Onboarding as a retention strategy: You found them, here’s how to keep them

Mallory: Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I'm Mallory Hendry, senior content specialist with Key Media. And I'm pleased to introduce today's webinar onboarding as a retention strategy. You found them. Now let's keep them. The presenters we have with us today all hail from Igloo Software and each have over 20 years experience in their respective fields. We'll hear from Kristen Ruttgaizer, Chief People, Officer Rebecca Nielsen, Customer Success Manager, and Brad Rooke, Senior Customer Advocacy manager. Over the next hour, these experts will discuss how a strong onboarding program supports your retention strategy and why having a tool that is one source of truth for all employees is critical, especially in remote and hybrid work environments. At the end of the presentation, the panel will participate in a question and answer period. So be sure to type any and all questions that you may have into the Q&A box within the webinar software. I'll turn things over to our panelists now to begin the presentation, So take it away. Brad.

Brad: Thanks very much and good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, folks. Wherever you happen to be in the world, my name is Brad Rooke and I am a senior customer advocacy manager with Igloo Software. I'd like to welcome you again to onboarding as a retention strategy, as we're calling it. You found them. Now let's keep them. Joining me, of course, in the presenter suite, as noted, we have Kristen Ruttgaizer, Igloo software's chief people officer, and Rebecca Nielsen, who is a customer success manager with Igloo. Before we get into the meat of the webinar, what we wanted to do is just a little bit of level setting. So I am going to ask Kristen to step up and tell us a little bit about this slide pre-boarding orientation and onboarding. Kristen what's the difference?

Kristen: Thanks, Brad. Yeah, so I think it's really important that we do distinguish these three key terms because I do find sometimes we will bucket all of them under onboarding and this is something that I've been doing for a number of years. Just distinguishing this within my team, within my network. Also, when I'm speaking with different vendors, I think a lot of us on this call can probably distinguish between orientation and onboarding. There's been a lot of articles that I've been seeing recently sent out. But one term that I feel is missing is that pre-boarding. And here at Igloo, we talk about pre boarding really being those steps that you take before an employee's first day. So this could be additional introductions to team members. It could be that welcome email to get all of the instructions to prep an employee before their first day and then also all of those forms. So payroll forms, benefit forms, the paperwork that can all be done before someone starts. Orientation. This is more of that one time welcome event. So thinking, you know, that one hour that you bring all of your new hires who start on that first day, bringing them together, giving them a great overview of the company, whether that's going into details of who your executive team is, what the departments are, an overview of your company culture, maybe some very high level introduction of processes if you're in a physical space, getting them to understand where everything is located. So really that one hour, maybe it goes about an hour and a half, 2 hours, but really more of a11 time event. But onboarding, which is going to be the meat of what we're talking about today, this is really something that we should be referring to, something that is much of a more longer term collaborative approach. And that collaborative approach should be with your HR team members, the department leader, probably colleagues as well. With the new hire that first week is typically going to be more intensive where your new hire is completing all of their compliance training, understanding corporate objectives, corporate processes, moving into understanding the department objectives and of course all of that on the job training. So getting a buddy that's assigned to them for more of that job specific training and then getting all of the experience and really your onboarding should last around three months. And this is giving the employee enough time to understand what's expected of them. When as a new employee with your company and Brad, I'll pass it back over to you to go through some of those questions.

Brad: Yeah, wonderful. Thanks, Rebecca. So, yeah, as Rebecca mentioned, we do have a couple of polls. The first one is going to be do you currently on board employees at your organization? I'm going to start this poll in just a second. We'll give the attendees about 30 seconds to complete it and then we'll look at the results together. So I'm just going to start that poll now. And just go ahead and check off the the option that applies for you. And I'll close the poll in about another 25 seconds or so. And as we're doing that, Rebecca, I just wanted to call out. That is a really important distinction on the previous slide. The idea of that onboarding is a process, but that pre boarding and orientation can in fact be separate processes that are part of the, the larger goal. So I definitely learned something when you when you called that out for this presentation. Thanks. Okay. We're just.

Kristen: You called me Rebecca.

Brad: Oh, I'm sorry, Kristen. My mistake had to happen once. Right? All right. We're going to go ahead and close that poll now, and let's just look at the results really quickly. So, again, do you currently on board employees at your organization, Option C looking at 56% of the total. Yes. Pre boarding orientation and onboarding. So the majority of our attendees do feel that they are performing all of these processes within their organization. So that's a good distinction to have. Next slide that we have how to on pardon me, how do employees currently get onboarded at your organization? So we're going to start that poll again, please. And same idea. I won't call Kristen Rebecca at this time. I'll call Kristen. Kristen. But if you could take a few seconds and vote here and then we'll close the poll and look at the results together. And we'll just give it about 15 more seconds to give people a chance to respond. Just go ahead, folks, as you have a chance. Ok and it looks like we can go ahead and close that poll. And as we do, do you currently employ on board employees that your organization's so. Yeah pre-boarding and orientation only is kind of 20%. Pardon me. Sorry. How do you currently on board employees at your organization and we're looking at in person only 18 so 36% of the total remotely using a mix of emails, video calls and or messaging apps is 48% of the total. So it sounds that our audience has a number one, they feel they do onboarding in a larger subsection of the audience, and it sounds like there's a mix of tools that are coming to the fore in terms of what's being used to ensure that the onboarding experience is addressed. Thanks, folks, for responding to those polls. And now that we've done that, we've level set a little bit and understood kind of the makeup of what folks are doing and really that pre boarding onboarding distinction that we're looking at. Let's get into what we'll learn today. So what we're going to learn, first off, what are the stakes? We're then going to talk about onboarding for success, looking at reengaging while you engage. Looking at the management crunch and then finally build happiness and shape leaders. So with a view towards what are the stakes, I'm going to tag in Rebecca Nielsen And Rebecca, what are the stakes?

Rebecca: So the stakes are really high when you bring on a new employee. We've already invested a lot of time in creating, posting roles, interviewing, selecting the right candidate and and bringing them on board. And so we want to make sure that we are giving the first impression right away that is is something that is value add. And there are four things that I would say. Are important pillars in this onboarding. One is expectations. So during that interview process, we had set expectations with the candidate, now new employee. With regards to what the culture may be. We are selling them on what a great organization we are, what team they're they're going to be bringing, bringing on as part of. And so we want to make sure that we are living up to those expectations. You can have a great candidate experience, but if you drop the ball at the onboarding and the bringing them on an orientation, it's going to let them down in that in that high expectations you've set for them.

Brad: Mm hmm.

Rebecca: The next piece is engagement. We want to be able to bring on that new employee, get them engaged in a couple of different ways. You want to be able to bring them on and get them engaged socially. People who have friends at work like to stay at work where they have friends. And so we want to make sure that they are engaged socially and that they feel like they fit in. But we also want to get them engaged in the work. They want to be able to go home, speak to their significant others, their friends who are like, How is it? How's the new gig to hear? They're really great people and the work is really interesting. And so as soon as we can get them engaged, both socially as well as in the work, then that is going to help create that stickiness and keep feeding into those high expectations we set. The retention is where we want folks to see that they are valued as part of the organization as well as productive within the organization. A new employee wants to feel like they are contributing. And the sooner they can contribute within their specialty, within why they were hired, then they are going to feel like they are part of an organization as well as that they are contributing. And of course, they always want to look forward long term to growth. And this can be growth as an organization. Is the company growing? Do I see myself there? Is it career opportunities? Not necessarily right when they on board, but to see how other people have moved through the organization and how the organization is is supporting them to grow, to provide more opportunity for for the long term. So as you can see here, the stakes are more than just do they have their benefits paperwork completed and do I have a void check it really aligns with are we fulfilling expectations? Are we making sure that they're involved and can they see themselves here long term?

Brad: Now, these are some points that make a lot of sense. Certainly, I love the idea of that meeting expectations. We do enter into kind of a social contract with a candidate. When we bring that candidate on, we want to make sure that that contract is upheld. So we're meeting upholding our end of the bargain. And certainly moving to your point about growth, not necessarily seeing that they've got a clear person that they want to kind of trail through the company, a succession plan and that term, but they want to be able to ensure that they have some career growth and are going to have some progression within the organization. So lots of good stuff happening there. So, Rebecca, with these goals in mind, how do we onboard for success? What are some tips? What are some guidelines here?

Rebecca: So it would be to work within those four to make sure that you are demonstrating as well as communicating those four pillars. We really want to make sure that you are bringing them in and showing them the great culture that you have, showing them how to find things. It is a way to. Introduce and reinforce the company culture, your corporate values, what is rewarded, and basically give them an understanding of how they can build a successful career within your organization. We here at Igloo went through a. A reimagining of our onboarding process. We had initially pre-COVID quite a bit of our onboarding built within our instance, our I.T. That was information that folks could self serve and it was organized in a way where people could go and use it as a bit of a data repository. But because we were in office, there was a lot of like walking around doing that orientation that Kristen had talked about, showing them where the bathroom was, introducing them to their buddy, and making sure by dropping by their desk that they were being engaged. And we had to step back when we moved to remote first and say, this social piece is now missing from this program.

Rebecca: And so we had to really reorganize how we thought about the onboarding process and using the tools that we had. And so we made the onboarding tools much more self guided, much more intuitive. We broke it down as to what we wanted folks to accomplish specifically within those four pillars and made sure we were able to deliver that through our program by like programming. What social activity, by programming, what things they were going to do by programming to ensure that we were covering off expectations, career growth, culture and corporate, which we were previously relying on a bit of like. Personal touch to happen. We've made sure that we've baked it into our remote. Self-guided onboarding tools that still have quite a bit of engagement as well. But because you're not sitting in an office and we have gone remote, you can't just lean over to your to your coworker and ask that question. So we really pulled it apart and put it back together there.

Brad: Absolutely. And did so quite well, I might add. I mean, I was someone who was onboarded relatively late, if you will, in the office onboarding program and got very quickly thereafter to see how that program pivoted. And we started onboarding people completely virtual. And one of the things that I really, really enjoyed was seeing how quickly these new hires came on with a lot of the the enthusiasm and the culture and everything already part of their way of thinking moving forward. I thought it was such a great pivot and one that a lot of organizations can learn from. So moving into and folks, this is going to be our our our last poll question. I promise we're not going to pepper you with polls all afternoon. But we do have one more poll question, if you would, and we'd like to ask, which initiatives does your employer or organization pardon me implement in your onboarding program? So I'm going to launch that poll. And if you could select all that apply, that would be great. So just go ahead and you can see the options on screen. Now. Just go ahead and select all the options that would apply. And again, we'll give that about 30 seconds as we're going through that. Yeah, definitely something that again, I can't overemphasize the the effectiveness of the pivot between that that in-person onboarding, which I availed myself of and that and that virtual element and just how beneficial that was to folks that I saw come on specifically coming on my team after me and really echoing a lot of the things that I felt having been in the office, I thought that was very cool. I can see just a few responses trickling in. Let's give it about 20 more seconds here and just make sure we capture an accurate make up of the responses. Pardon me. I froze on that word. I don't know why. And we'll close the poll in just three, two and one. So let's look at those results. So which initiatives does your organization implement in your onboarding program? And we can see there's a number of different things. So we do see 23%. We don't have a formal onboarding program. We do see 35% onboarding starts prior to employee's first day. So there's a lot of different varying responses here. Some good information to work with. So Rebecca mentioned off the top of her syntax earlier the idea of I.T or inside the igloo, which is our own own digital workplace and we've got a screen capture here and this is actually capturing part of our onboarding process that's presented to the employee when they're working within I.T. Rebecca, Could you take us through this example a little bit, please?

Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. You'll see here that it's day two and so we've, we've gotten into the little more meat and potatoes of it. Each day was set up with an agenda which is the welcome today too as well as some product learning. One of the things that we discovered through our feedback was previously all of our compliance was done on one day and so that was all signing off on the employee handbook and the security policy and the clean desk policy and, and, and, and, and we used to joke in person that grab a coffee, start on it and make sure that if somebody wants to come up and have a chit chat to do that. But what we were finding when when we got put remote first is it was a lot and it was a bit of a letdown from the excitement of the first day to then sit and have to text heavy read. Right. So we took that feedback, which I think is very important to gather feedback from your new hires. And they said, Please, please split up the policies and the compliance. And so through building it through our digital platform, we were able to chunk out into smaller pieces across three or four days, a little bit of compliance. So it was a little bit of the bitter medicine, but we made sure to bake in some fun here. You'll see we've got it set up as well. So that's your signature. How do I get my zoom call? All of those self served answers, all in one place, branding, which we'll talk about a little later. We've got shared some of the employee wellness. So that speaks to the benefits that they probably have questions about, as well as the many programs that we support. And then of course, this is the page you see highlighted here is that the get social piece I had said previously, we baked in a little bit of that social every day and this speaks to our engagement squad with some examples. We are big. Fans of donuts here at Igloo. And so this is us dressed as a baker's dozen for Halloween. Some photos from our summer fun day. So you can see a demonstration of how we work to engage folks in person, even though we are remote first team. And so this gives a great example of what an agenda may look like, what content we're bringing forward, how it's been split up and still speaks to expectations, engagement, retention and growth.

Brad: So it's really the ability to well, you set it all. The idea that I don't want to just bring a new hire on, sit them in front of a computer and have them read policy after policy description after description, we really want to let them know progressively who we are as an organization, cultural moors, but also provide them with some of the other resources they need as far as things go. So a great synopsis as far as things go and certainly something that we see a lot of in i.t. I did note in the chat, folks, we're going to do a little hiccup here. I did note in the chat that the previous poll was misconstructed. It didn't allow for more than one answer. We have reconstructed that poll. So with your indulgence, I'm just going to go ahead and launch that poll one more time and you'll see it on screen. We are going to leave it open for just a few seconds here. We don't want to bog down too much in it, but this poll should allow for you to select more than one option and maybe give us a little bit more of a picture of what you folks are doing in terms of your your own onboarding program. So if you give us just a few seconds of your time and go in and check those off. And again, our apologies for the the last poll being a little misaligned.

Rebecca: I will also say that we have broken our corporate onboarding into like day one, day to day three, so that when your new hires who are working remote can log on to start their day, they know where to start. Oh, it's my third day. I'm going to start on day three and they know when to end. Yes, sometimes. Sometimes people get very eager about blowing through all of the onboarding and we want to make sure that we are not overwhelming folks from the beginning. And so to know that there's a story and a beginning, a middle and an end, I think speaks to balance and well being.

Kristen: I think the other thing Rebecca to highlight is the balance of there is this online version, but it's not an eight hour. Day two is not 8 hours, day one is not 8 hours. You know, it is probably about 3 to 4 hours. So that what we do and you'll hear later about that importance of the collaboration and partnership with your leaders, there's going to be meetings, the employees attending. There's going to be one on ones with their leader. So it breaks up that it's not just 8 hours staring at a screen because again, that, of course, isn't as engaging.

Brad: Yeah, great point. Thank you both. We did close the poll, so I did want to just highlight we have some results on screen. So different results, obviously, because we do have folks that were able to select more than one option. Some highlights we see first day introduction to objectives. 16% of the total periodic check ins, 16% of the total 18% onboarding starts prior to the employee's first day. Very, very good. So lots of different things that our folks in attendance are doing. And thanks once again for your indulgence answering that one a second time. Rebecca Moving to the next point and the next part of our presentation, I like the idea of reengage while you engage and we got that up on screen. Now tell us a little bit about this and how this onboarding process really presents other opportunities.

Rebecca: So what's great about this onboarding process is, although it's been pulled together on a page day two onboarding, it points to a single source of truth within our digital workplace. And so what's great is we are getting folks involved in the tool that all of our employees use. We are showing them where to find things and how to self-serve within a platform and a workspace that all of our employees use. Doesn't matter the tenure. And so when change happens, as it does not necessarily on schedule or scheduled. There is a place where, no matter how long you've been with the organization, you can. Find the same information. And so if like I've been with the organization just over three years and there may be somebody who's been with us three months, if there's a change in marketing or branding, then we are all speaking from the same playbook. We are all looking at that same single source of truth. If we've moved to a new method for connecting via Zoom or a new dial in to update our passwords, security, any of those things, everyone is using the same place. And so this gives an opportunity from a culture standpoint to reengage your current employees and tenured employees. And so when you are building a new program or launching a new product or any one of those things, it's all within the same place. This really brings the idea of. Cohesiveness to a team no matter the tenure. There isn't a like new cohort, old cohort piece. And so this is a great opportunity to ensure that there is that. And I keep going back to the term single source of truth, but that one published piece they're not searching through. Do I have the right file name? Oh, this is the most recent file name. This has changed. It's all in this one area that can be shared, directed and the like. And so that's why this is really important, to make sure everybody's moving together in the same direction.

Brad: No, that makes a lot of sense. And certainly when we look at Igloo and our own Igloo, ITI, specifically, you mentioned we have that source of truth, that unified place for people to work together. It's also our core product. So it has the benefit of, of, of bringing people into our core product and really familiarizing themselves with how the product functions and what it is that we do as an organization, which I think is fantastic. And then to elaborate on your single source of truth point, one of the biggest reasons that people indicate dissatisfaction with an employer is not being able to find resources, not being able to find things consistently to many different sources of truth or information, or just not being able to find things they need. So certainly this allows us to have that consistency as well. And speaking of that consistency, Rebecca, can you take us through this, this example that we've had here?

Rebecca: So real, real briefly, we had a brand change earlier this year and there was a spot created in I.T to talk about the new email signature templates. This is what feeds into our onboarding. So if you were onboarded from that week on, then this is where you go to get your Igloo email signatures to become part of the team and brand your your email. But this is the same piece that would have been sent and drawn attention to you for all our current employees to be able to do it as well. And so that's this is a quick understanding of of this is what the one thing that everyone would see to be able to to point. And if you missed the announcement or you're on vacation a week later, you'd still be directed to this this new updated piece of of new branding owned by marketing.

Brad: Wonderful. And yeah, again, that consistency being key, the fact that we can find this when we need it, any employee can find it as needed. This is fantastic. We've talked about it a fair bit inside the igloo as it stands for our own internal digital workplace. This next screenshot really encapsulates ITI. And well, this is our home page and I'm going to defer now to Kristen Ruttgaizer who's going to take us through some points here Kristen.

Kristen: Yeah, so I think. Thanks, Brad. Thanks, Rebecca. And I think it's just really important through it. And we said right at the beginning about really making sure that your new hires are feeling engaged and part of the organization right from the beginning. And I think through a lot of what Rebecca was highlighting is, again, going back to the information that your new hires are receiving is the same information that your current employees are receiving. So everyone is speaking the same things and really understand what's happening within that organization, especially when your hybrid or your remote first. It's just it's so hard to keep people connected. This is our home page, and our home page is when you log in and you go into your digital workplace, into that platform that we go to do our work and to get information. Everybody's receiving the same information right from the get go. But not just that, what you see along the top here, we have our priorities. We have our brand, our marketing brand knowledge base, and we have projects and corporate projects that we're working on. What happens is when I click on that link, that's going to bring me to a page that goes into that information. But that page is the same page that our new hire, when they're going through their onboarding, which is in a different area, it brings them to the same page. So again, everyone speaking the same language, seeing the same information and really being connected. Our priorities page as an example, that page goes and it shows new employees, it shows our current employees, our tenured employees, our mission, our vision, our values. It shows our 2022 objectives and our scorecard against that. And again, it's just keeping everybody connected into the same information. The other thing that I would just highlight on this as well is on the right side where you see that coffee mug underneath there, we're welcoming to new hires into the organization. And what's great about this is every week we have someone start. We're doing that welcome. It's in our digital workplace, so no longer can we shout it from the office, but we're doing it in our remote office and we're learning about that individual. So our our one of our HR team members is giving a highlight of who that individual is. Where did they come from, the role they're filling and some personal information, their hobbies, what they like to eat, favorite restaurant. And what's great about this is then we see all of our current employees going in and engaging that new hire, welcoming them to Igloo if they have a same interest being like, Oh gosh, hey, like, yeah, you know, I love lasagna too, or whatever the case is, right? So just really keeping people connected through the process is just so important through your entire employee lifecycle.

Brad: That's wonderful. And for those in attendance, there was a little bit of a snicker when when Kristen mentioned the idea of taking a person around the office and kind of bellowing out their information as someone who who was part of that process, Rebecca was the one who led me from room to room bellowing out the wonderful information. So that was the source of the snicker there. Rebecca did a fantastic job doing that, but more to the point, we're able to replicate that. This is one of my favorite pieces and I'm so glad that you brought it up of I.T. Is the fact that we take the time to find out about our new employees and we ever that advertise that to the company. And we see a lot of call and response there. We see people coming back with commentary. Welcome, that sort of thing. They'll fire in a jiffy, whatever the case may be. But there's a lot of that that cultural engagement that happens just simply because we've taken the time and the trouble to make sure that these new employees are highlighted. Definitely one of my more favorite pieces.

Rebecca: And I and I would say that when we do get together as a team because we've had these introductions, it makes that in person meeting face to face a lot less awkward because you remember that they that they're Arsenal fans or that they have a great spot in their local pub where they like to go. It provides those pre icebreakers for when we do get in person as well and I and I do I also really love these welcomes.

Brad: Absolutely folks since we've got you on this screen here and we are talking about new hires we did have a question that came in from our audience and I'll just read it if you don't mind. Do you note all employees that are new on the home page are casual on call employees, things like that. Are they included as well? And Kristen, I see you're nodding your head, so take it away, please.

Kristen: Yeah. So we definitely anybody new coming in. We would if they are we call ourselves igloo-ites. So if they are an igloo-ite we don't acknowledge or contractors because typically contractors, they're more doing external work, they're not as involved internally. But when we have a co op student or part time employee, most. And I think it all depends on that. Your own company culture in terms of whether or not who you want to call out, but if they're going to be part of working with many team members 100%, I think it's great to call them out and let them know. And if they're only going to be there on a two month period, but they're going to be very involved in your team. It doesn't hurt to call them out and make sure everybody knows who they are.

Brad: Wonderful. Thanks, Kristen. Okay. Moving along. Getting into this slide. We're talking about the management crunch now. Kristen, what do you have to tell us here?

Kristen: Yeah. And I think it's just really important that, you know, throughout today we've been highlighting that first impression is everything. And your manager really plays a critical part in that first impression. They're also so critical in your onboarding. We've talked so much about how collaborative your onboarding is and it's so important that you're including the manager, and that's where we're coming into that overall manager crunch. You want to make sure that your your management team is supporting with building out that corporate culture that they are part of keeping your employee engaged and them making sure that they are part of that onboarding is just going to make your onboarding so much more successful, making sure that your manager fully understands everything that is in your onboarding program. And I always recommend having your managers, whether they're new or they're tenured, that they are going through your corporate onboarding, because in a lot of times you're reviewing a lot of great information in there. Going back to what Rebecca was saying in terms of engaging and making sure that the new hire sees that this is a great place to work. You're probably talking about those growth opportunities that are available. Where can they when and where can they apply for a new position as they are as they become more engaged in the company? Is it a one year or two year period understanding how do they set goals, what the performance management process is? You probably are going to go into information about bonus programs or compensation programs that are in place. So again, making sure that you're empowering your leaders to understand the processes that your company has in place enables them with the right tools that they're keeping. Your team members, your new hires engaged, ultimately keeps them empowered so that they're exceeding succeeding in their own job. And that's why we also say it's the last thing I would say is having an onboarding program or a program specific to your leadership team and making sure that the information that they need is also at their fingertips. So we talk about onboarding. You have your corporate onboarding. A lot of departments are going to have their departmental onboarding. Don't forget about leadership onboarding because you need to make sure that they have the information.

Brad: Really solid points there. And definitely, yeah, we want to empower those managers. We want to enable them to support the overall onboarding process. So when we're talking about leadership and really looking into their growth and development, what sort of what sort of resources are we providing leaders?

Kristen: Yeah, so what we do here at Igloo, so we've created a program similar to an onboarding, but we call this our Leadership Leadership Essentials Training. And this is something that all new leaders, whether they're new to Igloo or they've been promoted into a management role that they're going to complete. So again, this is that's it's set up for leaders as that one stop shop for all your leadership needs. So it's going to include tools, processes, resources on that full employee lifecycle to ensure that your leader is going to be the best for their employee. So we are going to have we have chapters in our leadership essentials from right from the beginning hiring, onboarding, talent management, compensation recognition. And what I'm showing here, growth and development and really this is just and it'll go into compensation and and turnover resignations if we have it. But what I would say here is all of this information is the steps that what are the processes we have here at Igloo. And again, it's that one stop that leaders can go to to understand, though they may go through this, their second week of becoming a leader, they may not have someone starting a new higher start for eight months after they have become a leader. They're not going to remember reading any of that eight months later. Right. We want to make sure that they're able to go back to it. The other thing that I would highlight is a lot of the information in here, the information that we're pulling into these pages is the same pages that we're pulling into our onboarding. So again, the information is consistent. So when we talk about growth and development and our performance management process as an HR team, we're only putting it in one place. But then that's being pulled into many different playbooks that we have with within our digital workplace. Again, making sure that it's consistent, it's efficient for us, and that everybody has that same information and always can go back to it.

Brad: Well, that efficiency is such a key process. I'm sorry, Rebecca. I know you're going to jump in in a second. Hold that thought. But that efficiency is such a key part of the process as well. If we're going to be surfacing policy in multiple areas, it's great to have one area that we can edit that policy, and yet it affects all the areas in which it's service surface. It really helps with that back checking that we have to do in a lot of cases when we're surfacing policies. Rebecca, over to you.

Rebecca: You had I actually I was coming at efficiency from a different way. Brad Sure. I was going to I was going to ask Kristen to comment on on how having all of these things together helps the business partners from a. Service level that they provide to their leaders.

Kristen: Yeah, I mean, there is there's always that fine balance between self service and still providing that one on one support. But I would say that, you know, in this hybrid remote work and for a lot of our leaders being able to just go and access that information. So it helps then that with our business partners, if a leader is reviewing this information ahead of time, it's more that your conversations are now more strategic as opposed to tactical, as opposed to being like, okay, well, this is your first step. It's like, Hey, I write this. Like, what should I do? You know, I have this individual. They're looking for some growth opportunities. You know, I know we have the different levels within igloo. This person's a level C, I really want to get them to that level D. What steps do I take to get them there? So now you're having more meaningful strategic conversation as opposed to tactical. And now I'm going to have to go back to the basics.

Brad: No. Great question and solid answer. Thank you, Kristen. We're moving through this as we get to the next part. We like to we like to get into that happiness aspect. So we're looking at building happiness. Kristen, what can you tell us about this?

Kristen: Yeah, So I mean, really, this is like concluding your onboarding. And I can't stress enough that the, the sorry, the conclusion of your onboarding is just as important as starting it. So really important that as your employees are concluding their two or three month onboarding program, whatever you've put in place that you're doing that 90 day, 60 day check in as that last step of the process. And it's such an important step not to skip. And here at Igloo, we actually encourage that. You're doing two check in meetings, concluding check and meetings. Of course, you should be checking in throughout the process. But one is with the employees leader and one is also with your talent acquisition partner. And first, in terms of the leader, like this meeting really is for your leader to have. Okay, you've completed your 90 days, you've got a good understanding of the role. Let's start making sure that we're putting in your goals and we use that this tool to put your goals in. Let's talk about what the goals are. Let's make sure that you understand what your role is and making sure that you're setting the employee up for success. And that and I think a lot of us are doing that. I've done that through a number of years. But one other piece is in terms of that conclusion of that onboarding is that 90 day check in with the talent acquisition partner. And this is something that we implemented at Igloo, I would say probably about a year, a year and a half ago. And one thing we didn't highlight is. We're back at Customer Success Manager today, but she started there. Before that, she was actually our talent acquisition partner, so she was a huge contributor and spearheaded putting in our onboarding and making a lot of changes. But she also did this step in terms of this talent acquisition partner, 90 day check in. And this is we looked at more of that interview style. So we're getting with the new hire to understand like, Hey, first, how was your onboarding experience? Any feedback that you have, anything that we should adjust and we do. We take all that feedback and we on probably about every six months, we relook and we make some adjustments to it because things are always evolving. But the other key piece is really understanding from the new hire is. Is what they were hired to do, what they understood during the interview process, that job description that they first read is that matching to what they are now seeing those first 90 days, are they going to be satisfied? Do they think they're going to be challenged? Is there anything that we need to reset? Have they been having meaningful conversations with their manager, really getting that engagement point and not just being like, yep, okay, we're assuming that everything's being done? And Rebecca chuckles because they're I mean, most cases, they have been really great meetings and yes, things are great. I'm really excited. Everything's good. We've had some situations where we've had new hires be like, You know what? This is really different. This isn't what I was expecting. And we were hearing like, Oh gosh, we're going to have a turnover and we all know how expensive. Turnover in that first year is. And we, you know, I think it's safe to say we've saved some folks on ok been able to then go back to the manager and say, Hey, we've got something going on here, we've got to have a conversation and doing that reset and making sure that we've realigned. We things change, right? And sometimes that does happen. What you bring someone on and company is going in another direction, but it's like we can still save that person and make sure that their skills are being utilized. So really, really important part not to forget this and continue to build that happiness and then again that the leaders always have at their fingertips, going back to their leadership Essentials book to be able to go back and keeping that engagement level high with their employees ongoing as their whole tenure at your company.

Brad: I really like that, and it really extends back the idea of that, that that check in that level setting extends back to what Rebecca was talking about right off the top, those expectations. We want to make sure we're meeting those expectations. Love what you said about the idea that you look at that feedback and you may pivot or adjust accordingly, because if it's not an organic process, something that's growing and being fed and watered by the people that are using it most actively participating in it, then it's a process that isn't. It's going to stagnate eventually. So wonderful to see that that's progressing the way it is. I think we've got some idea towards next steps. And Rebecca, I think you were going to take this, but both of you feel free to chime in as far as things go here.

Rebecca: Yeah. So I mean. I was taking this because this is what this is what we went through. Very much so. When we were like at our current onboarding process isn't working for a remote first. And what we did was we identified what we were covering off. First and foremost, we did an audit. We took it page by page, item by item. Myself and another team member and we had discussions. Is this current? Does it fulfill the objectives? Does everyone need to know this? Because for us, we had a lot of information that Tech might find interesting, but marketing wasn't. And so we took a lot. Believe it or not, we edited a lot out of our onboarding initially because we then were like, This is only good for these departments. And so we pushed that back and made sure that that the corporate onboarding piece fulfilled the corporate mission and vision. And so after we identified what our current process was and audited it, we we were like, okay, now what are we keeping and how are we presenting it? Hence this like, is it meeting new higher expectations? Are we sitting somebody down with 3 hours of policy? Because that clearly was not a fit for, for, well, everybody. And so we broke it up and and does it fit those four stakes that we talked about at the beginning and how can we best deliver on that? We had a column actually that had a just do it, which was what I was empowered with my teammate to do. And then we had a few things that we needed to check in with different departments and management to make sure we were moving forward. But there was a lot that we could create and change based on how we wanted to reorient it with just a little bit. Management doesn't. Executives don't need to be in the nitty gritty, but they they will want, obviously, some say in a few things. And then the 90 day check in it is it's a new version of the interview that was originally started. But the the key piece for me as a talent person at the time was this idea of is the job we hired you for what you are currently doing and sitting and listening. Also, we asked about management and were there other things and would they? This is the exciting part. Would they refer anyone to the organization? Right? 90 days. And if they're excited about your org and you're having a hard time hiring, being able to ask for that referral right there, being able to ask them for like, Hey, if you like us, why don't you review us? Glassdoor type option as well. Those are a great opportunity on that 90 day check in, but it's great to know you've got some raving champions after that 90 day. But as Kristen said, and I did giggle when we were talking about the saves was we had some high performers that came in with incredibly high expectations and that check in back with the talent person who they had a relationship with allowed them to open up. And and I would say that we weren't able to save them all, but we were able to save a number of performers, high performers that I can tell you I did not want to have to re recruit at the time, but that 90 day check in and then obviously to to circle back, reevaluate. Kristen talked about making sure we take that feedback and feed in. We are in quickly evolving times and so we just need to to check in and make sure these things are, are moving forward and still fitting with your corporate culture. Finding Opportunities to Improve. Fresh set of eyes are always, always interesting.

Brad: Wonderful. Okay. Well, thank you, Rebecca. And thank you, Kristen. This does bring us to the end of our prepared comments. We do, as was indicated off the top. We do have some time for Q&A. So if you do have some questions, do feel free to fire them into the Q&A link at the top, and I'll share those with our presenters and we can go from there. I did want to share with our presenters, you may have seen it in the chat, but Samina, thanks very much for saying it's been an awesome webinar. We're glad you found it valuable. Thank you for attending and participating in our polls. Thanks to our audience for attending and participating in the polls today, especially for that second one we did twice. Very much appreciate your indulgence there, but do feel free. Go ahead and fire questions into the Q&A if you have them, and we'll be happy to take those at this time.

Kristen: I was just also going to add, I did see there was a question that came in asking if the slides we're going to be shared. They will. And we are going to also send with those slides some samples, 90 day check in questions that you can be asking as well. So some of that will be coming out to support you as you're building out your onboarding.

Brad: Great. Kristen, thank you.

Mallory: All right. Well, if there's no more questions, I guess we can wrap it up here. I want to just thank our wonderful panel today for sharing their insight and expertise. And to everyone in the audience for joining us today. And just one second. I'm going to see if there's any more questions coming in. Nope. Okay. So please keep an eye out for any upcoming webinars and enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks again.

Brad: Thanks very much, folks.