
EMPLOYEE ONBOARDING EXPERIENCE
Increasing employee retention by redefining the comprehensive new-hire onboarding experience.
CREDIT
Joan Bowlen
Graphic Design
Lauren De Muro
Project Management
Business Operations Partners:
Marlenny Guerrero
Deidra Buonauro
Talia Zahur
PROJECT SUMMARY
The Global Media Operations team grew rapidly over a five-year period from a few hundred employees to nearly 1,000. With this growth came an increased challenge of employee retention. By leading internal research and studying compelling industry data, it became clear to me that an onboarding program needed to developed and introduced.
While NBCUniversal has a new hire onboarding program, there was no standardized process in place to teach managers how to transition a new hire into their organization. This left the onboarding experience inconsistent, or worse, borderline non-existent.
To address this operational void, I partnered with the Business Operations team, HR leaders and Executive team to build an end-to-end onboarding process and manager training cadence.
RESEARCH
GRAPHIC DESIGN
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS
PROCESS
01
Research & Pitch
Conduct research
with hiring managers and recently hired employees across LA, NY, NJ, and CO to understand current hiring practices, pain points & opportunities.
Built business case and met with leadership team to pitch concept and gain feedback and buy-in.
02
Scope & Build
Established employee experience & journey map
including new-hire checklists to help both Managers & New Hires know what they need to do to complete the onboarding process.
Built comprehensive online information library
filled with everything new-hires need to know about the business, tools, and operations to help them hit the ground running.
Built Manager Training Program
for the first time in partnership with HR to ensure adoption across all lines of business
03
Launch & Iterate
Launch by sharing with leadership teams, and begin manager training.
Proactively sought feedback from managers and new hires through "First week survey" to understand what is working and what could be improved.
INSIGHT
DRIVEN INITIATIVE
Onboarding ranked second most impactful out of 22 HR practices
21% of employees who left a job in the first 6 months said “more effective training” would have convinced them to stay
86% of new hires make their decisions to stay with a company long-term within the first 6 months
Employees who had a negative new hire experience are twice as likely to look for new opportunities
DAY 1 JOURNEY MAP
Clearly defined the phases of the day to eliminate ambiguity, while assigned accountability for key tasks either to the manager or the "partner." The Partner Program was introduced as a new feature to help balance the responsibilities for the manager as well as create a friendly point of contact for the employee.

INTRODUCED
TO-DO'S
There are a lot of logistical tasks a manager must tend to prior to a new-hire's first day. Because these steps were never written down or standardized, many first days were chaotic, unproductive, and unsettling. To fix this, I partnered with each business to understand all required steps, established SLA's with dependent business partners, and built a comprehensive checklist.

This was the best onboarding experience I've had in my career yet!"
Feedback from Business Operations Coordinator in the LA office
LINE OF BUSINESS PAGE OVERVIEW
