Humanizing the Employee Experience at Foxtel Group
The Foxtel Group is Australia’s leading, next-generation subscription television company with more than 4.6 million subscribers.
Foxtel’s success metrics:
1 year
New onboarding journeys boosted eNPS to best practice in just one year
4.2
Managers rate the onboarding workflow a 4.2/5 in helping them prepare for their employee’s first week
4.7
Employees rate their first 2 weeks in the business 4.7/5
⚙️ Challenge
Foxtel has been entertaining Australians for more than 25 years. In recent years, the company has successfully navigated disruption stemming from COVID and the broader technology space, and has reinvented itself into a technology-led streaming company with world-class sport and entertainment content at the heart of the Australian home.
💬 “We’ve really had to be agile and pivot how we do things,” says Karina Vanderwerf, head of HR, Talent Acquisition and HR Support at Foxtel Group. The company is hyper-focused on making it easy for customers to view content in real time.
So the question became: How can Foxtel Group apply that same disruptive mindset to the way it attracts, onboards, and retains top talent? What they needed was technology that wows candidates during pre-boarding and introduces them to Foxtel Group’s unique culture, where employees are encouraged to embrace growth and disruption.
💡 The Insight
Foxtel Group chose Enboarder’s Human Connection Platform to humanize the entire employee experience – from onboarding to learning and development, promotions, parental leave, and offboarding.
Pre-boarding is one area the team focused on. In the four-week lead up to someone’s first day at Foxtel Group, “you don’t want radio silence,” says Karina. “We’re a content-led organization. It’s exciting to work here. Now we offer people coming on board access to our products and services before they come, which makes it a really great experience.”
So what does the communication journey look like? “Pre-boarding is all about our values, our leadership team, our strategy,” says Karina. New hires are also asked fun ice breaker questions like, “What are you watching?” Their answers are shared with hiring managers to help introduce their new hires to the team.
Then in employees’ first 45 to 90 days, “the content is about access to tools like LinkedIn Learning and information about our workshops, because people want that just-in-time learning,” says Karina.
Thanks to pre-built workflows, new hires and people managers are automatically nudged at various points – one week, two weeks, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. “It’s about providing checkpoints for a leader and new starter and the buddy to continuously check in with each other,” says Karina. And because employees and managers might get dozens of notifications every day, Foxtel Group has integrated Enboarder with popular apps like Microsoft Teams and Slack to keep messages top of mind.
HR and hiring managers can pop into Enboarder at any point to check on employee sentiment through eNPS scores. And if for some reason those scores start to drop, the team gets notified so they can provide extra support and prevent unwanted turnover.
💬 User experience is also an important aspect of Foxtel Group’s employee experience. “A lot of things are in video form,” says Karina. “Everything is really nimble and quick to record on a mobile device. That’s really helpful.”
👑 The Results
How are employees and the business responding to these new workflows?
The proof is in the data. After just one year of using Enboarder, Foxtel Group saw a more than 50% increase in eNPS scores. Hiring managers give an average 4.2 out of 5 rating for how the onboarding workflow helps them prepare for their employee’s first week. And employees give an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 for an amazing first two weeks in the business.
“Our Foxtel Media business unit is a fantastic example where the uptake on the Enboarder tool is massive, it’s significant,” shares Karina. “That’s a testament to the business partners that we’ve worked with who keep communicating and sharing what the tool does, and also leaders stepping up and helping us drive that message forward. It’s those wow moments that really excite us.”
Now the team is starting to bring existing programs – such as rewards and recognition and well-being – into Enboarder workflows. “We offer discounts, free fitness classes, yoga, boxing. So we’re weaving all that into communications for new hires and existing employees,” says Karina.
💬 Some of the biggest benefits of working with Enboarder, according to Karina, is the “amazing customer support” and a robust library of templates that are easily customizable. Now Foxtel Group is using Enboarder for offboarding, promotions, and parental leave. “You start with one [workflow] and it gets very addictive!”