EY Onboarding

The Project

The Melbourne EY Digital team reached out to RMIT students to gain alternative solutions to the current onboarding issues existing within the organisation through individualised discovery sprints.

While the existing onboarding process at EY works well for consultants and other more 'traditional' EY team members, the digital team across all levels from graduate to senior professionals felt excluded by the current structure. EY Digital sought to develop a more effective methodology for onboarding new hires as the team expanded. The initial solution proposed by the group was the development of an app-based onboarding system, which could be used by new digital team hires as an additional component to the existing week-long in-person training required of all EY new hires. However, the EY team strongly encouraged students to explore alternative solutions and channels for boosting new-hire engagement.

Executive Summary

Rather than developing an app, the inspiration for this proposed solution is derived from cultural practices that have proven successful in other team environments. Encouraging new hires to join one or more social groups that fit their interests would increase the team’s collective cultural capital and expand the reach of a new hire’s social network within EY. Integrating more social interactions into the onboarding process would allow new hires to acclimate to EY Digital's culture more quickly and seamlessly. 

Additionally, conducting smaller-group-focused activities would afford more opportunities for partners to interact with their staff members—i.e., partners attending a book club meeting or an informal dinner with a meal club. 

Some recommendations include:

• Self-generated groups among staff 

  • EY support (whether through use of space or reasonable resources) for groups 

• Weekly events (i.e., talks, activities, or ‘field trips’) 

  •    curated by staff members 

While this proposition does not suppose to solve all issues concerning EY Digital’s current onboarding, we believe that as components with minimal overhead and added effort, these suggestions would improve the onboarding experience and overall culture of EY Digital for new hires and established staff alike. 

Methodology

As students, we were fortunate to have access to interview sessions with current EY's Digital Team members across all three standard entry points for the company: Graduate, Professional, and Partner. Having these interview opportunities allowed student groups valuable insights into EY's culture and specialised information. Specialised information was varied, yet one example repeated regularly was the discrepancy that the organisation's IT department works almost exclusively on the PCs assigned to consultants and has little experience with the Apple products assigned to the Digital Team.

Following the collation of interview information, my teammate and I developed current state journey maps for all three tiers of new-hires. We did this to better conceptualised how the long-term onboarding process could be amended in a way that is more inclusive of the Digital Team within the EY Organisation.

Graduate Current State Journey Map

Professional Current State Journey Map

Partner Current State Journey Map

Proposed Solutions

After developing and examing all of the "current state" journey maps, one of the points that stood out most predominately was the lack of inclusion or community as expressed by EY new hires. The existing "buddy structure" implemented at EY was a massive discussion point. As some of the Digital Team had terrific experiences when paired with buddies that aided and engaged with them, other team members had only interacted with their buddies once or twice. It seemed to us that this need for greater accountability in the "buddy system" could be amended by encouraging all members, including new-hires, to engage in social clubs based on their out-of-work interests. 

In conceptualising a solution, we did not see how the suggested proposal of an app would negate these issues. While an app-based solution could, say, help new hires access Apple knowledgeable IT support staff--it would be of little assistance to assisting new hires in feeling a greater sense of community or belonging within the organisation.

Also, apps are costly to design and develop.

We opted for a service-based solution, where new hires would be encouraged to join existing social clubs/sports teams/book clubs/etc. upon entering the organisation. We believe that this LEAN solution would allow for greater refinement based on employee feedback, with minimal overhead or delay in implementation.

Future State Journey Map

We then developed a speculative future state journey map for both Graduate and Professional mindsets, to show how gradual onboarding with this new system could benefit new-hires in the Digital Team.

MVP Proposed User Flow

Following the journey map development, we developed an MVP user flow for our proposed solution. By utilising standard tools such as e-mail, Slack, and internal portals, we developed a solution that could be quickly and inexpensively implemented. This MVP development goal would be to implement and iterate on the social club model as often as possible to ensure that the needs of diverse new-hires and existing team members could be met effectively and efficiently.

Success Metrics

• Engagement with community and social groups by new-hires and current team members

• New-hires periodically self-reported community engagement figures throughout their first 6 months of employment.

• Observation of decreased queries relating to internal workflow systems