Enhancing the Global Onboarding Process with an Immersive Experience
Research shows that effective onboarding gives employees the opportunity to feel at home and become productive faster. Zebra Island was created as an immersive, gamified solution to take new employees at Zebra Technologies through essential corporate information in a fun and engaging way.
The challenge
Zebra Technologies wanted an onboarding process that was globally consistent, less labour intensive for HR teams and line managers, and that represented one of its key values: innovation. The experience needed to impact and inspire new starters from day one on the job, while crucially bringing them up to speed effectively and efficiently.
Onboarding is an important stage in the employee journey for providing role clarity, helping individuals on the path to proficiency, and making them feel that they belong. The challenge lies in being able to successfully impart essential company information – such as policies, social norms, messaging, goals, etc – in a way that people are able to absorb and engage with. The experience would need to:
- Incorporate corporate pdfs, presentations, infographics, videos, with suitable dynamics and mechanics to immerse individuals in the materials
- Help new joiners stay committed to the learning process through setting challenges and missions and encouraging progress
- Embed key messaging around company culture and values, as users progress
The team at Zebra is deeply committed to creating experiences that leave its employees feeling valued whilst simultaneously providing value for them. Zebra Island plays an important role in this offering
as a crucial touchpoint in the journey that employees take at the company, providing an exciting, encouraging welcome for all who join.
Development
Zebra Island was designed with the company’s culture, strategic objectives and desire to innovate at its heart.
However, the solution needed to be developed specifically with the end users in mind, and a wide breadth of employee profiles would be going through the process. There would be remote workers, interns, factory-based employees all accessing the experience, and various language and cultural differences would need to be taken into consideration as well. As part of standardising the process for all global participants, it also had to remain relevant and inclusive to everyone.
To achieve this, the team led user research that analysed past and current onboarding experiences – speaking to employees across regions and departments, holding focus groups, and conducting surveys to understand what different employee profiles hoped to gain from the solution. The design and development utilised behavioural theory and user experience (UX) expertise to plot user journeys and ensure the experience would be easily accessed and readily adopted by all.
The decision was taken to set the experience in a gamified environment which immerses users into a rich narrative where company materials are no longer seen as mundane or mandatory, and instead are presented to users in a way that sparks curiosity and initiative to develop their own goals.
“When looking for a partner
to work with, you want them to understand your culture and your business. You want agility, innovation, and creativity. You have all of that with Motivait. They worked with me to solve a global onboarding issue – listening to and helping me really define what was needed. It’s an awesome team of creatives, collaborators and they help you challenge your own thinking.”
Kally Kang-Kersey – VP Global Talent
The experience
The result is a digital solution, Zebra Island, that takes new employees through corporate information in a fun and engaging way across the first 30 days of their new role.
The journey begins with an invitation to the game-like experience where users are challenged to save the fictional team based on the Island. They move between different stations, each representing one of Zebra Technologies’ core areas, and unlock clues by completing key informative materials and challenges, with the ability to manage their own learning process throughout. This non-linear storytelling adds the immersive feeling of the experience and helps to embed the learning. The solution supports the 4 key principles of effective onboarding:
- Role Clarity: By sharing insight into organisational structure and context, and where the user’s contribution fits within said structure
- Self-Efficacy: By offering an early foundation of information, while encouraging users to test their knowledge in a safe environment with no pressure to get answers right the first time.
- Social Integration: By providing a digital social space to ‘meet’ and chat with other new joiners and creating a community with a shared experience
- Knowledge of organisational culture: By presenting information on company facts and history alongside core products, services and solutions, in an engaging way, supporting overall knowledge retention.
It is a space built for all – an example of how solutions can be interdisciplinary, international, and intergenerational in how they connect and engage employees.
“It has been – and continues to be – such a pleasure working with Motivait. I love their creativity, curiosity, and solution-focused approach. Zebra Island has achieved what we wanted – a global onboarding platform that provides new employees with corporate content and information in a fun and interesting way. Where it is really impactful for me, is in the level of engagement from users and how much people enjoy using it.”
Lauren Taylor – Organisational Development Specialist.
What do the users say?
