RBS Early Career Onboarding

We like to feel we're specialists in onboarding (our award-winning onboarding product Eli has something to do with that), so this project for RBS was right up our street. RBS hire approximately 350 graduates each year across 13 programmes. (And, over the next five years, will be hiring over 500 apprentices). With upto 11 months between offer and day one, RBS needed a way to engage with these new employees and prepare them for day one.

With such a long period of non-engagement, RBS recognised the need to engage with this group during this period and wanted an innovative way of communicating and onboarding the future leaders of their business.

/Research

Every year RBS conduct an online survey with their entire graduate cohort. This survey covers all aspects of the recruitment process and allows RBS to analyse what works well, and more importantly, where improvements can be made. Consistent feedback over the last few years has highlighted the need for more engaging and innovative communications during the long offer to day one period, as well as a desire to feel part of the organisation graduates are about to join.

/Objectives

Using this feedback, and other goals highlighted by Kerry, the following objectives were created:

(1) Provide a way to build loyalty with graduates and use networks to create an RBS community.

(2) Provide an engaging, timely and personalised way of communicating with graduates.

(3) Provide an intuitive, bespoke CMS and provide detailed MI to ensure continuous improvement and identify and deliver what the student population requires.

(4) Develop better informed, insightful and more culturally aligned graduates, to bridge the gap between the student and professional world.

/Our solution

A number of different solutions were identified and explored, as we worked closely with the RBS Early Career team, Programme stakeholders and current graduates to define the onboarding process and experience. In the end there was only one solution that met everyone's challenging objectives - a responsive, personalised onboarding portal.

The site was carefully developed in partnership with the Early Career Team and the current graduate cohort and launched for graduates at the start of 2013. The front-end of the site was fully personalised with names, content, events and buddies, along with a network book and messaging system which helped the graduates build peer networks.

What this meant, in a nutshell, was that if you were on the Finance programme based in London, you're website was contained details of the Finance Programme in London as well as details on development, line managers, peers and benefits. This was the same for any graduate no matter what the programme or location.

The portal closely followed the RBS Graduate Employer Brand in look, feel, imagery and tone. This helped provide a consistent experience for all, helping to build a sense of community - something very key to RBS.

To aid in this, the portal and its content were regularly updated to encourage repeat visits. Content was built up over the 11 months period, so graduates never felt overloaded with content, simply valued by RBS. Important areas, such as the messaging system and networks book were explained and their use encouraged. The aim, to make the new hires feel like part of a community - a community that would help define the future of the RBS business.

The back-end of the site was just as user-friendly and intuitive. It allowed RBS to cost effectively manage the whole portal and the graduates easily and efficiently. Comprehensive real-time MI, provided by the site, was easily accessible and used to ensure early identification of usage and usefulness of content. It highlighted areas of the site and content that required updates immediately, as well as content and functionality that could be developed and added for the next years' intake.

Don't just take out word for it though, watch the video above.

/Results and effectiveness

The results from the first onboarded graduates couldn't be more positive. Over a period of five months there were 1333 logins and 29,334 page views from just 143 graduates. The average time on site was a hugely impressive 32 minutes.

The 'Your network' page had some of the highest hits (1571 pages views, average time on page 4.25mins) helping graduates to build their peer network through use of the portals internal messaging system.

Feedback from the RBS graduate survey has been overwhelmingly positive with 95% rating it as good or very good. The personalised, business specific, information was particularly loved, as was the 'Day one and beyond' section.

Internally, the induction team fed back that graduates had a far superior understanding of RBS, and their individual business areas, when compared to the previous years' intake.

The Early Career Team also reported a large drop in onboarding related administration saving them time and resource. Indeed, the site was so easy to use, that one person was able to manage it's content, users, events and messages along with their other day to day responsibilities.

As a result of the success, the portal is now being rolled out to the entire RBS 2014 graduate intake with new content and improved functionaility, helping to onboard a new generation RBS graduates.

RBS are also now monitoring drop-out and retention rates more closely in order to evaluate the portals effect on these hugely important figures. Early indications are very positive with RBS reporting a 12% reduction in drop-out before day one.

The portal was lucky enough to pick up a RAD nomination, a CIPDRMA win for internal comms and a Scottish Recruitment Award for onboarding strategy.