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Company Onboarding: Product Design & Strategy

Marketing Assets

Company Onboarding Product Overview

Testimonials

  • The new hire onboarding is so well done. It’s thorough and has this personable, friendly approach… It’s so great!
  • I loved the supporting videos that expounded upon the written content of the trailhead. It helps visual learners, like me, better absorb the material.
  • I thought the materials were thoughtfully composed, concise without losing content, and highly authentic.
  • I felt like the developer(s) of the training really care about the company and its future.

How it works

Our onboarding product combines asynchronous and synchronous onboarding experiences with a social learning element. New hires can begin learning about the company their first day using eLearning without the need for HR, manager, or others doing any hand holding. Then within their first month, new hires attend an in-person (remote-friendly) orientation where they meet other new hires, reinforce content from eLearning, and participate in cultural activities. These two components are tied together with a social learning through Slack or other communication tool at the company where new hires can ask questions, help other new hires, and get to know each other.

Montage builds out 3 components that are interwoven to create a great onboarding experience.

  1. Knowledge Base [eLearning]: This contains easy to read, informational, and actionable content that new hires consume. It focuses around these main areas: Company’s History and About, Company Culture, Main Systems & Tools (Setup & Basics Resources), Getting Setup (HR Information, HR Setup (e.g. 401k))
  2. Monthly Orientation Presentation [In-Person/Remote]: This presentation focuses on reinforcing content from the Knowledge Base, company culture emergent, and activities to help new hires settle in. Recommended monthly, depending on your hiring cadence. Presentation typically built-in Google Slides.
  3. Slack or Community Forums [Social Learning]: A Slack channel or community forum just for new hires is recommended where they can ask questions while navigating the Knowledge Base, getting ramped up in their role, or to ask HR questions. This should be moderated by someone in People Ops or HR. Creating automated polling to check how new hires are doing and a template for new hires to introduce themselves is recommended. This is a great way to maintain contact and build new hires’ independence. New hires graduate from this channel or forum after 45 days.

Client Perspective (Preparation & Decisions)

What decisions do you need to make during this process?

Self-serve Content

  1. Who will be your SMEs (and reviewers) of content for these topics:
    • Company History
    • Company Culture
    • Systems and Tools
    • Getting Setup ( Technical and HR)
  2. Kickoff the project with us by gathering all resources needed to cover these topics and walk us through the material (either individually per topic or as a project team)
  3. SME(s) may need to dedicate 45-60 minutes for a interview to help clarify or provide follow up per topic
  4. In about 10 business days after the resources walkthrough and SME interviews, you will receive a draft of content to be reviewed (some content may be released sooner). Spend up to 5 business days writing up changes and submit them to us.
  5. About 5-10 business days after you submit your feedback, you will receive your final onboarding program for final review.
  6. Once you sign off at the final review, the program content will be staged in your chosen platform for a quick review for any minor issues (no content changes at this moment).
  7. Launch your self-serve content to learners.

In-Person Cohort Presentation

  1. Who will be your content creator(s) and facilitator(s) for monthly cohort presentation template
  2. Work internally to build out the presentation, ask us for guidance and feedback
  3. Review the content with us and your facilitators
  4. Attend a training session to walkthrough how the presentation should be delivered and best practices

Asset definitions

  • Persona Survey: Use with new hires to better understand where they are at as they onboard
  • Module Template: A template used to structure content for the Knowledge Base
  • Monthly Orientation Presentation Template: A base template with main topic areas that companies can customize with branding and colors
  • Curriculum Template: A template used to organize content for the onboarding flow and development process.

Points of Entry

Development Effort

Requirements:

Subject-Matter Experts in each topic area for Knowledge Base (must be available to review and provide feedback) Facilitator for Monthly Orientation, companies are required to build out the presentation to fit their needs (facilitator should be available for presentation walk through with Montage and able to make edits to presentation independently) Slack or Community Forum Moderator willing to engage a few times a week or answer questions from new hires Depending on resource availability, Onboarding development time should run between 45 - 60 hours

Return On Investment (ROI) Notes

Salesforce Implementation Partner (SIP) Healthcare and Financial Experts

Before

  • 1 week in-person onboarding experience (up to 7 hours each day) with multiple Subject-Matter Experts involved

After

  • Eliminated need for 1 week of onboarding to automated emails and Slack messages, self-paced eLearning, and a monthly orientation
  • Maintained a Learning Experience Survey (LES, Learner Satisfaction) 4.8/5
  • 30% reduction in time to proficiency (Measured by Slack questions and common errors like time tracking)
  • 134% ROI after redesigning onboarding, compliance, and continuous learning programs after 1 year

Salesforce Implementation Partner (SIP) Construction and Manufacturing Leader

  • Cost of Montage Onboarding: $23,900

Before (People Ops Manager Perspective)

  • 1st Day, 3 hrs spent with each new hire, on average 3 new hires per month
  • 1st month, on average 1hr per day spent working on new hire tasks (pulled in and off other tasks) = 29 hrs with new hires per month
  • monthly total onboarding cost for People Ops Manager (POM): $1,160
  • yearly total: onboarding cost for POM: $13,920
  • estimated average salary for POM in US: 85K, $40 hourly

After (People Ops Manager Perspective)

  • Montage onboarding eliminated 1st day time with self-paced and automated emails
  • New Hire Slack channel eliminated 29 hrs with cohort support or easy to connect chats
  • will reach 100% ROI for this position over 1.7 yrs
  • after 6 months about 25%

Onboarding Customer Success Stories

Salesforce Implementation Partner (SIP) Healthcare and Financial Experts

A Salesforce Implementation Partner, focused in the healthcare and financial industries, with a majority of remote-only employees, thrived in these fast paced environments and solving complex problems. But this required speed and talent at a rapidly growing company. Onboarding was highly rated but took almost a full week for new hires to complete and it involved multiple teams like human resources, learning and development, and department leaders to run it.

Helping to rethink their approach, Montage offered insights into optimizing their onboarding systems and strategy. Streamlining processes, gathering information into a knowledge base, and implementing a blended learning approach allowed new hires to discover content on their own and gain company cultural immersion through a monthly orientation. And leveraging a social work platform like Slack, gave new hires a space where they can get answers from each other or anyone.
Implementing this new onboarding program, helped the company see a week’s onboarding shrink to 9 hours of self-serve learning, increase new hire proficiency by 30% within 30 days, and maintain a 4.8 out of 5 satisfaction rating. And over the first year of the program, the company will see a 134% ROI, essentially cutting the costs of onboarding in half. An easy to maintain program like this allows for scalability at any point in a company’s growth.

Salesforce Implementation Partner (SIP) Construction and Manufacturing Leader

A Salesforce Implementation Partner, leader in the construction and manufacturing industry, with remote-only employees, has been experiencing steady growth over 10 years, but suddenly faced a period of rapid growth. This created significant new challenges for their people operations team and it all had to be done at speed. One major issue was onboarding new hires quickly and efficiently so they could become proficient and contribute.

Their current onboarding process was long, involved multiple people, and required a hand-holding sequence of check-ins to progress. This took hours of time away from people operations, managers, subject-matter experts, and others. A total of around 30 hours per month and this was all done per individual new hire.

To combat this resource hog, Montage collaborated with them to develop a cost-efficient strategy, relevant content, and an accelerated onboarding process. The solution required a blended learning approach, where new hires take 8 hours of self-serve content and participate in a remote monthly new hire orientation that reviews important information, but also serves as company culture immersion.

Montage’s solution gave back 30 hours per month per new hire back to those previously involved in the onboarding process. As the company grows the onboarding strategy can scale easily to accommodate the amount of new hires and still allow people operations to focus on new projects to continue making their employees’ experience even better. Learners love the autonomy rating their onboarding experience 4.7 out of 5 and in under 2 years the company will see 100% ROI from implementing this new onboarding program.

FAQ

  1. How long does it take to stand up Montage’s Onboarding program?
    • Clients usually have their onboarding program up and running within 30 days of project kickoff.
  2. Who should be involved in the Onboarding program discovery/build from my company?
    • HR, if you have an HR department. We also work with clients that have not stood up an HR function. In those cases we work closely with employees that have knowledge about company history, systems and tools, culture, and getting an employee started.
    • Your IT department or anyone who handles technology decisions. This is to learn more about the necessary systems and tools new hires will be required to use and how the onboarding program fits into the IT onboarding process.
  3. How much time will my team need to commit?
    • Developing an onboarding program generally requires about 20 hours of your stakeholder or SME’s time. Time may vary depending on the creation of any custom modules are required.
  4. Can we add additional onboarding modules?
    • Yes, of course. The Onboarding Package entails the development/build of Company’s History and About, Company Culture, Main Systems & Tools (Setup & Basics Resources), Getting Setup (HR Information, HR Setup (e.g. 401k)) . If you need additional onboarding modules, you can add additional modules or choose the Custom Onboarding Package.
  5. We have ABC platform, can the onboarding content be posted/delivered on that platform?
    • Our learning programs and content are designed to be platform-agnostic
  6. When can I get started?
    • Montage will begin on your onboarding program once the SOW is signed and payment is received. We will create a timeline that works with your team’s schedule to ensure all resources and stakeholders are involved in the onboarding build.
  7. How do I onboard employees virtually?
    • Our strategy for onboarding is to give you and new hires flexibility during their onboarding time. We develop a blended approach that includes a self-serve knowledge base, a monthly instructor-led orientation, and recommend a new hire forum or channel where they can ask questions.
    • Each of these components work together to support new hires: self-serve content is to be completed in 30 days, orientation happens in their first month, and the new hire forum is available during their first 60 days.
    • We help outline best practices when implementing this new onboarding strategy so it doesn’t feel overwhelming and works with your current processes.
  8. What information should be included in onboarding?
    • To start an onboarding program, we have found that company history and culture, systems and tools, and information on getting setup at your company (benefits, resources, company policy) is enough information for new employees to digest and follow up with if needed.
  9. We are a young company and don’t have onboarding resources/content. How can we build an onboarding program without this information?
    • Montage will walk you through the process of building out an onboarding program, give you the tools needed to conduct discovery around onboarding, facilitate portions of discovery to identify practices/content, and provide templates to develop onboarding content.
  10. What does virtual onboarding consist of?
    • Virtual training usually consists of 4 pieces:
    • Instructor/Facilitator to guide the virtual learning
    • Web-based classroom (Zoom, Google Meet, GoToMeeting)
    • Content (onboarding material)
    • New hires
    • A new hire forum or channel (if you use Slack)
  11. How do I pivot from in-person onboarding to virtual onboarding?
    • Our onboarding program includes the strategy of blended learning, which includes:
    • A self-serve knowledge base where new hires can learn at their own pace within their first 30 days
    • A monthly instructor-led (in-person or virtual) orientation where new hires meet and greet, review the self-serve content through activities, and dive deeper into the company culture.
  12. How do I make virtual onboarding engaging?
    • We provide best practices to help you understand how to maintain new hire engagement with your onboarding program. Self-serve content that tells a story and instructor-led presentations that involve learners is key to maintaining engagement. Our onboarding product averages a 4.5 out 5 for learner engagement and satisfaction across different industries and types of companies.