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Writer's pictureCarla Hill-Lewis

An onboarding platform built for scale!


How does a growing business replicate the founders’ entrepreneurial DNA, values and attitudes in new team members, especially when the team is growing fast?


In thinking about this problem, we aimed to protect the precious commodity of time for the existing team and leadership, yet make sure new team members are quickly acclimated to the business and ready to hit the ground running in their new roles.


Our solution: We’ve designed and built a successful onboarding programme that is plug and play, digitally-led, and is fun and engaging.


Toward the end of 2020, we found ourselves taking this even further. We realised that the best way to evolve our onboarding product is to reimagine the entire process in a fully remote, virtual space.


This shift was more than just a requirement of the new remote working world we all found ourselves in. It derived from a basic need of any fast-paced, agile business that was growing rapidly.


Our first client to pilot this remote onboarding programme was exactly that, a fast-growing, tech-led property business with team members spread across the country.


They needed an onboarding process that provided their new team with all the knowledge and business exposure necessary to get started, from anywhere in the country, and it needed to be scalable.

It was also important that new team members were immersed in the culture and values of the business. They needed to experience what set this organization apart from the rest. In essence, their onboarding experience needed to reflect the character of the business while properly training them.


We had two primary strategic goals when building this experience: (1) we needed to create a phenomenal experience for the new team while avoiding bureaucracy; (2) supporting the growth strategy of our client’s business.


So, what did we do…


We mapped out and shifted all the training content to a virtual space through a podcast and video approach, saving approximately 250 minutes of the teams’ time per onboarding. We then used a team workspace called Confluence to build a portal for new team members to access this content.

It was imperative that we kept new team members engaged, asking questions and giving feedback. This usually occurs organically in an in-person meeting, but must be actively forged in an online environment. So, we used Airtable to build multiple feedback forms that were sent to the new team members after watching each podcast. This enabled them to ask questions and engage with us. Lastly,we underpinned the entire experience with Slack, a communication platform, that ensured we were all connected for the entire onboarding week. This allowed us to share experiences and encouraged banter between the new and existing teams.


We piloted our virtual onboarding with a small group, then reiterated and made slight adjustments for the second round. Now, we successfully use this platform to onboard teams of 30 or more at a time.


We’ve mapped out the entire process blueprint so that it can be replicated with ease. The process isn’t reliant on any one person and can be tweaked to accommodate a group of any size - whether it’s a group of 7 or 50 new team members. Importantly, it saves time and significant resources.


Find out more and get in touch : https://www.kaleidoscopesa.co.za/what-we-do


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