October 2023 – February 2024
In October 2023, as the Product Design team started scaling, I saw the need for a structured onboarding process to help new Product Designers quicker get acquainted with RBC’s values, team workflows, and design processes. I took the initiative to develop a self-Onboarding for Product Design team and then scaled it to other Design teams
1 Product Designer
1 Communication Designer
1 Design Operations
1 HR Business Partner
During onboarding, Designers have many questions. For some of questions, Designers get answers on 1–1 call with the team Lead, but one call isn’t enough. As a result, Designers constantly ask questions in different chats or in private messages with team Lead. It increases the time required to immerse Designers in team processes
All knowledge in the team is transferred from one Designer (or Lead) to another. There is a set of unrelated to each other guidelines describing working processes in a team
The HR department and HR Business Partner had a hypothesis that Onboarding could help reduce the percentage of designers employee rotation in communication, print and Product Design teams
Working process
I wanted to analyse our current processes for onboarding new Product Designers to better understand how effectively they help new team members adapt
I created a personalised table for each Product Designer in my team and Design Operations, with detailed questions about their Onboarding experience. After collecting their responses, I analysed the data to identify key elements that should be included in the Onboarding process
Collaboration with Product Designers
Collaboration with Design Operations
Data analysis
Day 1 Onboarding in Notion
I've developed a clearly structured, day-by-day self-onboarding for Product Designers. It contains the answers to all questions that new team members may have
Since all RBC databases are stored in Notion, I built the Onboarding document there as well
Onboarding is designed as a single knowledge base for a Product Designer access to essential guides on processes, Design System, Work Flow, descriptions of company products and introduction to Designers across Product and Communication Design teams
Product Design Work Flow guide in Onboarding
To make Onboarding process more engaging I've collaborated with Communication Designer and managed to design a key visual which was later used in RBC' Design System
Onboarding Key Visual
At this stage, I tested the new Onboarding document with Product Designers joining the team in post-launch period. The main goal was to determine whether the information provided in Onboarding was sufficient and easy to understand
After testing Onboarding on new Product Designers I've collected the feedback from Designers, made adjustments, added more FAQ and reorganised some information to enhance the experience for team members
Questions to gather Onboarding feedback
FAQ for each day of the first Onboarding week
Decreased by 200%. It’s about 3 hours of team lead time
Increased by 70% according to the survey of HR BP among designers
Decreased by 5 days. Before the introduction of Onboarding, new Product Designers asked various questions about the processes during the first month of probation period
Onboarding checklist for Day 1
