New Starter Induction Process

To deliver an improved experience for new starters at Maidstone Borough Council.

My role in an agile delivery team

I'm the lead designer for the project and have been involved since the early discovery phase. The project team is made up of developers, a delivery manager, service designer and a product owner. I have created process maps to capture the interactions of new starters at different stages of the process.

Birds-eye view of the pre Day 1 process
Before new starters join, there are many different processes they must do comprising of even more interactions.

User research

I worked with a Service Designer to interview new starters that had recently joined the Council. This allowed me to understand what their experience was like and what was lacking or proved difficult before and after they started their role

Managers across several departments were included in the user research to identify barriers that caused overly complicated processes and took up excess time.

The outcomes from these sessions were written up in a spreadsheet and transferred to a project management board in Trello.

Tracking processes during each stage
One of the many cards in Trello looking at staff pre-employment checks.

Breaking down what happens at each stage

One of the big challenges was to look at when new starters received information or were required to complete a process.

The project team got together and carried out an extensive card sorting exercise to map all the existing processes into the following stages:

The outcome from the card sorting allowed me to map out new process flows to look at each stage of a new starter before presenting them to the product owner.

Example of one stage of the process
Creating a process map to check if staff had received their ID on Day 1 allowed HR to see the interactions clearly.

Discovery / Alpha

The project is in alpha and I am working on potential outcomes for improving the information that new starters receive and how they access it.