How to design a measurable digital onboarding experience

Published by Lily Winslow on June 24, 2022June 24, 2022

How to design a measurable digital onboarding experience

When is the best time to measure the impact of your digital onboarding initiative? A week after launch? Six months later?

To know if something has worked, you have to measure it. Based on the results, you can see the impact it’s having on new hires and your organisation.

‘When’ to measure is as important as ‘What’. Thinking about measuring the impact of your new onboarding experience after it has launched is too late. The key is to build measurement into your digital onboarding programme from the start.

Measurable by design

Before you start thinking about what your digital onboarding will look like, focus on defining your measures of success. What impact are you aiming to create? Higher engagement levels? Increased training completion? Reduced numbers of support requests? Improved staff retention? Reduction in onboarding time? Improved user sentiment? Real world behaviour change?

Deciding on your success criteria is a way to set your intention for designing, developing and launching your digital onboarding. It sets you up to meaningfully measure the impact of your initiative after it has launched.

Measuring behaviour change

If your success measure is behaviour change, you need an accurate understanding of why people are or aren’t doing what they ought to, rather than second guessing the problem or making assumptions without asking people. You can then use systematic methods from behavioural science to design digital onboarding that’s more likely to change people’s behaviour. Again, set clear measures at the start and design your onboarding accordingly.

Survey new hire employees

Survey users prior to implementation of your digital onboarding programme. Ask questions that gather feedback on new hire experience at your organisation. Use questions that ask “how much…”, “on a scale…”, “to what extent…” for quantifiable data on behaviour, and use questions that ask about thoughts and feelings for data on sentiment and satisfaction.

For the highest chance of a good response rate, surveys should not be onerous. They should be easy to access and quick to complete. Those completing it should be told of its importance – the opportunity to shape onboarding for new hires in the future.

Analyse user behaviour and interaction

Use an analytics tool to track and analyse user engagement with your digital onboarding programme. Seeing what users are interacting with and gathering their feedback on the experience will give you a picture of how each element of the onboarding programme is being used – what’s popular, what’s not.

Over time, you can analyse user trends from the data you capture for a deeper insight into how the programme is being received. Analytics tools that allow you to configure data visualisations by role, function, country, and manager status will give you the most detailed insight into user engagement, sentiment and behaviour.

Get off to the right start

Starting out your digital onboarding project with clear measures, user input and a way to track engagement will set you up for designing a successful, measurable onboarding programme. And when it launches? That’s the best bit. You’ll have the data to reveal evidence-based insights about its impact.

Our team at BAD creates digital onboarding experiences and tools that help you achieve your success measures. Get in touch if you’d like your new hires to learn through immersive digital experiences

Time to change…

Why do we behave the way we do? It can be hard to change our less desirable behaviours when they are highly ingrained and have become habits we perform automatically without thinking.

Richenda Sabine April 15, 2024