Announcing Our New Onboarding Process
For the past few months, our Learning & Development team has been hard at work revamping our onboarding process. What began in 2018 as an in-person experience for one or two people at a time has now, in 2022, become a remote-first, multi-day learning opportunity for cohorts of more than twenty new hires at once.
Ahna Benson, Em Bates, and Jacob Gruberger recognized the challenge in designing a remote-first onboarding experience to have the same camaraderie and usefulness as an in-person session. After a lot of hard work, we’re excited to present our new onboarding process: TMUniversity.
Because we had so much to say about this exciting new experience, we decided to split our interview with Ahna, Em, and Jacob into two parts. This week, read about the previous experience and what prompted the Learning & Development team to launch a redesign. Next week, we’ll publish more about the new experience and what we want new team members to take away from onboarding.
Can you talk about the old experience vs. the new experience?
Em: Thirty Madison previously offered an orientation session that gave our new hires their day one “must-knows.” Although this program served its purpose for the earlier stages of Thirty Madison history, we have crossed too many milestones to squeeze everything into a 75-minute presentation.
Enter TMUniversity! Our revamped onboarding program provides new hires with a full understanding of our company’s past, future, and everything in between. Although this journey is jam-packed, one factor in particular has made a substantial difference from the previous program: Time.
By allocating more time for onboarding, we have provided our new hires room to digest information, ask questions, learn about tools and resources, talk with leaders, and understand company culture all within their first week. Our goal is to create a memorable experience that welcomes new hires into the Thirty Madison family and leaves them ready to take on their new role!
Jacob: I like to equate the old experience to the very first day of your freshman year of college. You are so excited to embark on this new journey, ready to tackle the world, and you show up to your first class only to be presented with a breakdown of everything that needs action throughout the semester. You walk away feeling anxious, nervous, and overwhelmed because you haven’t even purchased your books yet.
In comparison, the revamped TMUniversity multi-day experience is values-driven and solution-focused. Coming into the program, new employees will be introduced to the Thirty Madison mission, vision, and values. Together we will dive deep into the impact that we have on the lives of our patients, how we are making healthcare accessible for all by operating as One Team, and how we challenge each other to be Better Every Day. Learners will enter the program with excitement about their new journey and exit in celebration, feeling confident and equipped with a properly sharpened toolkit moving into week 2.
Ahna: Like any start-up, we experience change. Right now, we are experiencing a hyper-growth stage of our organization life cycle that is both thrilling and challenging.
The New Hire Orientation was no longer providing the return on investment that it had originally. It was a 75-minute event that was primarily a one-way delivery of imperative information, with an emphasis on speed. But as an organization that is bringing in 30–50 new hires a month, this became more and more challenging to scale effectively.
Fast forward to today. We now have a newly unified Learning & Development team of 7 incredibly talented individuals who are focused on developing our entire organization, including architecting, delivering, and evaluating the new TMUniversity onboarding program.
The newly designed multi-day onboarding program engages new hires in a meaningful and memorable virtual onboarding journey led by the L&D Team, where they will immerse into a multi-day values-based and culture-centric experience with a group of 8–25 other new hires from various geographical locations. It even has a brand new look to match the brand new content and overall experience!
As the future of work changes and as we adjust to a hybrid work environment, the emphasis on creating a human-first experience for our new hires remains key. We want to proactively invest in our people to accelerate how quickly they grow, while ensuring our new hires feel emotionally connected, supported, and developed by Thirty Madison.
