HR Tech Implementation Best Practices: A Q&A with Enboarder’s Phoebe Howard

Embarking on HR tech implementation can be a thrilling experience full of promise – especially if it’s tech like Enboarder that automates of all those important details in your onboarding process. Just think of all the time you’re about to get back and the amazing employee experiences you’re about to create! 🙌

And yet, if you’ve been through software implementation before, you likely understand there’s a science to the process. According to a recent survey from BCG, nearly half of C-suite respondents said that more than 30% of the technology development projects in their organizations suffer from delays or budget overruns. One in five said less than satisfactory outcomes occur more than 50% of the time. Ouch.

Thankfully, you don’t have to sweat implementation when you’re working with Enboarder. We have a team of professionals with years of HR experience at the ready to help you bring your vision to life. 

We recently sat down with one of those rockstars, Phoebe Howard, senior implementation & solutions manager, to learn about how she’s helped customers across the globe get their journeys up and running as fast as possible. 

If you’re thinking about purchasing Enboarder or you’re a new customer, read on for tips to ensure a successful implementation experience for everyone involved!

Before HR tech implementation, what are three things customers can do to get ahead of the game?

1. Sketch out your current process.

Don’t worry about making it perfect or in a beautiful document. Just capture what your journey looks like today. It could be as simple as a numbered list, or all the tasks you need to do during each phase of onboarding, such as ‘complete I-9,’ or ‘send follow-up emails.’ Most of our customers have the process in their heads, so just documenting it gives us a starting point to build from together. 

2. Consider the data flow across your tech stack.

No need to have all the answers yet. But have a think about your current tools and how they play into the onboarding process. This will help us ask the right questions and assess possible integrations for your implementation.

3. Get the right team involved.

Think about who might benefit internally from a streamlined onboarding experience: the HR team (of course), but also other teams like IT, facilities, or even marketing. Start reaching out to other teams and jotting down their ideas. Getting the right people involved will create a richer experience. 

What sets successful implementations apart from the rest?

We’ve worked with customers at every level of readiness going into implementation. The customers who get up and running the fastest are really motivated to drive business impact right away. They have a strong vision in their mind of what they want their onboarding process to look like, and which stakeholders they want involved in the process. They’ve done the work to understand their current processes and where gaps exist.

For example, one of our customers organized a workshop with representation across multiple teams, including HR systems, IT, and HR onboarding. The goal was to go deeper into their current onboarding process and broaden their understanding of all the stakeholders involved. 

Be empowered to lead the charge! Bring in stakeholders at various levels and in various departments who play a role in onboarding.

And if you haven’t gotten there yet, that’s OK too! We’ve worked with hundreds of customers to enable them to bring their internal team on the journey with them. Check out this Resource List for further reading on onboarding implementation and take some tips from this blog on Building a Business Case for Employee Onboarding Software.

Demonstrating ROI is critical with B2B software. How do you set customers on the right path to prove ROI during implementation? 

For many customers, we’ll run an in-person build workshop at the beginning of implementation. One of the sessions in the workshop is called “Pains, Gains, and Continue.”

So we’ll ask:

• What are the biggest pains that you see in your onboarding? 
• What do you want to gain from the experience? Maybe it’s better visibility or reporting. Maybe it’s better collaboration.
• What do you want to continue? Think about what you’re doing really well in your employee journeys that you want to continue in the future.

It’s a very collaborative sticky note process that gets everyone involved and participating. We summarize all the key points and surface themes that we’re hearing. After we review those buckets, we talk about which metrics are most important – how are you going to see ROI? The earlier you answer that question, the more success you will see down the road!

For example, a customer recently told me they spend many hours reviewing and sharing reports between different teams. So as a next step I suggested they estimate how long it takes, on average, to gather all those reports. Implementation is the perfect time to collect that data. That’s how you’re going to see return on investment. So in a year’s time, if you need to present this to your executives, they can clearly see the numbers.

You can also check out this blog about calculating onboarding ROI and some of the other metrics to track, such as retention, time-to-productivity, and turnover. Onboarding has a positive impact on so many areas of your business!

What sets Enboarder apart when it comes to professional services? 

The main piece is expertise in the field. I have eight years of experience in HR, designing and implementing onboarding workflows, buddy programs, culture initiatives, and skills gap analyses. So I’m supporting customers who are doing jobs I’ve done myself!

Before I joined Enboarder, I worked as an HR professional, starting in workplace relations, helping with payroll questions, complaints, etc. Then I transitioned into learning and development and eventually employee experience, where I managed engagement programs and executed and analyzed annual employee surveys.

What’s one piece of advice you would give a new customer about to start implementation?

Phase one of implementation is about what will make the most impact the quickest.

A lot of customers come in with big ideas to roll everything out globally to every employee all at once. And that’s amazing! But I also like to remind customers to keep things within the right timeframe. Think about when your executive sponsors are expecting implementation to be complete – it’s usually within 12 weeks.

This is where Enboarder comes in to help you break things into logical steps and prioritize according to the data you have. Maybe you have low engagement scores and you need to figure out which employee base is most impacted. Think about which group of employees you want to see go through the new journey first.

From there, we usually recommend three integrations: 

• SSO, so it’s just easy for the end user to access everything
• Communication channel, so people are getting messages on channels you already use internally
• Applicant tracking system, immediately reducing that administration burden because it’s automating people from signing the contract to launching in Enboarder, no manual intervention required

What’s one thing most people don’t know about you?

I love quilting and sewing, but every single weekend I will be sitting in front of the TV watching UFC. So I’m like this old lady and a middle-aged man at the same time.