 page views
• A full 1m00s average time on page
• And an impressive 7m42s average time on site
• 31% of people are accessing the site on a mobile phone
• 1787 media downloads
• No negative page ratings

In their recent employee survey, questions relating to the onboarding experience they received incredible results too. The average score for any onboarding related question coming in at a very envious 8.8/10.

Finally, as a result of Eli, all relevant legal and regulatory requirements are being completed sooner than ever before, reducing admin and headaches. As part of this programme, our client also revolutionised their UK IT provisioning model. Now 97% of new starters have IT access and kit in place by day one. This model is now being rolled out globally.