Onboarding at Cuvva (and the secret to happy new joiners!)

So you've aced the interview, accepted the job offer and been given a start date.

Now what?

Here at Cuvva, we’ve had some amazing feedback from recent new joiners about our preboarding and onboarding process - so I’ll spill the beans and let you in on some of the things we’re doing to make it a special experience for every new joiner!

Every company has some form of onboarding when welcoming in new talent to the team, whether that’s simply assigning their uniform, right through to full blown office tours, buddy programmes and the whole shabang!

I’m a strong believer in ‘first impressions count’ - from our one minute customer support response time, through to our onboarding. Here at Cuvva, we want to be memorable in all the right ways and make a lasting impression that excites our new joiners and shows them they made the right choice accepting our offer! The onboarding journey starts when the new joiner accepts our job offer, and all of this plays a significant part about their opinion of their new workplace.

Over the last couple of years we’ve constantly been adapting our onboarding programme - from remote, to in-person, to remote again, to hybrid - so we’re used to reacting quickly and adapting depending on the latest government advice! Another thing that’s really helped us is that, even before Covid, the whole company would work from home one day per week (we called this ‘WFH Wednesdays’). This meant that we knew what worked and what didn’t work and we could apply that to our onboarding process.

Ultimately, our goal is to make the process as seamless and stress free as possible for our new Cuvva team members!

Before we reveal our secrets, it’s important to understand why onboarding is so important to us.

Studies have shown that a great employee onboarding can help improve employee retention by 82% and productivity by 70%.

You’ll probably remember your own first impressions when starting new jobs, whether it was a welcome lunch with your team, training sessions, or even a passing conversation you had with a new colleague. All of these things have a big influence on your opinion going forwards, so it’s really important that it’s a positive one - especially as studies have shown that a negative experience results in new hires being twice as likely to look for other opportunities.

Onboarding is a very busy time - for new joiners, and the People Team alike! There's a lot to do and a pile of admin, but we still wanted to make sure new joiners had a personalised and human experience. Introducing… ✨Enboarder✨ - the automated onboarding platform!

Why Enboarder?

The time spent on admin was a real issue for the People Team: it used to take around 20 minutes per new joiner, spent on things like creating manual contracts and sending onboarding emails. Occasionally, we’d have five new joiners joining on the same day, which in total would be over an hour and half in admin time alone. We wanted to automate these tasks so that this time could be spent organising engagement events, improving wellbeing and developing our onboarding process further with initiatives like our buddy programme!

Our main communication with new joiners was through email threads. They’d hear from four members of the People Team - plus their line manager and any other key people from the interview process - all before their first day. The emails would contain key information such as signing the employment contract, getting set up with tech onboarding, social events and a takeaway voucher.

We had some feedback that there were too many emails, important bits of info were easily missed and it was difficult to refer back to a particular email if it was needed - so we changed it!

Another key priority in the People Team at Cuvva is building scalable processes that can be picked up by any member of the team in case of last minute absence. Implementing Enboarder ensures that no information is missed because every message is sent automatically at set dates on the lead up to the new joiners first day.

Here’s an example of the message we send to our new joiners! It’s a nice way for them to get to know me as their main point of contact 😊

How we’ve rocketed our onboarding process to the next level!

Welcome pack

Every new joiner receives a special welcome pack ahead of their first day - they’ll get a Cuvva branded hoodie, a t-shirt, a beanie, some cool stickers and a Macbook that they can also use as a personal device too if they want!

Enboarder

We’ve reduced the admin time from 20 minutes to just 5 per new joiner through using Enboarder, but the content itself is really what’s taken us to the next level. There are three different workflows we’ve custom built, depending on the new joiners start date (in 40 days time, 60 days or 90 days) which include things like Cuvva blogs, a getting to know you survey, upcoming events and a Week One itinerary!

We even include a survey for Macbook confidence to get the feelers out in advance. That way we know whether they might need extra support during the technical onboarding session.

Visit the Cuvva office

It can sometimes feel like your first day at school when you start a new job - the nerves are flying high and you don’t know what to expect!

We invite our new joiners into the office ahead of Day 1 to give them a tour of the office, set up their Macbook, introduce them to some more of the team, attend our weekly Show & Tell and have some drinks at our company-wide Happy Hour!

There’s no pressure though - if the new joiner is too far from the office, we offer to post their Macbook along with the welcome kit.

First day!

We kick their first day off with a welcome chat - a one hour informal chat to prepare the new joiner for their week ahead, run through any questions and make them feel really welcome.

The team will hold a virtual welcome lunch on Google Meet so the whole team can attend - and the lunch is on us! 🍕

The People Team also gives an insight into our benefits and some of the perks.

Cuvva Buddy

We have a group of Buddies who are chosen by the People Team. The Buddies have been recognised as outstanding team members, and their role is to help the new joiner smoothly integrate into life at Cuvva.

The buddy helps with things like booking a coffee with different people across the business, signposting social events and creating a ‘Working With Me’ page.

Introductions to the wider team

Each department head hosts a session to give an insight into their department and chat about how the departments cross over and work together. This is a really good opportunity to get networking early on!

New joiner roundtables

Every six weeks we host a roundtable to gain feedback from recent joiners about the candidate experience, onboarding content, tech ops support and more. They are also given the opportunity to fill in an anonymous survey, in case there’s something they don’t feel comfortable sharing in front of the group.

At the end of each session we put together an action list to improve our onboarding experience!

So, what’s next for Onboarding at Cuvva?

We’re constantly evolving our onboarding process by keeping up to date with the latest government advice and updating our messages to keep them fresh!

Later in the year we'll give our welcome pack a revamp too, adding in some extra goodies.

On a personal level, I’m really passionate about constantly improving our onboarding process. If you work at Cuvva and you have some thoughts about how to make things even better, please send me a DM.

If you want to know more about our onboarding experience at Cuvva or anything about the world of Workplace Experience, I’d love to chat! Here’s my LinkedIn.