Consistent positive onboarding experience across 7 offices in Central Eastern Europe , Middle East , Africa and Turkey 

 Challenge : In the summer of the year 2008 , our company introduced a hiring program with the objective of increasing the number of sales people in the field sales organization by 20 % of EMEA sales headcount . The intention was to extend offers to the selected candidates during the autumn 2008 in order to get the new hires to the company between November 2008 to February 2017 . In absolute numbers , our company was about to hire approx . 400 new sales employees . 

 The growth of 20 % of headcount was not evenly distributed across EMEA . For the emerging markets gathered under the region of Central Eastern Europe , Middle East , Africa and Turkey ( abbrev . EXCOM ) , the allocated headcount was disproportionately higher as opposed to mature markets in the Western Europe ( as EXCOM was expected to experience higher growth in demand and number of customers ) . EXCOM headcount in sales was expected to be on average 35 % , with some of the offices growing as high as by 50 % . The major number of new hires was expected to start in December 2008 and January 2017 ( standard notice period in the region being 2 months , standard time to find , interview and hire a suitable candidate being 3 months , the hiring kicked off in early August 2008 ) . 

 This steep headcount growth posed a particular challenge in EXCOM ( as opposed to e.g. the Western Europe ) due to the fact that the sales offices in EXCOM are small - on average around 25 employees - with no support functions ( such as receptionist , office manager , internal IT , HR or finance ) present on site locally . This means that any new hire that comes on board presents a tough load for the local team - who needs to help the new hire set up not just business - wise , but also from the perspective of setting up computers , email , entry cards etc . 

 Because the onboarding experience is of crucial importance for the first impressions and engagement of the new hires and their long - term retention in the company ( as studies suggest1 ) . Therefore , myself as the Human Resources Business Partner for the EXCOM region and the leadership team from EXCOM agreed that we must structure and scale our onboarding process in a way that will create a “ Consistent Positive Onboarding Experience in the region ” . 

 Selection : Because the onboarding process is a relatively complex issues consisting of multiple steps and multiple stakeholders acting as part of it and also because we had a lot of different qualitative and quantitative , but quite inconsistent and unstructured data , we decided that the best approach to sort all the information and engage all the relevant stakeholders would be Mind Mapping . We leveraged a combination of live whiteboard session with various virtual sessions ( as the offices are quite far - spanning from South Africa to Moscow - so a workshop in one location would not be feasible ) . By leveraging mind mapping as opposed to a normal roundtable 

 1 http://www.chambers.com/wp-content/app/categorieshomepage.jsp 

 debate we were hoping to come up with some creative , out - of - the - box smart ideas as the participants will be building on each other 's ideas . 

 Application : We had multiple mind - mapping sessions with various mixed groups of stakeholders . When inviting the stakeholders , we were paying attention to get together as diverse group as possible - for example managers and individual contributors , people from different offices , employees freshly hired to the company ( less than 1 year in the company ) and employees with more than 5 years in the company , men and women , different nationalities , different departments and different work experience ( juniors , senior professionals , employees who came from start - ups as well as from industry giants … ) . During each session we started from the new hire and mind - mapped how this new hire experiences RH . I printed out results from historical onboarding surveys , comments from employee satisfaction surveys etc . While people were discussing , I was capturing the ideas into the mind - map ( either on the wall , please see image below ) or virtually in a drawing pad . With each group we had 2 sessions . The initial , when we drew the main mind map , and a follow up session , when we reviewed the mind - map and discussed actions / ideas that we may carry forward . There were on average 6 people in one group and we had 4 groups in total . 

 Insights : By applying the mind mapping and engaging a broad and diverse group of stakeholders in the activity , we were able to identify a lot of areas that were not covered by the corporate onboarding programs and at the same time were identified as very impactful for the onboarding experience . The visual map in front of us enabled us to see some not very obvious relationships between the various onboarding elements and based on these relations , we were able to identify 8 different small projects that we could do in order to improve the onboarding experience across the EXCOM offices without impacting negatively the workload of the employees in the offices ( e.g. gathering new hires into virtual cohorts across the whole EXCOM and create for them virtual practical chats with e.g. operations or the EXCOM leadership etc . ) . 

 Thanks to the collaborative approach we were also able to get quite a few volunteers willing to assist with the identified projects - I consider this willingness to help as another positive outcome of the mind mapping activity . People were able to get their voice heard and this created an alignment and additional engagement . On the negative side , this whole exercise was obviously way more time consuming than the usual way ( round table discussion , followed by management decision ) , but overall very rewarding . Also , as a by - product , we identified a couple of gaps and obsolete information in the global onboarding process - which we reported to the global talent team . 

 Approach : I think the mind mapping tool was the right one for this purpose . We were also considering mapping the customer journey ( in this case simply following one of the new hires through his or her onboarding ) - but , eventually , we leveraged the experience of the fresh new employees as part of the mind - mapping groups , which was more efficient . The activity was very bonding for the team and the element of visualisation helped to trigger a deep and detailed discussion about how are elements of onboarding related . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: http://www.chambers.com/wp-content/app/categorieshomepage.jsp
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Consistent positive onboarding experience across 7 offices in Central Eastern Europe , Middle East , Africa and Turkey 

 Challenge : In the summer of the year 2008 , our company introduced a hiring program with the objective of increasing the number of sales people in the field sales organization by 20 % of EMEA sales headcount . The intention was to extend offers to the selected candidates during the autumn 2008 in order to get the new hires to the company between November 2008 to February 2017 . In absolute numbers , our company was about to hire approx . 400 new sales employees . 

 The growth of 20 % of headcount was not evenly distributed across EMEA . For the emerging markets gathered under the region of Central Eastern Europe , Middle East , Africa and Turkey ( abbrev . EXCOM ) , the allocated headcount was disproportionately higher as opposed to mature markets in the Western Europe ( as EXCOM was expected to experience higher growth in demand and number of customers ) . EXCOM headcount in sales was expected to be on average 35 % , with some of the offices growing as high as by 50 % . The major number of new hires was expected to start in December 2008 and January 2017 ( standard notice period in the region being 2 months , standard time to find , interview and hire a suitable candidate being 3 months , the hiring kicked off in early August 2008 ) . 

 This steep headcount growth posed a particular challenge in EXCOM ( as opposed to e.g. the Western Europe ) due to the fact that the sales offices in EXCOM are small - on average around 25 employees - with no support functions ( such as receptionist , office manager , internal IT , HR or finance ) present on site locally . This means that any new hire that comes on board presents a tough load for the local team - who needs to help the new hire set up not just business - wise , but also from the perspective of setting up computers , email , entry cards etc . 

 Because the onboarding experience is of crucial importance for the first impressions and engagement of the new hires and their long - term retention in the company ( as studies suggest1 ) . Therefore , myself as the Human Resources Business Partner for the EXCOM region and the leadership team from EXCOM agreed that we must structure and scale our onboarding process in a way that will create a “ Consistent Positive Onboarding Experience in the region ” . 

 Selection : Because the onboarding process is a relatively complex issues consisting of multiple steps and multiple stakeholders acting as part of it and also because we had a lot of different qualitative and quantitative , but quite inconsistent and unstructured data , we decided that the best approach to sort all the information and engage all the relevant stakeholders would be Mind Mapping . We leveraged a combination of live whiteboard session with various virtual sessions ( as the offices are quite far - spanning from South Africa to Moscow - so a workshop in one location would not be feasible ) . By leveraging mind mapping as opposed to a normal roundtable 

 1 http://www.chambers.com/wp-content/app/categorieshomepage.jsp 

 debate we were hoping to come up with some creative , out - of - the - box smart ideas as the participants will be building on each other 's ideas . 

 Application : We had multiple mind - mapping sessions with various mixed groups of stakeholders . When inviting the stakeholders , we were paying attention to get together as diverse group as possible - for example managers and individual contributors , people from different offices , employees freshly hired to the company ( less than 1 year in the company ) and employees with more than 5 years in the company , men and women , different nationalities , different departments and different work experience ( juniors , senior professionals , employees who came from start - ups as well as from industry giants … ) . During each session we started from the new hire and mind - mapped how this new hire experiences RH . I printed out results from historical onboarding surveys , comments from employee satisfaction surveys etc . While people were discussing , I was capturing the ideas into the mind - map ( either on the wall , please see image below ) or virtually in a drawing pad . With each group we had 2 sessions . The initial , when we drew the main mind map , and a follow up session , when we reviewed the mind - map and discussed actions / ideas that we may carry forward . There were on average 6 people in one group and we had 4 groups in total . 

 Insights : By applying the mind mapping and engaging a broad and diverse group of stakeholders in the activity , we were able to identify a lot of areas that were not covered by the corporate onboarding programs and at the same time were identified as very impactful for the onboarding experience . The visual map in front of us enabled us to see some not very obvious relationships between the various onboarding elements and based on these relations , we were able to identify 8 different small projects that we could do in order to improve the onboarding experience across the EXCOM offices without impacting negatively the workload of the employees in the offices ( e.g. gathering new hires into virtual cohorts across the whole EXCOM and create for them virtual practical chats with e.g. operations or the EXCOM leadership etc . ) . 

 Thanks to the collaborative approach we were also able to get quite a few volunteers willing to assist with the identified projects - I consider this willingness to help as another positive outcome of the mind mapping activity . People were able to get their voice heard and this created an alignment and additional engagement . On the negative side , this whole exercise was obviously way more time consuming than the usual way ( round table discussion , followed by management decision ) , but overall very rewarding . Also , as a by - product , we identified a couple of gaps and obsolete information in the global onboarding process - which we reported to the global talent team . 

 Approach : I think the mind mapping tool was the right one for this purpose . We were also considering mapping the customer journey ( in this case simply following one of the new hires through his or her onboarding ) - but , eventually , we leveraged the experience of the fresh new employees as part of the mind - mapping groups , which was more efficient . The activity was very bonding for the team and the element of visualisation helped to trigger a deep and detailed discussion about how are elements of onboarding related .
### Output: 