Experience design for impact

The Challenge

Onboarding had evolved without a clear, shared design.

Processes varied across teams, managers, and functions. Systems were disconnected, responsibilities were unclear, and there was no consistent standard for how onboarding should be delivered. While compliance expectations had increased, the employee experience had become more complex and less intuitive.

This created a disjointed experience for new hires and placed unnecessary strain on hiring managers and support teams, resulting in duplicated effort, inconsistent delivery, and slower time to contribution.

Key challenges included:

• Unclear ownership across teams and stakeholders
• Recent focus on compliance unmatched by focus on ‘keeping things human’
• Inconsistent onboarding delivery across functions
• Disconnected systems with no central coordination
• Limited manager support at key onboarding moments
• Slower ramp-up, reduced confidence, and avoidable rework
• Adverse impacts on new hire confidence and productivity.

Client Overview

A large organisation was investing in enterprise-wide transformation, but one of its most important employee experiences remained inconsistent: onboarding.

Despite strong intent to improve, the onboarding experience had become fragmented across teams, systems and ways of working. New starters were entering the organisation through a process that lacked consistency and ownership, creating unnecessary friction.

Org was engaged to redesign the onboarding experience through a human-centred lens, improving not only process efficiency, but the experience, confidence, and readiness of the people moving through it.

Solution

Using a human-centred design approach, Org redefined onboarding around the moments that matter most, improving both the experience for new starters and the way teams deliver it. The result balanced operational efficiency with greater clarity and confidence.

Key actions included:

• Defined a clear onboarding value proposition and experience lifecycle
• Mapped personas, pain points, and critical moments across the onboarding journey
• Identified experience gaps across systems, teams, and interactions
• Co-designed practical improvements through facilitated workshops
• Aligned stakeholders around shared ownership and minimum onboarding standards
• Prioritised interventions that improved both experience and operational consistency

This resulted in a practical, scalable onboarding framework designed to improve experience quality while reducing operational friction.

Implementation

The redesigned approach was delivered through four targeted interventions, focused on creating immediate impact while building longer-term consistency.

Org implemented:

• A central onboarding hub to create a clearer and more consistent entry point
• Minimum onboarding standards to improve consistency across teams
• Just-in-time support for hiring managers to strengthen capability at key moments
• Structured feedback loops for both new hires and managers across the first 60 days

This approach enabled the organisation to improve experience quality quickly, without adding unnecessary process complexity.

The Impact

In just 11 weeks, the organisation significantly improved the onboarding experience for both new hires and internal teams. The redesigned experience reduced fragmentation and established a more repeatable and scalable onboarding model.

Outcomes included:

• Improved clarity, confidence, and early engagement for new starters
• Reduced rework and less fragmentation across teams
• A more consistent and repeatable onboarding experience
• Stronger manager capability and confidence at key onboarding moments
• Improved alignment across stakeholders involved in onboarding
• A practical experience design framework the organisation could continue to scale

Beyond process improvement, the work strengthened trust in the onboarding experience and improved the organisation’s ability to bring people in with greater confidence, consistency, and care.