Problems Identified:

1. Social Integration of the new hires within the organization:

The onboarding process is the first interaction of a new hire with the company. Though it is good
to have a structured onboarding process covering basic administrative challenges, an
onboarding process that adds strategic HR value to the company must go beyond the basics.
Employees expect a personalized onboarding experience where they feel valued. Providing that
experience during onboarding is essential to ensure that the employee socially integrates into
the organization.

With work-from-home and hybrid work becoming the norm, this is an integral part of the
employee onboarding experience that needs to be tackled.

2. Understanding organizational culture

The culture of an organization is an intangible asset that is hard to define, and hence it is one of
the hardest roadblocks in the onboarding experience. Every company has a different culture,
and it is quite challenging for the new hires to learn culture from training material, especially if all
the culture training is scheduled in a short period as soon as the new hire joins the company.
So, it is essential to create avenues for new hires to form social connections and learn the
company's culture by experiencing it.

3. Role Clarity
Another area that new hires struggle with is clarity on roles and responsibilities. Often the new
hires join a company with a particular set of expectations about the job, and it may or may not
match the reality. Mismatch should ideally be detected earlier in the process through realistic job
previews. Even if expectations match the reality, the new hires must be provided access to the
company's body of knowledge and guided through it so that they are ready to perform their
duties as early as possible and prevent frustrations during the onboarding period.

Based on the above problems, our approach to the solutions is to concentrate on these three
aspects:
Welcome: Provide a welcoming environment to the new hires and make them feel valued.
Culture: Help new hires understand the culture of the organization by experiencing it.
Support: Provide all necessary support both within and outside of work to help the new hire
during onboarding.

Goals:
The goal of the proposed solution is to create an onboarding experience that focuses on the
individual who is being onboarded. All the needs of the new hire are taken care of, and support
is provided to the new hire till he/she is comfortable with the company and its culture. The
proposed solution aims to solve these scenarios faced by new hires:
● Not feeling valued/welcome.
● Not understanding company culture.
 ● Being bombarded with information on Day 1.
● Unable to find the resources and support required to settle down into the new job.
● Providing an avenue to provide feedback about the onboarding process.

Non Goals:
The following are some scenarios that the product does not aim to solve:
● The product can only prompt the employees at the right time for action. The onus of
creating a helping culture still lies with the organization.
● Such a product may not be feasible for use during the period between acceptance of
offer and the day of onboarding due to data privacy issues. So the product does not aim
to solve issues arising during this period.
● Some features of the product may not be useful to work-from-home employees.

Feature Description

A Microsoft Teams app named VI Buddy is installed on every employee’s Microsoft Teams
application (not just new hires). This app will be the one stop solution for all onboarding related
challenges faced by the employee. Here are some features of the app that we believe will help
address the challenges faced during employee onboarding:

1. Welcome video
User Scenario: Arun is a new hire who is eagerly looking forward to his onboarding day.
He’s excited to meet his new teammates and learn more about the team.

Solution: VI Buddy pings all team members and managers of the new hire two days in
advance of the onboarding date with a message that says ‘Arun is joining the team in
two days. Would you like to welcome him with a short video message?’ Team members
can record a video and VI Buddy will compile all of these videos into a welcome video
message including the names and designations in the video.

A new hire joining the company must feel welcome and recognized. This is especially
true with hybrid and work-from-home setups. Even in traditional office setups, many
teams are distributed across geographies so a personal welcome becomes difficult. The
welcome video feature helps achieve this objective. The welcome video feature helps
achieve this objective and adds a personal touch to the welcome.

2. Gamified introduction to the company and its culture

User Scenario: Arun starts his first day at work and is bombarded with information about
his team, his roles and responsibilities, HR policies, Company Culture and more.

Solution: VI Buddy has a section named Icebreaker that has a series of actions to be
completed by the new hire. The first step being the welcome video mentioned above,
subsequent steps will include short videos introducing the company culture, clarifying the
role, explaining the HR policy and so forth. The progress bar will display a mystery
 reward at the end, thus incentivizing the new hire to watch the videos. The new hire can
complete these tasks at his own pace.

This feature makes it easier for the new hires to consume information about the
company at a pace they are comfortable with. This helps the new hires integrate into the
company culture and helps them understand role expectations before starting on the job.

3. Support features
User Scenario: Arun has recently shifted to the company’s location and is looking for a
place to rent, he’s also looking at suitable schools for his children. In addition to this, he’s
hoping to find people interested in joining him for tennis.

Solution: VI Buddy has a section named Buddy forum where new hires can ask
questions like ‘I’m looking for a 2BHK apartment near the office. Please contact me if
you have any leads’ or ‘What does LC1 stand for?’. Buddy forum questions are high
priority and are pushed to all employees in the location.

In addition to this, if a group of new hires join around the same time (say, within a
fortnight), they are allocated to a cohort by VI Buddy. The cohort helps new hires support
each other through similar journeys and share helpful information as they learn.

VI Buddy will also have an Interests section that will help new hires find employees with
similar interests. An individual mentor is also assigned to each new hire.

These features are designed to provide the support that the new hires require when they
are onboarding. These features also help the new hires to form connections and
integrate into the organization.

4. Feedback
User Scenario: Arun received many calls from the hiring manager before he joined the
company. It’s been 2 weeks since he joined the company but he hasn’t heard from the
hiring manager after the first day.

Solution: VI Buddy prompts key stakeholders in the onboarding journey like the new
hire’s mentor, his/her HR contact and his/her immediate supervisor. The prompt reminds
these key stakeholders to contact the new hire and listen to their feedback about the
onboarding experience. VI Buddy uses the calendar schedules of all the stakeholders to
suggest feedback meeting slots. Additionally, VI Buddy also asks how the new hire is
feeling every 2 days, it alerts the stakeholders if the mood is consistently bad over 2 or
more responses.

Feedback is an important part of the onboarding process, it helps improve the process
and also helps understand the parts that require case by case attention. The employee
feels cared for when key stakeholders check in on how the employee is doing.
 5. Ready-reckoner
User Scenario: Arun finds himself logging in to his email or to the information page on
the company’s HR information system quite often to search for some or the other piece
of information.

Solution: VI Buddy includes a ready-reckoner with all the information that a new hire
needs to know. It includes the contacts of teammates, HR and admin employees related
to the new hire. It also includes the new hire’s ID information like employee ID,
workstation number and location and so on. Simplified policy points are included in a
FAQ section with a link to the full policy document. Floor plans of various levels in the
organization are also provided with an easy to use search feature.

This feature simplifies the process of information recall, helping employees understand
and use the company’s policies as early as possible. It also makes the policies and
facilities of the office easily accessible for the new hire.

Success metrics:
Overall product: The objective of the overall product is to improve the employee onboarding
experience. This can be measured by: Average feedback score of onboarding experience (from
stakeholder feedback interviews), No. of new hires reporting less than satisfactory (<4 out of 5
on a 5 point scale) ratings for the onboarding experience, Attrition rate of employees within 1
quarter of joining the company, Time taken for new hires to integrate into the team (from a
survey of managers).

Welcome video: No. of welcome videos created/No. of new hires, No. of welcome videos
watched/No. of new hires, Onboarding feedback score of teams that create welcome videos Vs.
Onboarding feedback score of teams that do not create videos.

Gamified introduction to the company and its culture: No. of rewards claimed/No. of new hires,
Surveys to measure culture change

Support features: No. of answered posts in buddy forum/No. Of posts, No. of posts made in the
cohort group, No. of new hires joining interest groups via ‘Join Group’ buttons in VI Buddy.

Feedback: No. of feedback interviews scheduled/ No. of prompts by VI Buddy, Aggregate mood
tracker of new hires (to measure impact of interventions)

Ready reckoner: Feature usage (No. of times ready reckoner is opened/No. of new hires), Page
visits to company’s existing HRIS system
Workflow