Part 4 of Series 5

The onboarding process is the first and most important step in integrating new hires with the company and its culture, connect with new hires, foster trust, and develop and cultivate a value system. However, this insight has yet to move companies to implement a new onboarding culture as they continue to follow outdated, rehearsed, and largely theoretical onboarding processes. 

Concentrix Daksh Services India Private Limited has taken concrete steps to address these challenges by evolving new onboarding best practices. It emerged from the realization that there were gaps between expectations and actual experience of new hires at the time of joining the company. The objective was to build an emotional connect with new hires at the very first instance and to provide an experience the newcomer would cherish forever. 

The Challenge

The first step was the realization that the existing on-boarding process was unable to fulfill its objectives. A close inspection revealed that the process was monotonous, boring, lengthy, and merely sticking to getting the mandatory activities completed. This usually left the candidates jittery, tired, and sometimes confused about the way forward. The period between the offer rollout and onboarding meant zero communication from the company. Thus, the opportunity of using this as an organizational branding exercise was completely missed. 

As a result, there was a time lag between onboarding to productivity, leading to high attrition rate. Even simple functions took a long time. For example, something as basic as creating an employee ID was very time consuming. Most of all, there was no mechanism to address queries during the process. Internal hiring too suffered as word-of-mouth was not favorable. In this scenario, new staff were often left perplexed, and the cumbersome process made it difficult to align them with the culture and value system of the organization. 

The Intervention

Concentrix leadership wanted a solution to replace the existing manual and time-consuming process. This led to the emergence of a dedicated onboarding solution developed completely in-house. Swagatam: Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device Onboarding has truly proven to be a game changer in our onboarding process. The salient features of the portal are:

• Anytime, Anywhere Onboarding: The virtual onboarding feature works seamlessly even in low-signal strength areas, helping staff stay engaged and receive information on the go.
• Continuous engagement: The portal serves as a bridge between the time from offer roll-out to joining, and also offers compelling and engaging options to learn.
• Standardized experience: The automated process enables all new hires to undergo all experiences together, especially in learning, thus ensuring uniformity of quality.
• Socializing tool: The portal allows new hires to connect and chat before joining, share their anxieties, experience, and expectations, and offers them the opportunity to bond with others. 
• Self-paced learning: Self-explanatory and crisp videos aid high engagement and information retention, as well as customizing the pace of learning based on individual needs.
• Scalability and feedback: In addition to handling any kind of volume, the portal allows customization, complete scalability, addition of features, and a real-time feedback mechanism. 

The Impact

The portal proved to be a huge success right from its inception. The initial feedback was very positive. New hires reported being more connected, engaged, and had a fair idea of what to accept, where to go, whom to meet, and felt connected with the organization from Day 1. Many new hires knew their peers even before formally joining the organization through chatting with them. The employee ID creation time came down from 3.48 days to 1.2 days, and subsequent lags also reduced. 

The portal also introduced an email-based platform to address queries of new hires before joining. This helped the completion of formalities like documentation more efficiently. Further, Swagatam also worked as a low-cost referral channel for recruitment. The highly personalized and favorable joining experience resulted in more productive staff, and consequently improved retention. 

Subsequently, the highly disruptive intervention of Swagatam built a strong brand value for the organization. The plan now is to take the project to all geographies post its full implementation in India, and also build the platform to facilitate other features of learning, document submission, and feedback.