Onboarding Course

Neuco is a family-owned local business that prides itself on quality of customer service. They have grown substantially over the last 10 years, and have been hiring many new employees to add to their expanding team. Kayla Giss (Human Resources) stated that they had been wanting to create an onboarding welcoming course for some time.

I met with Kayla for a project kickoff and together we determined the objectives of such a course. I helped to guide our plan by describing what a successful onboarding course would look like: short, upbeat, easily digestible. And, I asked meaningful questions: What does your new hire typically look like? Why would someone want to complete this course? Are there any skills that you want to emphasize with the learner or issues that you would like to prevent?

Answers to these questions led me to understand that new hires were presented with a lot of information to sort out. There was also a disconnect between the offices and the warehouse, so people in one had trouble navigating the people and places in another.

The challenge was this: create a course that conveyed the family and team atmosphere of the company and help new hires to know where to go and who to go to. After gathering all of this information, I determined that the learning objectives were that learners should be able to:

1. Describe how the company helps its customers.

2. Identify the department leaders and functions.

3. Navigate the offices.

I sent Kayla our meeting notes and a mock up of the project style, and then got to work!

My solution to this challenge was to sort the information in the style of a Table of Contents, rather than a timeline. I drew inspiration from Instructional Designer Cath Ellis's Skin Safety course. This allowed for a non-linear course, with learner choice in which section to complete first. When learners have autonomy over their experience, they are more likely to be successful. A new employee, as in this case, is likely overwhelmed with information, and this type of course will set them up for success.

I also provided the new employee with an agenda of the day's events, highlighting their goals and giving them room to take notes.

The visual design of this project is simple and clean. The company logo uses a strong blue and white scheme, which conveys a sense of reliability and trust. I wanted to mirror this in my design so that learners experienced a sense of stability and clarity.

One of the challenges of this project was the large number of departments for the learner to read about. I did not want the learner to experience an information overload, or to simply begin clicking through just to finish. To solve this, I personalized icons for each department to keep the user interested. I also added eye-catching transitions. When quizzing the learner on the departments (and on all sections) I did not aim for memorization of the content. Instead, I allowed the learner to learn as they were being assessed by including helpful information in the question itself. The answers for each question also aided learning in that feedback included helpful hints about what to do with this new information.

Kayla's Review: Catie was absolutely amazing to work with! She did a great job capturing exactly what we wanted our employees to learn about Neuco on their first day and we are so excited to add this to their onboarding experience. My favorite part of the course was how she took Neuco’s history and turned it into an interactive timeline so our new hires can see how far we’ve come. This course was everything I had envisioned it would be and so much more. Catie is extremely talented and anybody would be lucky to work with her in the future. Thank you for everything you have done for us!