Using the Immersive Internet for employee onboarding

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

In mid-October, the ThinkBalm Innovation Community held its fourth 3D brainstorming session, this one on the topic of how to run a successful employee onboarding program using the Immersive Internet (e.g., virtual worlds and campuses, immersive learning simulations, serious games, and 3D business applications). The “challenger” for this session – the person who submitted the topic for discussion – was Philippe Barreaud, a chief enterprise architect in Michelin Group’s IT organization. About a dozen and a half ThinkBalm Innovation Community members gathered in an “Idea Globe” in the sky created by Leslie Ehle (avatar name Tara Yeats in Second Life) to share their perspectives and bounce ideas off each other (see Figure 1 and click on the figure for more images on Flickr). We used a collaborative 3D mind mapping tool created by community member Jeff Lowe to visualize our conversation and create a lasting artifact. (For more info about this tool see the article Recipe for a great 3D brainstorming session and the article The ThinkBalm Innovation Community brainstorms in 3D!)

 

Findings from the 60-minute brainstorm: Onboarding in immersive environments requires hefty effort

ThinkBalm Innovation Community members put their heads together and in 60 minutes came up with a number of tips and suggestions for holding a successful employee onboarding program in an immersive environment. We didn’t come to agreement on how deeply the Immersive Internet has to penetrate an organization before an in-world employee orientation can be successful – some thought a pre-existing affinity is necessary and others didn’t. What we did come to agree on is the importance of:

• Offering experiences that teach new employees things they really need to know. New employees need to learn about company history, organizational structure, products and services, and employee benefits. They need to learn who their fellow employees are – who they can turn to for help or answers to questions. All this can be done in an immersive environment – it doesn’t require in-person meetings. Provide interactive games people can play. Hold networking and social events. Let new hires access information at their own pace and in their own time. There is a lot to learn so encourage people to revisit content and repeat exercises or games.
• Easing employees new and old into the immersive experience. Hold “pre-event events” to give people who may be unfamiliar with immersive environments a chance to get their sea legs. Invite old-timers to engage with newcomers as mentors in the immersive environment. Set up “office hours” with functional leads, during which they can answer questions new employees may have. Create a sense of community among new employees.
• Putting success metrics in place. Solid metrics include new employee retention rates and amount of time required to complete the onboarding process in the immersive environment. Compare this to the existing methods. Don’t just compare the two methods in total: recognize the differences and look for ways to measure “softer” success data. Softer metrics may touch on increasing user satisfaction and reducing employee burnout.
• Integrating with existing enterprise systems for optimal user experience. Integrate with enterprise learning management systems (LMSs) if the immersive environment is to be used for training. (If this is a requirement, look for enterprise immersive platforms that support the sharable content object reference model (SCORM) standards.) Other important systems that should be integrated include enterprise directory services and enterprise collaboration platforms (especially presence, instant messaging, voice over IP, and calendaring).

This brainstorming team did a great job of examining the onboarding question from a wide variety of angles. The collected wisdom is fairly daunting, were all of these recommendations to be taken to heart at once. Start with necessary elements: a program that eases people into an informative destination with trainers and fellow employees. Make the immersive environment reusable, information rich and an easy place for people to connect with others. Put metrics in place that will allow for quick validation of the immersive approach. Once the initial environment is in place, expand it to integrate with more enterprise systems. Look for ways to leverage the initial investment, such as by using it as an element of the corporate learning and development program. Ultimately, the breadth of brainstormed ideas lends a lot of weight to the idea that immersive onboarding is an area ripe for development and a promising use case for enterprises beginning to experiment with the Immersive Internet.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.