Technology Services
Anonymous/NDA
Global Onboarding Strategy
EcoTech Dynamics, a rapidly growing mid-sized technology company, faced increasing challenges with onboarding consistency as it scaled across international markets following a recent acquisition.
SERVICES
Workshop Facilitator, Performance Consultant, Stakeholder Management, Learning Experience Mapping
Category
LXD Consulting & Advisory
Duration
2 months
Year
2025
The Challenge
Historically, onboarding had been a founder-led, informal process grounded in deep personal relationships and tribal knowledge. However, this approach was no longer sustainable or scalable. I was brought in as a strategic advisor to help the company reimagine onboarding from the ground up.
My focus was on surfacing pain points, aligning on a shared vision for what onboarding could be, and bridging the gap between founding-era instincts and the realities of a growing, global team.
Despite good intentions and a culture that cared deeply about people, onboarding at EcoTech had become fragmented, inconsistent, and increasingly ineffective for a diverse, global workforce. Senior leaders believed the current program “worked fine” and saw no urgent need for change. Meanwhile, turnover was rising, and new hires were struggling to ramp into performance. The onboarding process lacked structure, clear ownership, and alignment across departments, and there was no shared definition of what a successful onboarding experience looked like. The broader tension was clear: leadership wanted new hires to be autonomous quickly, but the process they had in place didn’t set people up for success in a scalable or repeatable way.
My Approach
We used Miro to map out the current onboarding process and the separate onboarding program that would happen 1–2 months after the start date.
Rather than designing a "learning experience" in the traditional sense, my role focused on uncovering new hire needs, aligning leadership, and proposing a phased onboarding structure that could scale globally without losing the company’s culture. To that end, I facilitated a series of cross-functional design workshops involving HR, department leads, middle managers, and executive stakeholders.
We began by reviewing the current orientation materials and process flows from the new hire's perspective. Using empathy mapping and journey mapping techniques, we outlined what new hires see, think, feel, do, and hear during each step of the existing onboarding process.
What We Built
We proposed a new onboarding journey structured into four phases spanning the first 90 days. Each phase included new hire actions, needs, and potential pain points.
Key features
In stakeholder conversations, we uncovered key beliefs. The founders (CEO and CTO) and executives valued the agility and "trial by fire" approach they experienced. Managers were concerned about balancing development with business outcomes. HR wanted to improve retention and experience, but lacked cross-functional support.
Inside the Experience
Impact Overview
"We thought we had a decent onboarding process, but going through this experience really helped us see the gaps we were too close to notice. Mike didn’t just give us a plan—he gave us clarity. The experience map helped our entire team get on the same page, and for the first time, I feel confident that we’re building something scalable that actually works for our people, not just the business.”
—People & Culture Leader, EcoTech Dynamics
We aligned on what success would look like. For the new hire: faster ramp-up, reduced confusion, a sense of belonging, and fewer avoidable mistakes. For the business: improved retention, time-to-productivity, and leadership confidence in scaling.
The experience map and proposed phased structure helped stakeholders see, perhaps for the first time, the full scope and effort required to deliver the onboarding experience they claimed to want. This visibility shifted the conversation's tone and revealed that the effort necessary exceeded the budget. Ultimately, the organization agreed to revisit the onboarding strategy in the next fiscal planning cycle. HR gained momentum to make critical updates immediately.
“The moment we visualized the full experience, the tone shifted. What started as a conversation about checklists turned into something deeper. Senior leaders weren’t just worried about process—they were worried about losing what made the company feel like them. That clarity helped us move from defensiveness to shared purpose. In the end, they didn’t just agree to the change—they saw themselves in it.”
— M. Jones
