Enboarder Powers Cisco Meraki’s World Class Preboarding Journey
Cisco Meraki is the industry leader in cloud-managed IT, with offices in London, San Francisco and Sydney.
The Problem
Onboarding didn’t exist for Cisco Meraki in any formal, structured way.
Meraki knew onboarding mattered but nobody had ownership. With no clear direction, new employees were left anchorless. And manual processes meant onboarding was time-consuming, inconsistent and error-prone.
Meraki had no unique workflows for their different locations or roles. Recruiters were spending 3 to 5 hours for every new employee on preboarding alone, using Excel and email templates. Hiring managers were disengaged and disempowered.
And the new employee experience was suffering.
New employees had nothing to build excitement before day one. They had no introduction to Meraki’s mission, values or culture before day one. And there was a big drop-off in engagement after six months.
Cisco Meraki made a business-critical hire – Darren Gant, as Global Onboarding Manager – to start turning things around. And he brought Enboarder into the frame.
The Solution
First, Darren introduced a four-stage strategy to govern Meraki’s onboarding program:
- Preboarding (from offer acceptance to day one)
- New Employee Orientation (day one)
- Role-dependent training paths (from day two…)
- Check-Ins (…until day 365).
Darren’s vision was focused on delivering an amazing day one experience. To get there, he created a consistent and engaging preboarding stage that built new employees’ excitement, lessened any nervousness and provided the necessary touch-points to make sure they’ve got everything they needed for an incredible first day.
That’s where Enboarder came in.
Darren chose Enboarder for a year-long preboarding pilot thanks to our simplicity and ease-of-use (our mobile-first interface was a winner!) Meraki needed to implement better preboarding immediately – without any change management, without any training, and without any pushback from users. Changing new hires’ experience needed to happen fast.
“If you don’t have that laser focus on each employee, you’ve got a rough road ahead of you,” says Global Onboarding Manager, Darren Gant.
Now, all new employees get a highly consistent and amazing Meraki preboarding experience. Automated workflows mean preboarding is totally consistent, with preboarding interactions – like surveys, welcome messages, team introductions and company info – beginning 21 days out and every three days until their start date.
The Results
Cisco Meraki have had some fantastic results working with Enboarder.
New Hires
88% of new Merakians
feel prepared for Day 1
Managers
88% of managers
feel prepared for Day 1
Senior leadership approval with onboarding has improved dramatically, and the people team have considerably more time to invest into creating amazing experiences through the onboarding journey.
And we're excited to say, Cisco Meraki is rolling out Enboarder for global preboarding in November 2020 – and for stages three (to create personalized training journeys) and four (to deliver regular check-ins) of Darren's onboarding framework in 2021.
We can't wait!