The Persona & Problem Statement

Abi joined a new company and took part in the new joiner’s induction program. The next day, she went to an HR executive for a query on insurance. The HR executive responded rudely, asking “What were you doing during the induction.” Abi was taken aback and felt this is not in line with creating a psychologically safe work environment and the “Great Place to Work” philosophy the company is advocating.

A few months down the line, when Abi wanted to book tickets for a few team members to attend a conference, she booked using a travel website instead of Concur, which is the company prescribed way for the employees to plan travel. Abi did this inadvertently, firstly because no one told her during induction, there is a system called Concur. Next, she didn’t have the mindset to check with someone from operations/HR team due to a poor first impression. Not using Concur, led to compliance issues, warnings and in turn had cascading negative effects on her career, resulting in low level of confidence, and being withdrawn from participating in office events. This had an overall impact on Abi’s morale and in turn on company’s business.

Suggested Solution

You Have a Buddy (YHaB) – A chatbot to handle employee onboarding & offboarding. This doesn’t mean, we eliminate physical onboarding sessions. This is to aid new employees beyond the induction sessions, with multi departmental support.

Poor onboarding can leave employees with lower confidence in their new roles, and worsened levels of engagement. Creating a great onboarding experience can make lives at work easy for employees, motivate them to perform well, set new hires for success and in turn greater employee retention.

From experience, we have seen checklists on Workday, to see if all onboarding tasks are complete. However, people rarely see to those. When new employees are handed over the laptop, they should have the onboarding chatbot pinned to their task bar. The chatbot should have notifications/flashing capabilities like how MS Teams flashes when a new message arrives. When the employees open the chatbot, he should get a welcome message with videos on the company, its history, various operations…etc. The employees should be presented with the list of various points of contact. The chatbot should answer questions like:

• What are my roles and responsibilities?
• How can I book a cab?
• How can I apply leave?
• Please share me the holiday lists for this year
• Who is my manager/HRBP?
• How to contact facilities team?
• How to get my laptop repaired?
• How to add a new software to my laptop?
• What are the leave policies?
• What are the various company policies?
• What are the compliance policies I should be aware of?
• What are the emergency contacts?
• What is the organisation structure?
• What does each function in the organisation do?
• Where to find my Form 16?
• What are the reimbursements I can avail?
• What is GCO? What do they do?
• Do I have a mentor at AZ?
• What are the mandatory learnings I should complete?
• Where can I see my mandatory learnings/assignments?
• What are my goals and objectives for the year?
• What is the company scorecard?
• What are the tools I should be knowing? Ex. Jira, Confluence, Workday, ServiceNow, Workplace, Degreed, SabaCloud…etc.
• What are a few examples of breach of compliance?
• What is POSH?
• The checklist before offboarding

*Above listed are a few sample questions.

Once onboarded, the chatbot should nudge the new employees on daily basis for the next 30 or 60 days prompting them to complete the mandatory trainings and guide them to plan their day.

Ex: When the employee logs in the morning, the chatbot should present a note saying,

“Good morning 😊 Let me guide you to plan your day. You have these mandatory trainings to be completed. Pick one to complete today.

Also, what is one big thing you want to focus today?”

When it comes to learning something that is in a document with option “Read & Sign”, people predominantly open and sign it without fully understanding what is in it. Not to blame the employees. This is partly because of the way such trainings are designed, which overwhelms. Probably a good way to make trainings meaningful should be to share snippets of information, at regular intervals, that is easy to grasp.

As a way for new employees to remember certain things, the chatbot can ask question from what they learnt, nudging to type the answers.

Ex: Chat bot asking, questions like “What is your understanding of leave policies at AZ?”

In toto, the virtual buddy should help new employees understand the company culture, know how to be compliant, ask for clarifications, and help establish workplace connections within the team, stakeholders, and the company, which in turn can enhance the overall employee experience.

Business Outcomes & Strategic Alignment

The chatbot can capture metrics on daily basis, from individuals, by populating some questions like:

• How was your day?
• Were you feeling stuck somewhere?
• What could have been done better today to improve your mood?

A weekly report can be generated to measure the level of satisfaction of new joiners and take measure to address their concerns.

The suggested solution, when implemented, can help new joiners with a pleasant onboarding experience, plan their career ahead at AZ, which in turn can lead to improved work satisfaction and greater retention of employees. This also aligns with company’s strategic goals of Run IT Brilliantly, Digitize Our World & being a Great Place to Work. Extensions of this chatbot solution could be to help clarify queries of patients onboarded onto studies, vendor onboarded to provide some service…etc.

Sustainability

Clear communication, and easy availability of information reduces the time wasted in navigating a matrixed organisation to find clarifications and improves overall productivity. Wanted to use the below example to corelate:

Over 1,200 hours wasted daily confiscating cigarette lighters, perfume sprays, power banks – BusinessToday

Please click & expand for a wealth of resources & references

• Question Answering – Language Understanding – Microsoft Azure
• FAQ Plus App Template
• Onboarding Can Make or Break a New Hire’s Experience
• Why People Quit Their Jobs
• Turn Departing Employees into Loyal Alumni
• The Morning Nudge & Evening Mood
• Over 1,200 hours wasted daily confiscating cigarette lighters, perfume sprays, power banks – BusinessToday

PS:

• Submitted this during a hackathon organised by my business unit in 2022 and resubmitted in an IT org wide hackathon in 2023. We were not the winners, but are glad to be in the top 10 entries amongst the 70 submissions.

• Thanks to new grads Banishree, Asaf, Sai Krupa & Sandra, who joined the company recently, for being part of the team and sharing the inputs on their employee onboarding process.

• Long back, when I was looking for a personal finance app, I stumbled upon YNAB (You Need A Budget) and that inspired the title for this idea: YHaB (You Have a Buddy)