Journey of the Year Series: A Chat with Smitha Sanjeev from Thriva Health

Today we are so excited to kick off a new blog series all about our Journey of the Year Award winners.

You may be wondering: What are the Journey of the Year (JOY) Awards? This is Enboarder’s annual showcase to recognize the amazing work that our customers are doing.

First up, we talked with Smitha Sanjeev, people and culture associate at Thriva Health, our third place winner in the 2022 JOY Awards for building one of the most comprehensive and consistent onboarding journeys we’ve seen to date!

Learn all about how Smitha and the team at Thriva Health are building a world-class onboarding experience that’s on brand and connects to other people programs, like well-being and learning.

1) Tell us a bit about Thriva and your role on the people team.

At Thriva, we’re constantly trying new things to understand how we can improve people’s lives by putting better health in their hands with tools they can trust, advice that they can action, and the support to get them there.

We’re on a mission to help millions of people worldwide actively invest in their health. We make diagnostic services and the powerful data they provide easy to access, intuitive to action, and affordable. We do this via both our b2c and b2b channels.

I am a People & Culture Associate at Thriva, and have been here for two years now. As part of the people team, my role covers a variety of people operations processes such as benefits, everyday people questions, and of course, onboarding new starters.

2) What were the goals of the onboarding journey you built with Enboarder?

First impressions really do matter. But providing a great onboarding experience shouldn’t be a time-consuming task for our managers. We wanted to help our managers save time, stay organized, and be the best managers they can be.

We also wanted to get our new starters excited about joining Thriva, finding a way to give them the information they need, but still creating delight every step of the way. Our managers, new hires, and their chosen buddies get bite-sized tasks and timely reminders, like our top tips for starting at Thriva and prompts for buddy chats.

3) The judges commented that Thriva built “one of the most comprehensive and consistent onboarding journeys we’ve seen to date.” Amazing! How has the new onboarding journey impacted your employer brand?

I think our onboarding journey sets our new starters up for success. They get a taste of the culture at Thriva with our welcome video, a message from our founders. We also try to give comprehensive information on what to expect on their first day and weeks at Thriva to alleviate any anxiety they may have, and also try to build excitement as much as possible – a strong gif game definitely helps.

We have had feedback that this information they get is so thorough they have no need for questions or worries and feel confident with what to expect – I think this is reflective of our culture at Thriva to provide transparency, to galvanize, and to truly care about our people.

We also send some curated images that our new hires can use with their announcement on LinkedIn about their new job, to help them celebrate and for their post to stand out.

4) Tell us a bit about how this journey is connecting new hires to your well-being and learning programs.

Mental health is just as important as physical health. At Thriva, we want to support our teams so they can look after both. The products we put out into the world try to recognize the fact that the head and body are all part of a single organic system. So our team should never feel like they can’t talk about what’s happening in their head, just because it’s harder to identify than a pulled hamstring.

Our approach to mental well-being is:

• It’s okay not to be okay.
• We care – you can talk to us if you need to.
• Take the time you need – we’ll support you.

Keeping this in mind, after our new hires start, we send them nuggets of information and reminders about what we have for their well-being at Thriva. A week in, they get information about all of our benefits and ones in particular relating to supporting well-being.

We also have a one-stop-shop document on all that we have available for mental health at Thriva, such as our well-being budget, private health care, and mental health first aiders that we send through a few weeks in. We also send a reminder to our managers to look out for their new starter’s well-being, as a few people may feel quite overwhelmed starting a new role and could use some support.

We also have a learning hub that we connect them to about a month into their new role so they can go and explore. Close to three months in, which is when our new hires come up for probation review, we send them our top tips on what they need to plan and prepare, as well as show them our growth + development basecamp, which is Thriva’s comprehensive website with a ton of resources to help lead our team on their adventure.

5) Do you have any advice for other companies looking to build a more connected employee experience?

When designing our onboarding overall, as well as our journey on Enboarder, at the forefront of our thought process was ensuring it was aligned with our mission and vision, and the content we send has our values embedded in them. We also tested the flow with a few of our team members, and also consistently collected feedback from our new hires. We took this feedback on board and implemented any changes we could to ensure it was an inclusive process for all.

Our main advice would be to ensure the journey and the information given to your employees is simple and digestible, using a human tone of voice, and thinking about how to create delight every step of the way. For example, we had to send some internal policies, which are mandatory to send and are usually full of jargon. We re-wrote this in a human way, including touches of humor, and of course with some great gifs. Team members will appreciate the sneak peek into your culture before they start and help start building that connection and trust.