Today, I’m excited to take you on another adventure — a look back on an innovative project we had the pleasure of exploring with one of our continued clients. If this is your first trip with me, I recommend familiarizing yourself with our new series by taking a quick detour to view our first project spotlight, Take Me Out to the Ball Game.
Now that you have the lay of the land — let the tour begin (said in my most convincing Crocodile Dundee voice)!
Feeling Lost?
One of our continued clients came to us with a long list of resources intended to help orient new employees on the company’s culture, history, and values. The information they had on hand was really a wealth of content that included several landmarks in the long journey of becoming familiar with the company’s background and how they adventure toward innovation today.
Although the new hires had these great resources available to them, there was no real structure or roadmap to help guide them along their path to discovery. There was no direction on where they should journey first or why they needed to head down a particular path versus another, leaving their learners feeling much like this…
Now, if you’ve ever picked up a highly rated travel book, you know it can be quite helpful to have a cheat sheet — a guidebook of sorts to help you get from point A to point B efficiently while still allowing you to stop and see the sights. This is exactly the idea our talented instructional designer, Julee, had in mind when she developed the concept of an interactive PDF that would serve as a handy roadmap to guide new hires down the right path.
The Guidebook
Julee had the ingenious idea of designing this guidebook so that it would navigate much like a website (mirroring the companion SharePoint site we built for them previously), with tabs across the top to explore throughout each week of the onboarding process.
We wanted to give our clients’ adventurers (new hires) the opportunity to venture to their resources when the moment was right for them. This comprehensive map was designed to be interactive, eye-catching (like any good travel destination), and personalized in that they could either keep their field notes digital or print them out for more traditional notetaking.
We took the learning adventure one step further by including calls-to-action for each week, which were intended to make what they were learning feel more real and relevant to their job. We prompted review questions such as:
- How will you apply this information to your role?
- How will you embody the company culture and values?
A handy tracker was built in at the end of the guidebook (kind of like a packing list) to provide a sense of accomplishment and accountability for completing each step of their onboarding journey.
There was another collaborative element: The “action items” section could be personalized by either the learner or their manager to include assigned tasks or stimulate discussion, making their journey all the more personalized and meaningful! The manager also had a companion 90-day onboarding plan that they could refer back to for providing feedback and assignments.
Trip Highlights
- Project Timeline:
- Phase 3 — creating the manager’s 90-day onboarding plan
- Content Developed:
- One interactive guidebook
- One companion SharePoint site
- One manager’s 9
- Innovators in Adventure: 3 Innovators
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Detours Along the Way
Different Departure Dates
This project was unique in that the three deliverables were requested to be built at separate times. Fortunately, our expert Innovators in Action knew how to handle this particular detour by assigning the same creative instructional designer to each element so they could all work seamlessly together.
Travel on a Budget
We went into this project knowing the budget wouldn’t exactly allow for first-class flights (figuratively, of course), so we had to come up with a creative way to take what were essentially paper-based resources and turn them into an affordable, digital, and interactive solution.
We may be biased, but we think we navigated these detours expertly! Don’t take our word for it — see what our client had to say…
“We presented it to our HR leadership team a few weeks back and the feedback has been very positive! Thanks again for all of your efforts and partnership…I feel really good about the product we created.” – Sr. Talent Development Specialist
Our Innovators in Adventure
All and all, we’d say this project was one for the [guide] books thanks to the help of our Innovative team making it the most memorable adventure!
If you’re looking for help in planning your next learning journey, our expert Innovators in adventure are ready to guide you along the way. Contact us today if your learning organization is looking for a partner in adventure!
