New-hire satisfaction was low, and each site ran its own version of training. Hands-on practice sat in a block at the end of the program, after most of the content had already gone by.
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Rebuilding new-hire onboarding across the U.S. and India
New hires were unhappy with training, and every site ran it differently. I redesigned the program around hands-on practice and standardized it across four offices. Time to productivity dropped by a third.
- Role
- Led the redesign as Team Lead
- When
- 2023
- Scope
- U.S. office and three India offices
- Worked with
- HR, cultural training, compliance
3→2months
New-hire time to productivity, a 33% reduction
60%→95%
Satisfaction with content load, on a formal survey
The situation
What I did
- Redesigned the program so hands-on practice runs through the whole course instead of trailing it.
- Traveled to all three India offices to standardize agendas and scheduling. Most of the program became the same everywhere, with a small share of site-specific content kept where it made sense.
- Put together and led a bi-weekly committee with HR, cultural training, and compliance to get every site on one new-hire schedule. Some site leads felt their way already worked. Showing the value of one consistent process across every site is what brought them around.
- Met each U.S. new-hire class weekly to collect feedback on everything from product training to travel. I handled training issues myself and passed the rest to the teams that owned them. One example: new hires were arriving without day-one travel details, so the travel team started sending every new hire a one-page itinerary.
Result
Time to productivity dropped from 3 months to 2. Satisfaction with content load rose from 60% to 95%. Standardizing the program also freed up roughly 20% of instructor time per new-hire class, which went to higher-priority work.
What I'd do differently
I'd set up a regular check-in with HR on the feedback they hear from new hires 30, 60, and 90 days after product training. Being in the room with each class told me how training landed in the moment. What I didn't know was how new hires felt about it months later, once they were doing the job.
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Building or scaling customer education? Let's talk.
I'm looking for leadership or builder roles in customer education, onboarding, and enablement, where I'd be creating something new or close to it. I'm especially drawn to SaaS companies where education sits close to product.