Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge & Selection

As a member of the recruitment and onboarding team of a major company, I was in  charge of the successful onboarding of some new hires who would eventually join in  two months. Normally this is a pretty standard work, but we had gotten feedback that  the process was lackluster, and the content heavy format tended to disenchant people.  The program was to familiarize the hires with the company’s mission, vision and  processes, and carryout initial engagement practices.

So, I was looking to ramp up the engagement part and after going through design  thinking decided to put to use the storytelling tool. The aim was to weave narratives to  make the hires invest their emotions in the messages. I wanted to get them emotionally  invested to match their expectations, build rapport, surprise them and leave positive,  lasting impressions, while keeping them engaged.

Application

As a starting point, we used visual storytelling to create a fictional hire (Let’s say X),  and map his journey through onboarding, induction and a couple of months into the  job. This contained the many processes X would have to go through, the general  queries that may arise, how to navigate uncertainties, etc. While I could have skipped  this one, it was more realistic, more consistent and gave the new hires something to  relate to.

Series of graphic videos were created to tell the story of the company, products with  inputs from the top management as well as employees to give a virtual experience of  the company. It helped to see the bigger picture. We also asked the new hires to use  storytelling tool to tell their journey till the point of joining the company. Surveys were  carried out, which tried to gauge the feelings and emotions of the recruits with respect  to the company.

Insight & Approach

By using storytelling, we were able to put ourselves in our customers (new hires) shoes  and find the best experience that we could give them during this period, while trying  to maximize organizational orientation. It gave a clean structure and concrete goals of  that structure. It combined the power of creativity together with the need of analytical  thinking. Our actual results post this was that the new hires showed more interest in  the onboarding process and better organizational orientation post joining. Hence, we  are now incorporating and finding alternate ways to ramp up the engagement process

From being a technical person to using design thinking and creativity opens up  possibilities for solving problems that focuses on asking questions and listening, with  empathy, to the needs of our customers. This will enable good understanding of all the  people involved and catering to those needs while furthering organization goals.

