The What, Who and When of Onboarding

The What, Who and When of Onboarding

Sometimes, I have no control over when my “work brain” turns on. This time it happened nine minutes before kickoff of the “Big Game.” As the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco Forty-Niners prepared to square off, my mind, amidst chips, queso and seven-layer dip, naturally wandered to new hire onboarding. What? Doesn’t yours?

Our design team is currently helping several different customers reimagine their onboarding process on the ServiceNow platform. This is an enormously transformative experience for each customer, and they want to get it right.

Onboarding is one of the earliest impressions an organization has on the new hire. Make it smooth, engaging and productive, and the new hire will quickly become the asset to your company you hired them to be. You invested time and resources with recruiting, scheduling interviews with several people, and negotiating an offer, only to muff the kickoff for your new hire. Can you recover? Sure. Could you design your playbook so that you don’t have to worry about needing to recover? Absolutely!

When you decide to move the onboarding experience to ServiceNow, you will quickly realize that ServiceNow has cracked the code on making the numerous activities and business processes into the first, truly enterprise-wide event. The visibility of all the touchpoints along the way is a game changer.

At The Anti, we have guided dozens of ServiceNow customers to implement their onboarding vision and improve the new hire, hiring manager, HR and IT experiences as well.

Our approach has evolved over the last six years and we have streamlined the design process to answer three questions:

  1. What needs to happen?

  2. Who needs to do it?

  3. When does it need to be completed?

What types of activities and tasks are we talking about?

  • The new hire enrolls in benefits before their start date

  • The hiring manager selects the new hire’s laptop and other equipment two weeks before the new hire’s start date

  • IT orders the laptop and other equipment for delivery one week before the new hire’s first day

  • The new hire buddy meets with the new hire during week one

  • The hiring manager sends the new hire announcement to the team before day one

  • A welcome video from the CEO is published to the Employee Center for the new hire watch during their first week

  • A notification is sent to payroll informing them the new hire has started on the start date

I could list dozens of examples, but I think you get the idea.

Once you are able to list the activities and tasks that you want for the onboarding experience, answering the What, Who and When, you’re well on your way to a “W” for the new hire, their manager and your stakeholders across the enterprise.

For more information or to schedule a call with our team, drop a note to aloha@theanti.com!

A Bit about Sean: Sean leads our design team with 25 years of experience implementing various HCM solutions for dozens of customers in a wide variety of industries. He joined The Anti seven years ago and has focused solely on ServiceNow’s Employee Service Management suite of products. Sean also led the effort at The Anti to create our Review and Recommend and ANTIcipate HRSD offerings that point customers to “true north,” while leveraging the latest features in the Employee Service Management suite of products.

About The Anti: In 2017, we realized traditional HR technology consulting desperately needed an overhaul. So, we flipped the script on consulting culture.

  • We grew a team with expertise in real world HR process design and technology implementation

  • We aggregated and refined the best practices we’d already proven elsewhere

  • We rejected traditional friction points and changed consulting culture for the better

It caught on, and we have since delivered 350+ ServiceNow HRSD engagements as the only elite ServiceNow Partner committed to the employee experience workflow products. The Anti brings a unique blend of HR Consulting experience, HR Technology backgrounds, and HR Practitioner expertise to every engagement.

Types of engagements and how we can help

We offer a comprehensive range of assistance that encompasses five key types of engagement:

  • Implementation Readiness Assessments

  • User & Experience Design

  • Initial Implementations (Phase 1)

  • Follow-on Deployments (Phase 2+)

  • Advisory and Managed Services

Our mission is to meet you where you are in your ServiceNow journey to ensure your project is a success. Whether you require help with the initial setup or need guidance on optimizing your deployment, we are here to help every step of the way. With our expertise and commitment to excellence, you can be sure you are in safe hands.