An Automated Onboarding System for New Employees
Human Computer Interaction - PSYC/CS 6750 - Spring’14 P2 Report
Team 5 Members
Guliz Tokadli Rose Peng Vinai Suresh Meghna Mehta
Project Problem and Details
Problem
Our problem deals with the onboarding system at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing. Right now the system is not automated, and within the College of Computing’s School of Interactive Computing, there is only one HR representative who is managing the onboarding system. This representativeour clientapproached us to design a new, automated system to replace her current one. This current system is fairly inefficient, requiring mostly email for communication, sending required documents, and setting up meetings with the new employees. We would like to help by automating the system for our client while creating a broader onboarding system that could be applicable to many different HR systems within the university. In this report we will be presenting five of our proposed redesigns for the onboarding system.
Narrowed Scope and Audience
Our original design for this project was to design a system for both the Human Resources department, as well as new employees. However, it was suggested that we narrow our scope down as two systems could become too much work for this project. So we decided to focus on the HR side of the system, and create a customizable system for them to use. However, to evaluate the system, we also need a barebones system for employees, as this automated onboarding system is meant to ease both the HR and employee’s workload. There will be little customization on this side, but it will provide access to resources and an online checklist so that both HR and employees can keep track of their progress.
Although new employees will still be users of our system, we chose to put more importance on the HR managers, as this user group has higher stakes and closer fit to our client’s needs. Our redesigns include designs that target just the Interactive Computing HR manager, designs that target a broader set of users within multiple departments at Georgia Tech, and designs for users with different levels of computer familiarity.
Personas
Persona 1
Name: Ellen Thompson Age: 40 years old
Role: Human Resource Manager for the School of Engineering at Georgia Tech
Education: Graduate
Work:
● She was hired as HR Manager one year ago.
● She wouldn’t consider herself tech savvy, but she’s comfortable with the basic functionalities of her iPhone and her Macbook Pro.
● Doesn’t have to go through the onboarding process very frequently, around once a month
● She has a set of guidelines that she follows throughout the onboarding process, which she had compiled herself during the year she has worked as HR Manager.
● Currently she uses paperwork to maintain the data about the new employees and their tasks to be completed. The papers are kept in employee files in a good oldfashioned filing cabinet.
Goals:
● She likes to keep personal communication with each new hire, making sure the new hire is comfortable with coming to her if they have any issues.
● She also wants a nice neat place to go if she needs to find any information for these new hires.
● She would like a system to manage the progress of the new employees and simplify the communication process.
Problems:
● Most of her communication with the employees is either in person or through emails (Zimbra). She maintains a separate folder for these emails.
● She faces problems trying to communicate all the policies of the college to the new hires at one go.
● It takes her a while to retrieve the necessary documents from the employees’ files, and a lot of time is wasted sifting through tons and tons of paperwork. Also sometimes she loses emails from these employees and doesn’t hear back from them often.
Persona 2
Name: Michael White Age : 25
Role: Human Resource Manager for the Business School at Georgia Tech
Education: Graduate
Work:
● He was hired about two months ago and is new to this field.
● He is comfortable with new technologies.
● He has to hire employees in batches, most of them being foreign nationals.
● A set of guidelines for each employee, which depends on the position of the employee and their nationality.
● Currently uses Excel spreadsheets for maintaining the data, which are then shared with the team.
● Uses Google Calendar to set reminders.
● Most of the communication is through email (Outlook) and on phone.The email flow is linked to the spreadsheet.
● He needs the employees to fill out a lot of forms. He currently he has to manually fill in all this data on the spreadsheets.
Goals:
● He wants to make a good impression of Georgia Tech for his new employees. He knows that onboarding is the first impression that a new employee gets of the way things work at Tech, and having a bad onboarding experience looks bad.
● He wants his new hires, especially the staff, to start as soon as possible.
Problems:
● He is a very busy person, having to juggle many tasks during the onboarding phases. He often finds it difficult to track of the individual progress of the employees as there is no central system for all the information.
● The number of emails can be quite intimidating as he is the sole point of contact for any doubts the new employees might have.
Scenarios
Scenario 1 Current System
Actors: Ellen Thompson (HR manager), Amy Sambol (new employee)
Goal : To complete Amy’s onboarding process and make sure everything goes smoothly.
Ellen is the HR manager in the College of Computing. She ensures that the new employees are properly welcomed and they are acquainted with the norms and policies of the college. She is informed of a new employee who will be starting as a faculty: Amy. Ellen creates a copy of the onboarding checklist and adds it to Amy’s file. As the tasks are completed she checks them off of Amy’s checklist. First, she schedules a meeting with Amy to welcome her via email. She has a list of readings on the checklist which are mandatory for the new employees to go through, and these links are saved on her desktop. She sends each of these links to Amy through separate emails, making sure to select email templates to simplify the process. Next, she has to schedule Amy’s meetings with various department heads of the college for which she again uses emails.
Ellen realizes that so many emails are hard to track and maintain, and the employees find so many emails overwhelming as well. Ellen wants a simpler solution to communicate with the new employees. She also needs a better way to track the progress of these employees to make sure they have completed all the necessary steps.
Scenario 2 Improved System
Actors: Ellen Thompson (HR Manager), George Mendel (New Research Scientist)
Goal: To complete George’s onboarding process and make sure everything goes smoothly.
Ellen hears about the EasyOnboard application and decides to sign up for it. When George arrives, she adds his information to the application and creates a digital checklist. She can customize the tasks in the checklist for each employee. This adds George to the database of the application and now he can access all his tasks online. Ellen adds the relevant tasks to the checklist and posts all the links to the readings there. When George logs in he can see view these tasks and complete them. As he completes these tasks their status is updated on the online checklist.This helps Ellen keep track of his progress in a much simpler and
straightforward way.
Design Alternatives and Documentation
We created and documented five different design alternatives, based on our interviews with ten different HR Managers who are working at Georgia Tech. According to our insights from these interviews, we chose to focus on what they need and what the potential problems are with the current system. In the following subsections, five design alternatives are presented and some interactions are walked through in several mockup frames.
All of our design alternatives are designed with the HR Manager in mind. Although the
perspective of the new hire is also taken into consideration, we will only mention them briefly as they pertain to certain designs to help create a better understanding of how the design works.
Design Alternative #1
Our first design alternative was created to be easy to follow for both new and current HR Managers, and contain common interface elements of many websites. As seen in Figure 1.1, there are four menu option tabs for the user: “Employee”, “Documents”, “Calendar”, and “New Hire”.
Figure 1.1: Creating new hire account
On the “New Hire” tab, an HR Manager is able to enter information to add a new account for the new hire. The HR Manager can create this account by entering some basic information: the employee’s name and contact information (phone, building/room, email address). Next, the HR Manager must select the tasks that this new employee will be completing from a prepopulated checklist of steps. Then he/she can review those tasks and click “Apply” once they are
satisfactory.
Figure 1.2: New hire profile/account
Now the HR Manager can look at the employee’s profile (Figure 1.2) to keep track of his/her progress. This person will have their name added to the employee list located under the
“Employee” tab (Figure 1.3) once the HR Manager is done. Both the new hire and the HR Manager can see a progress bar depicting the employees’ onboarding progress under the
“Process Gantt Chart” section of the page. If the bar is completely red, it means that none of tasks have been completed. If part of the bar is blue and rest of it is red, the new employee has begun his/her progress.
Figure 1.3: Employee list
The Employee list view, which would contain all the names that the HR Manager has entered, their position, and the date the start.
Figure 1.4: Progress of new hire
From within each employee’s specific information page, the HR Manager can even see the specific tasks that are due at specific dates. This interaction helps to visualize tasks by the date they are due. The HR Manager can then click on a specific date on the progress bar, opening a mini checklist showing just the tasks die on that specific date and whether they have been completed or not (see Figure 1.4). Now, if there’s an urgent task that the new employee has not completed yet, the HR Manager has the option of sending a notification to the new hire. We chose to incorporate a notification system on this design, as this is a common concern that HR Managers want to be able to solve.
Figure 1.5: Notification system for new hire
As we saw in Figure 1.5, an HR Manager can send a notification reminder for any task, whether it is overdue or uncompleted. An email dialog box will open up below the checkbox and the HR Manager can then either choose a template email or write a quick notification to the new hire directly in the website. Additionally, the HR Manager is able to CC his/her email address so he/she can follow these notifications through a personal email inbox.
Figure 1.6: Choosing template email for notification of new hire
In Figure 1.6, we see that these template emails can be selected from a separate popup.
Figure 1.7: Documents tab for both new hire and HR manager
Figure 1.8: Printing and saving documents
Finally, the HR Manager can review, enter, and revise links under the “Documents” tab. These documents can then be printed out and shared with the new employee. Figure 1.8 shows a printing and saving dialog.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Design 1
Advantages
● Provides navigation that is similar to many existing websites.
● Provides the ability to print and save specific documents and readings.
● Detailed progress charts for HR people who prefer calendartype views.
Disadvantages
● Not allowed to edit existing documents and policies.
● No way to see which documents have been read by the new employees.
● Based on the inclass evaluations, the notifications would be better if they were automatically sent as a deadline approaches, rather than having the HR Manager manually select and send them.
Design Alternative #2
This second design allows for more customization of tasks by the HR Manager, giving them the option to add and edit task lists for employees based on their job titles. However, this one limits the customization of uploading and downloading documents. This is a robust, yet still minimal, design that is formulated to be easy for nontech savvy individuals to use. Many students from the inclass evaluation favored this design, commenting on the approachability for someone new to managing onboarding tasks.
Fig. 2.1: Home Screen for the second design alternative.
When the user first logs in to this system, they are immediately taken to a simple list of all new employees that are listed within the system (Figure 2.1). There are two tabs at the top navigation bar, which are placed in an area that web users frequently go for links and navigation. The number of available menu items are reduced to the two most important ones for the HR Managers to still be able to complete their tasks. This screen also shows small progress bars, which offer a view of each employees progress at a quick glance and reduces the need for opening each employee’s page to see their individual progress reports.
Figure 2.2: Detailed information about the selected employee.
If the HR Manager wants to see more information about each new hire, including their completed and uncompleted tasks, they can click on an individual name. Here he/she will see a readonly checklist of tasks that have been assigned to the new hire’s specific job title, and the progress can be reviewed (Figure 2.2). The new hire’s information may also be edited on this screen, but changing the email will require confirmation, as the email will be used to notify the new employee of any reminders they would have set up on their own side. An “x” at the top right corner closes this view and brings the HR Manager back to the previous listing of employees.
Figure 2.3: Natural interaction for adding a new name on the end of the employee list.
Now the HR Manager wants to add a new person to the list of employees. At the bottom of the list of names we will see an add button. This is placed at the bottom because the process for entering new employee information is done on the same page, instead of opening a popup or a new window. This would fit a less techsavvy person’s expectation for feedback, as it is similar to a realworld counterpart. For example, if writing a list of names on a whiteboard, the person would expect to place their pen at the end of the list and start writing there for a new name. In a similar way, the user would move their cursor to the end of this list and enter the new name along the same line.
Figure 2.4: Drop down menu to select a job title from a list of precreated titles.
Within the new employee option, the HR Manager has the option of selection a job title that the new employee was hired for. The listing of tasks that the new employee must complete for onboarding is generated based on the title selected from here. If the one the HR Manager needs is not on the list, he/she can make a new one from the “Other…” selection.
Here the HR Manager can choose a the employee’s start date from a calendar, instead of just typing a date in. He/she may also type the date if they wish, but both options are available depending on the HR Manager’s personal preference.
Figure 2.6: Initial screen for “Task Lists”.
If a job title is not available from the dropdown list offered, or if the HR Manager would like to change the tasks for a particular job, he/she can click on the “Task Lists” tab at the top of the website navigation (this page can also be accessed by clicking the “Other…” option from the previous screen). This brings up a list of job titles on the left of the screen, and a blank list on the right (figure 2.6). This list of titles contains checklists within them, which can be viewed once one is selected. A new one can be added as well, by clicking “Add New”. This twopane view is designed to be able to easily move from one job title to another without having to navigate multiple pages by going back.
Figure 2.7: Adding a new employee title.
Here the user has clicked on “Add new” on the side title listing panel. A drop down appears, which is the existing title we are basing the new list off of. Another input box allows the HR Manager to define the name of this new title. This method of defining a new instance of an existing position was suggested by both of the teams that evaluated our designs during the inclass evaluations.
Figure 2.8: List of tasks for the GTA position, which grabs the task list for the GRA position.
Once the preexisting position is selected, the list on the right side is populated with all the tasks that a new GRA would need to complete during their onboarding. This list now applies to the new
“GTA” position. Every time a new employee is assigned to the “GTA” title, this employee would have to complete these tasks shown above. All of these lists are used consistently: whether an HR Manager wants to add a new title, a new task, or a new employee, he/she will always look at the bottom of the list to find the “Add New” button. In this design, we chose to show the deadline as a function of the new employee’s start date, as sometimes the deadlines are not set in stone.
However, this may present a confusing interface for the HR Manager, and our other designs will show this information instead as a standard due date. Finally, a priority indicator is shown on the right side, and delete and edit buttons are available for each of the individual tasks.
Figure 2.9: Adding a new task to the GTA position.
This screen shows a simple method of entering a new task onto the GRA’s list of onboarding tasks. Similarly with adding a new employee, we would enter the information within the checklist itself, to keep the interactions consistent. Also links can be added here (especially for the case of readings), and would show up as hyperlinks on the new employee’s portal. The process is designed to be smooth and streamlined.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Design 2
Advantages
● Minimal, consistent interactions
● Flexible enough to allow for customization of tasks so that many HR departments can use it
● Simple enough for users new to their role Disadvantages
● “Add New” buttons may be hard to reach if the lists are particularly long
● Due date setup may be hard to understand or present incorrect information
● Some functionality may be hidden (implied scrollbars, etc)
Design Alternative #3
As we interviewed HR managers, we realized that the set of onboarding systems within Georgia Tech itself was fairly diverse. We meant to build this system for a particular user, Charmion Richards in the HR department of the Interactive Computing College. For this reason we believed that one design could be specifically tailored to her. Since the College of Computing onboarding system differs very little from employee to employee, other than meetings set up between the new employee and current employees, we figured that a less modular system could be advantageous because of its simplicity of use. That was one of the advantages of the design that we will show next. The disadvantages lie primarily in its lack of flexibility in case the current onboarding system changes for the College of Computing. Barring this however, we feel that this system could address some of our client’s key pains: namely keeping track of where new
employees are in the overall process, as well as giving them the online resources that they need without much hassle.
After the Human Resources representative logs into the system, they will be presented with a screen much like this:
Figure 3.1: HR View
In the above figure, the user is shown a list of employees. She can also see the employee’s checklist and what they have completed, as indicated by the greyed out checkboxes. She can edit when each item is due, on the right side, and can see in red which items are due soon for the user and must be completed. This gives her a sense of where along the process the
employee is. From feedback we received in class, we realize that this interface could get cluttered with a lot of employees, so we believe a collapsible list for each employee would help HR focus in on the employee they want to see. On the flip side, the employees will see the below screen.
Figure 3.2: Employee View
This shows a similar view to the HR view, but provides only the employees checklist, and allows them to check off items as they are finished.
Since a large part of the onboarding process is reading, we thought that an online source for links to these readings would be helpful for these employees and less work for HR to manage sending this links to the employees. Next to certain checklist items, the employee has a link to the reading for that item, such as reading the faculty handbook. These can be edited on the Edit links page before, accessed by the Edit Links button on the homepage.
Figure 3.3: Upload Documents
This is a popup dialog box, that lists the checklist items, and allows the HR representative to upload new links for certain items. The process does not change much, but it is possible that there would be broken links as resources are moved elsewhere within the Georgia tech system.
This screen would allow our users to account for that. On the homepage, our users will also be able to add new employees to the system. They will be able to add the name, email address, and phone number of the employee, and once they click submit, an email will be sent to the new employee allowing them to set up their user account password for login to this system.
Figure 3.4: Add Employee
provides the functionality that our client wants, with a simpler interface addressing her key issues.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Design 3
Advantages
● Simple design and implementation
● Directly addresses the needs of our client
● Allows readings and documents to be uploaded directly on the site Disadvantages
● Not very flexible
● Not compatible for other HR departments
● May have to scroll a lot if many names are expanded
Design Alternative #4
This design branched out of design alternative #1, with a similar design goal of being easy to use by people both new and familiar with the onboarding procedure, yet has a lot of experience with web interfaces. This design is the most detailed of all our alternatives, offering more detailed information about the individual employees to the user. Some portions of this design is influenced by feedback we gained from the last batch of people we interviewed, who had the beginnings of their own onboarding system in the works.
In this design we have six options on the navigational panel. Each of these panels (with the exception of “Calendar” and “Help”) have further submenus for navigation.
Figure 4.1: Home Page
When we are at the home screen (Figure 4.1), the HR Manager can conveniently access short snippets of some important information: “Notifications” and “Meet New Hires”. The “Notifications”
are an alert system for easily recognizing which new hires are behind in their onboarding or missing documents, etc. The “Meet New Hires” section shows appointment reminders that are coming up soon.
Another feature of the homepage is easy access to links such as OHR, Techworks, and Glacier.
These are sites that an HR Manager may frequent during a new employee’s onboarding. These links are listed underneath the “Home” tab and can be accessed with a simple click.
Figure 4.2: Employee Tracking Page
The second tab, “Employees”, shows a list of the detailed information about all the new
employees that were entered into the system (Figure 4.2). This information includes: employee name, email, position they are haired for, building and room number, start date for their job, progress, and a customizable alert (if there are any overdue tasks).
Another important feature this design contains is the ability to filter employees by their progress in onboarding. There are three filtering settings: “First Week”, “First Month”, and “90 Day”. We chose these three settings from our evaluations; many HR Managers we spoke to had separate stages of onboarding that extended to these time periods.
Figure 4.3: Employee Tracking Page 2
If an HR Manager sees an alert and wants to check on it, he/she can open that specific
employee’s page to get more details about the problem. The user just needs to mouse over an employee name to highlight it, and then click that row to open the employee page.
Figure 4.4: Employee Tracking Page 3
Once the HR Manager has the individual employee page opened, it slides into view under the name on the Employee List. This shows a detailed Gantt chart and full checklist of steps the employee must take for onboarding (Figure 4.3). This panel can be closed again by simply clicking back on employee’s name. In order to understand which task is problematic one, the HR Manager is can click on individual due dates below the progress chart.
Figure 4.5: Employee Tracking Page 4
As we mentioned above, clicking on a due date below the detailed progress chart will open up a list of the specific tasks that are due on that date (Figure 4.4). Now we can see where the unchecked task is located. Another approach would be to allow the system automatically open the specific date where the alert is when the user clicks on the alert.
Figure 4.6: Employee Tracking Page 5
Figure 4.7: Employee Tracking Page 6
If the HR Manager runs into any problems or would like to remind a specific new employee to complete a task, there is an option to send a notification to an employee. The HR Manager can click on the “Send Notification” button and open a message window. Here he/she can apply email templates, or write their own message; also he/she can CC themselves so they can find the message on their personal email account (Figures 4.64.7).
Figure 4.8: Creating New Hire account
Figure 4.9: Checklist settings for new hire
Figure 4.10:Preview of new hire profile/account
Now we will walk through the process of adding a new employee through the “New Hire” button.
The HR Manager enters the employee name, contact information, position, and start date. The HR Manager must select the specific tasks that this new employee needs to complete for onboarding and click “Apply” once that list is complete. The HR Manager can still edit and make changes to this task list after applying if there was a mistake by making the necessary changes and clicking “Apply” again. Once they are satisfied, they click on “Save” to add this new hire into the system. A preview page is displayed with the new hire’s information and tasks, then once
“Save” is clicked this employee will now appear on the employee list under the “Employee” tab.
Figure 4.14: Documents page
Figure 4.15: Printing and saving document to personal computer
Finally, we have the “Documents” tab. Here the HR Manager can review the readings and policies for their employees (Figure 4.14). The subtab, “Policy Library”, will direct the HR Manager to an official policy website. The “Readings” tab contains all the readings the new employees will see. These readings can be downloaded and printed (see Figure 4.15).
Advantages and Disadvantages of Design 4
Advantages
● Offers filtering solution for easy searching through employees
● Provides quick links for necessary websites
● Provides appointment reminder for user not to miss anything Disadvantages
● Two different lists for employee tracking might cause confusion for user
● Not flexible for documentation, HR manager is not able to edit and upload the documents on website
● May be too many navigational links/too complex for new users
Design Alternative #5
Since mobile phones are becoming quite ubiquitous, we thought that it might be beneficial to include a mobile design as well. This would allow HR to have constant access to their
employees and their onboarding progress. The first home screen will sport a list of employees along with a circular progress bar that gives HR an overview of the progress that employee has made. At the top the user will be able to search through their employees on the left and on the right they will be able to choose to sort alphabetically or by start date. The middle two buttons allow the user to change between the list view, and the job view, which will be described further down. From this screen the user will also be able to add a new employee, shown in Figure 5.2.
Figure 5.1: Home screen showing list of employees.
Figure 5.2: New Employee screen
The New Employee screen will allow the user to add a new employee to the system. They will add basic details such as Name, Email, and Phone number, as well as the Job description.
Similar to design 2, the user will be creating task lists based upon the job description, so
choosing the right job will populate the new employee’s checklist. They will then decide the start date for onboarding, so that all checklist due dates will be populated based upon that date.
Figure 5.3: Contact Information for employee
Figure 5.3 shows the contact information for the employees. This will be accessed by tapping on the employee’s name in the employee list. From here, the use will see basic information about the employee, and will be able to call or email them from this screen. The will also be able to edit any of the information by clicking the edit button.
Figure 5.4: Task screen for employee
Figure 5.4 shows the task screen for an individual new hire. This will be accessed by clicking on the progress bar of an employee in Figure 5.1. This list provides a picture for the user, their name and the progress bar from the original list. The user is then provided with the task list, which cannot be edited once an employee has been assigned one. This is to avoid
inconsistency in the experience of the employee as well; they would be confused if their task list was constantly updated. However, the HR rep can see their progress and click on the alarm bells next to any specific task to send a reminder email to the user that they need to complete it.
Figure 5.5: Jobs screen
Since the task lists largely depend on the job type, we designed this system to have built in templates. This will largely reduce the redundancy in the HR manager’s work. The jobs screen will let the HR manager populate the task list of the employee using the templates provided for the common job types. In case the job title doesn’t fit any of the provided values the user can add a new job and fill in the task list from scratch. The “Other” option provides the complete list of tasks.The user can select the relevant ones to fill the task list. Figure 5.5 shows the common job titles as the options.
Fig 5.6 Task List
Once the HR manager selects the job type as shown in Fig 5.5, he/she will be taken to the next screen showing the task list for that job type. Figure 5.6 shows the template for the job title
“staff”. He/she will also have the freedom to add more tasks to the existing list using the “New Task”button. The screen includes the name of the task as well as its priority (high, medium, or low).
Fig 5.7 Task Details
Once a task is selected from the task list, the application lets the HR manager set the details of that task. These include the priority (low, medium, high), deadline, a link(if applicable), and any notes that might be necessary. The fields will be prepopulated for the tasks provided in the template. For any new tasks the HR manager creates they will need the appropriate inputs.
Once these details are set the new employee can view them in his/her interface. Fig 5.7 shows the view for setting the details of the task “Read Travel Policies”. Since it is a part of the template the default values have been provided. Again, this will reduce the amount of redundant work for the HR manager as they just have to review the prepopulated values for the common tasks and save them.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Design 5
Advantages
● Mobile and accessible anywhere, anytime
● Simple interface with just two main lists that can be toggled from the home menu
● Easily call any employee straight from the app Disadvantages
● Cannot be used for people who do not have smartphones
● May be annoying to copy and paste links into the app
● Limited by screen size, may take a while to scroll if an HR Manager has many names to keep track of
