Building the Employee Experience Muscle: How T-Mobile Increased New Hire and New Leader Engagement
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T-Mobile is America's supercharged Un-carrier, delivering an advanced 4g LTE and transformative nationwide 5G network that will offer reliable connectivity for all.
T-Mobile's Success Metrics:
12%
Increase in new leader engagement
90%
Engagement rate for preboarding communications
3 journeys
Including Enterprise-, Leader-, and Intern Onboarding programs
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The Challenge: Breaking the Silence Between Offer Acceptance and Day One
Getting everyone in the organization to buy into a more consistent employee experience can be quite a daunting task. Where do you even begin? Sometimes an opportunity presents itself in the form of organizational change.
Such was the case at T-Mobile: “It was a really wonderful time to be able to dream up what the intended onboarding experience was, as opposed to the experience that was created by our technology,” says Jenny Jirsa, manager of HR programs at T-Mobile.
One of the biggest pain points was making sure new hires felt welcomed into the company by their managers as soon as the offer letter was signed – creating a sense of excitement leading up to their first day.
“The moment between ‘offer accept’ and ‘day one’ had a lot of opportunity for us to create a better experience. We’ve been courting this new hire, and both the new team and the new employee are excited for them to start their T-Mobile journey. But the manager might forget to check in from time to time or share important first-day details. I think a new hire wants some reinforcement that they made a good choice to quit a job to start a career with us at T-Mobile. We wanted to make it easier for managers and new hires, and demonstrate that Team Magenta is ready and excited for them to start!” said Jenny.
“We wanted onboarding to be that first demonstration of how we will invest in you when you start at T-Mobile. Onboarding is the first moment of development.”
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The Solution: Building the Employee Experience Muscle
So the T-Mobile team chose to scale Enboarder – building on the existing onboarding experience and integrating the journey with Workday.
They started with a pilot group before bringing the new Enboarder experience across the entire enterprise. “We learned a lot, and it’s different than sending an email out from Workday or Outlook. We could see our readership and make adjustments to meet people where they’re at,” says Jenny.
The foundational onboarding journey is called “Being UnCarrier”. It runs between offer acceptance and new employees’ first five weeks, during which they receive bite-sized pieces of information about the company culture and helpful logistics. For example, whether a new hire is starting in one location versus another, Enboarder’s Page Logic feature ensures they get the information they need about day one and beyond. “We just set the parameters, and all of a sudden a multitude of experiences are set in motion,” says Jenny.
Building the new journey in Enboarder was “relatively easy,” recalls Julie Moylan, senior project manager at T-Mobile. But what she really came to appreciate was Enboarder’s consultative approach throughout the process. “There’s a little bit of marketing you have to do to capture someone’s attention. And that’s more the art than the science piece. There were some good techniques Enboarder shared as we built it out.”
T-Mobile’s foundational onboarding was just the beginning. The team has also built out a specific journey for new leaders, divided into 30-, 60-, and 90-day milestones that address leadership behaviors and expectations and provide company-provided resources. This is delivered alongside an instructor-led orientation for maximum impact. “The communications, the orientation, the resources ... they all work together to support that new leader,” says Julie.
And as business requirements change, like they often did during the pandemic and still do, the team is able to change the communications in their programs very easily. “I thought that was a very powerful thing, that Enboarder enabled us to pivot so quickly,” says Julie.
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The Results: Driving New Hire and New Leader Engagement
“It takes a while to build a muscle in an organization,” reflects Jenny on creating change among T-Mobile’s hiring managers. But after launching these new experiences through Enboarder, providing a more human, connected employee experience has become the expectation within the company. Now managers at T-Mobile have the tools they need to set their team up for success.
For Julie, Enboarder’s customer success team has been “the secret sauce” to a successful tech implementation. She has been working with Corey, sr. strategic enterprise customer success manager at Enboarder, for years. “A lot of vendors will just give you their tool and say ‘read our job aid’ or ‘go watch this video.’ But I can have a conversation with Corey or anyone on the customer success team and explain the business problem and they will work to solve it with me.”
And with a team of just three HR people, engagement rates for new hires, interns, and new leaders are soaring. “We could not do this without Enboarder,” says Jenny. “We would not be able to scale to thousands of employees without being able to automate a customized experience. That’s been really wonderful.”