Reimagining Federal Employee Onboarding Through Human-Centered Design

Overview

Led an 8-person cross-functional team at a Federal Government Agency to design a comprehensive onboarding experience using participatory design methods. The project aimed to transform how new employees were welcomed and integrated into the organization, replacing a fragmented approach with a cohesive, empathy-driven program that combined virtual cohort learning with localized experiences.

My Role: Project lead, design thinking facilitator, and mentor to team members new to human-centered design methodologies.

Timeline: 1.5 years (2020-2021)

  • Hand Drawing comic style of optimistic Oliver- a new employee who is very eager and an over achiever

    New Employee Persona: Optimistic Oliver

  • Hand drawn image of a cynical employee who has been around for a while in different roles

    New Employee Persona: Cynical Cyndy

  • Post-it notes stuck to a wall in affinity clusters

    Participatory Design Workshop: Defining Onboarding

  • Post-it notes on a wall groups into specific elements of onboarding

    Participatory Design Workshop: Customer Experience

  • Hand Drawn imagine of a new employee who is very young a Green

    New Employee Persona - Newbie Nick

Process and Approach

  • The Federal Agency faced multiple interconnected challenges with their existing onboarding practices:

    • Resource constraints: Individual offices were overburdened with onboarding responsibilities while already being resource-strapped

    • Knowledge gaps: New employees lacked a solid foundation of understanding about the organization and asylum processes

    • Inconsistent experiences: Onboarding quality varied significantly across geographically dispersed offices

    • Employee retention: The agency struggled with turnover partly due to inadequate initial support

    • Low morale: New hires often felt overwhelmed and disconnected from the agency's mission and purpose

    According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), effective onboarding programs can improve employee retention by 25%—making strategic onboarding not just a nice-to-have but a critical business need.

    The organization needed a more effective way to:

    • Support new employees during their critical first months

    • Build consistency across geographically dispersed offices

    • Help new hires understand the complex asylum application process

    • Improve retention rates and employee satisfaction

    • Create a sense of shared purpose across diverse roles

    • Reduce the burden on individual offices

    • Conducted qualitative research through interviews and focus groups with new and existing employees

    • Gathered quantitative insights via surveys to identify patterns across offices and roles

    • Analyzed industry trends and best practices in employee onboarding

    • Identified key pain points in the current onboarding experience

    Key Research Insights

    • Inconsistent experiences: Vastly different onboarding approaches across offices created silos of knowledge

    • Organizational friction: Inconsistent onboarding led to frustration when collaborating with colleagues from other parts of the organization

    • Missing context: New hires lacked understanding of how different organizational components worked together

    • Unequal foundations: Variable onboarding quality created disparities in career starting points for new employees

    • Facilitated a participatory design sprint with cross-functional team members

    • Mentored team members in design thinking methodologies while leveraging their diverse organizational knowledge

    • Activities included:

      • Persona building: Created representative new hire personas based on research

      • Journey mapping: Mapped current onboarding experiences across different offices

      • Problem framing: Articulated specific challenges to address

      • Ideation: Generated potential solutions through collaborative brainstorming

      • Complexity and impact mapping: Prioritized solutions based on feasibility and potential impact

      • Prototyping: Developed low-fidelity prototypes for testing key concepts

    • Developed curriculum framework for a 40-hour onboarding program

    • Created prototype "onboarding toolkits" for local office customization

    • Built a low-fidelity interactive storytelling prototype to illustrate the asylum application process and how different job roles interact with the application.

    • Conducted user interviews with prototypes and collected feedback.

    • Observed users interacting with prototypes and cataloged common behavior patterns.

The Solution

Hybrid Onboarding Model

The 40-hour curriculum delivered through a combination of:

  • Virtual cohort-based learning across the organization

  • Locally delivered, customizable in-person experiences

  • Self-paced interactive learning modules

Onboarding Toolkits

  • Developed physical and digital resource packages for local offices

  • Included standardized materials with consistent branding and messaging

  • Provided customization options to address local office needs and culture

  • Created implementation guides for local onboarding coordinators

Program Support Structure

  • Designed a centralized coordination model with local implementation points

  • Created role descriptions for program facilitators

  • Established metrics for program success and continuous improvement

  • Developed a phased implementation plan to manage resource constraints

Interactive Storytelling Tool

Designed a "choose your own adventure" experience following an asylum application

Innovative implementation:

  • Initial prototype developed in PowerPoint for accessibility and easy editing by non-technical SMEs

  • Beta version created in Articulate 360's StoryLine for enhanced interactivity

  • Continues to be used for training onboarding contractors and IT partners within the innovation division

  • Incorporated decision points that affected story outcomes

  • Built empathy for asylum seekers through immersive storytelling

  • Highlighted interdependencies between different parts of the organization

  • Enabled new hires to understand process complexity through an engaging format

The storytelling tool serves as the cornerstone of the solution, making abstract processes tangible and helping new employees understand both the applicant experience and the interconnectedness of organizational roles.

Low fidelity prototype

Low fidelity prototype

Creating the interactive structure

Creating the interactive structure

Final version - showcasing various roles

Final version - showcasing various roles

Interactivity when selecting a key word

Interactivity when selecting a key word

Users choose the story’s path and unfold different outcomes

Users choose the story’s path and unfold different outcomes

  • Although the program was not ultimately implemented due to resource constraints, the project delivered several valuable outputs:

    • Comprehensive onboarding blueprint: A fully designed 40-hour curriculum and operational structure ready for implementation

    • Innovative storytelling tool: A functional prototype of the interactive asylum application journey

    • Scalable toolkit concept: A replicable model for consistent yet locally adaptable onboarding

    • Cross-functional collaboration model: Demonstration of how diverse team members can effectively contribute to service design

    • Research insights: Documented findings about employee experiences that remain valuable for future initiatives

    Expected Impact (if implemented):

    • Reduced turnover among new employees

    • Improved knowledge transfer and operational efficiency

    • Enhanced employee experience and engagement

    • More consistent understanding of agency mission and processes

    • Reduced burden on local offices through centralized resources

    • Human-centered approach validity: Our research confirmed that addressing emotional and practical needs of new employees is crucial for successful integration

    • Cross-functional collaboration: Team members with no prior design thinking experience were able to contribute meaningfully and develop new skills

    • Resource creativity: Successfully leveraged an inter-agency volunteer program to secure e-learning specialists for developing the interactive storytelling UI
      Resource realities in government: Even well-designed programs face implementation hurdles in resource-constrained environments

    • Project scope: The 1.5-year timeline reflected the ambitious scope; a more focused minimum viable product might have improved implementation chances

    • Change management: Future government innovation projects should incorporate change management strategies earlier in the process

    • The participatory design approach yielded solutions that balanced agency-wide consistency with local flexibility

    • The interactive storytelling concept demonstrated how complex processes can be made engaging and accessible

    • The toolkit model remains applicable to other standardization challenges in distributed organizations

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