Success story

Onboarding

Industry: Children’s Fashion Retailer

Key Challenges

  • Update the all-associate onboarding program to meet the needs of both external new hires and internal promotions
  • A more consistent and scalable solution was needed

Solution and Services

  • Collaborated with Justice to build an onboarding experience that was customized for the home office associates

Solution Highlights

  • A branded web-based onboarding experience
  • Best-practice onboarding actions
  • Time-based surveys to measure onboarding progress and impact

Key Benefits

  • The onboarding program reduced the time for a new hire, recently promoted or transferred associate to contribute in their new role
  • Leadership could easily track progress
  • It reduced process variances and enabled consistent onboarding experiences for the new hires and associates

Onboarding: A Children’s Fashion Retail Designs a Fresh Approach to
Groom New Hires

Children’s fashion retailers work hard to change a consumer’s preference to shop under one roof in supermarkets, discount and department stores rather than a specialty store. However, one segment of consumers is more sophisticated and enjoys a retail concept developed just for them. That is the age group of “tweens” – children between 7 – 14-years old.

This market changes rapidly according to trends. Retailers who serve this niche need strong teams who can anticipate new developments and seize the opportunities they bring.

The Challenge: An All-Associate Onboarding Program Needs a Consistent, Scalable Solution

Justice, needed to update its all-associate onboarding program in order to meet the needs of both their external new hires and their internal moves and promotions. They reached out to Connect the Dots to help them improve their new hires’ experience and build a strong foundation for their success.

The current program only existed on spreadsheets and Word documents. The HR leadership team knew the business needed a more consistent and scalable solution. Another business driver was that the hiring managers were to be responsible for the onboarding experiences of their new associates and not only rely on the Human Resources department to deliver onboarding.

The Solution: A Faster Way to Achieve Productivity and Employee Loyalty with a Web-based Program and Customized Resources

Justice needed to increase new hires and newly promoted associates’ speed to productivity by using technology to facilitate job training. They also needed to gain efficiencies in a plan creation and execution. To ensure a new hire’s success, CTD worked with Justice to develop a program that promoted positive associate engagement from point of offer acceptance through the first 90 days with the business.

With CTD’s deep expertise in retail, leadership and all-associate onboarding, they collaborated with Justice to build an onboarding experience that was customized for the home office associates.

Together they created a solution that delivered the following:

  • A branded web-based onboarding experience
  • A branded landing page with links to key information for new associates before Day 1
  • Best-practice onboarding actions that met Justice’s objectives
  • Customized resources that supported the new associate, hiring manager and HR Partner experiences
  • And ability to build individual onboarding plans with
    ❖ Customized objectives
    ❖ Stakeholder analysis
  • Time-based surveys to measure onboarding progress and impact
  • Email prompts for key onboarding actions

A Better Experience for New Hires Means Increased Productivity and Less Attrition

The onboarding program reduced the time for a new hire, recently promoted or transferred associate to contribute in their new role. It allowed leadership to track progress against onboarding goals. And finally, it reduced process variances and enabled consistent onboarding experiences for the new hires and associates.

Justice’s HR leaders agreed that with the implementation of the CTD Building Connections web-based onboarding solution, their associates were able to successfully integrate into their culture, be productive quicker and experience less attrition during the first 1-3 years.

The consistency and scalability of the program allowed hiring managers to more effectively deliver onboarding without having to “reinvent the wheel” every time they hired someone new. These managers also became better coaches and were able to help their new associates address onboarding concerns before they led to a larger issue for the associate or the organization – a “win-win” for both Justice and their talent.

Our team-connect Survey Process

 

We start with thoughtfully diagnosing the team’s current culture by using available data, assessments and interviews.

This provides the team leader with a clear view of what is getting in the way of the team’s success.

We design a series of structured team sessions that:

  • Share the team culture analysis
  • Give team members the opportunity to talk through both processes and behaviors that need to be addressed
  • Productively provide feedback to one another
  • Develop both team and individual commitments that will lead to the team’s desired state

 

Measure progress by leveraging CTD’s team-connect Survey to:

  • Drive accountability and measure progress by collecting team feedback specific to one another’s engagement and behavioral change
  • Provide the team’s leader with a clear understanding of what he/she and the team need from each other to enable and support the team’s success
  • Share team and individual survey result reports