Onboarding Revamp

In 2024, the goal was to optimize and simplify where possible. One of the areas where we wanted to do both was onboarding.

At Purple, we discussed updating the onboarding program for a solid year or so—and made a few revisions and additions in that time. But it wasn't until the primary facilitator left the role that we started to discuss and develop a new solution.

What were the problems?

• The original model was designed for in-person, in-office facilitation but most of our onboarding experiences were completed virtually, via Zoom.

• The People and L&D teams had limited capacity, due to fewer numbers and higher priority tasks, so a time limit was also a factor.

• New hires also experienced a bit of a time crunch, as some departments wanted to ramp up the culture onboarding elements to get employees into their actual roles sooner.

• The existing content was struggling to capture the full Purple culture vibe.

What did we do? How did I contribute?

• We met as a cross-functional group to design a synchronous curriculum for the trainer- or people-led portions, like setting up OKTA accounts, verifying identities, etc.

• We also worked together to design a rough curriculum (key points) for a self-paced, asynchronous e-learning program that new hires could complete within their first day or week. This program would include culture-related courses and existing compliance courses.

• I took the rough curriculum and the existing onboarding structure and used them as a base to flesh out the curriculum for the LMS program and its 6 courses. (See course descriptions and a few course samples below.)

  • Intro to Purple: Included a CEO welcome video, a more refined timeline of our company history, and a brief explanation of our company's OGSPs.

  • Purple Values: Included a description of our Values origin story, descriptions of Purple's 6 core values, videos of leaders talking about each value, and videos of employees who have championed each value.

  • Intro to Purple Products: Provided a high-level overview of our key product types to inform all employees of everything we sell and tied it to our key differentiator: the GelFlex Grid.

  • Purple Benefits: Outlined the insurance benefits and simplified the content, where possible, to improve understanding and reduce the amount of FAQs.

  • Purple Perks: Highlighted employee engagement perks, reimbursement opportunities, stipend opportunities, etc.—and described how to utilize them.

  • Purple Resources: Shared key company contacts and introduced common applications and their use cases.

• I designed, exported, and launched each of the LMS courses (and the graphics therein).

What was the result?

• The final program had 13 courses:

  • 6 Revised Culture Courses (See Above)

  • 3 Digital Security Courses (Not Revised)

  • 4 Legal Compliance Courses (Not Revised)

• The trainer-led portions went from a half- or full-day training to a 1.5 hour setup session, significantly freeing up time for the facilitating groups (L&D and People Teams).

• The total time spent by new hires did not drop dramatically, as we added in some elements to increase the value of the program, but there was a slight decrease in the total hours spent on the culture-specific pieces.

  • 0.4-hour decrease for Full-Time Employees (1.766 hours)

  • 0.6-hour decrease for Part-Time Employees (1.514 hours)

  • For reference, the culture-specific pieces for the original trainer-led course were roughly 2.177 hours long.

• New hires could also spread their culture onboarding time throughout the first week, creating a more flexible schedule for on-the-job training.

Tools Used: Articulate Rise, Articulate 360, Litmos LMS, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Canva

Note: The sample images below were captured from a PDF export of an Articulate Rise course, so they do not capture the actual learning experience (aesthetically speaking) or the interactive features of the course. These samples are provided to give you a gist of the work I did for the onboarding revamp.