Onboarding automation for Bank Saint Petersburg
The Talent Rocks app helps new hires get into work processes step by step, helps their managers complete their onboarding tasks on time, and lets HR monitor the process and respond quickly to issues.
Client
Bank Saint Petersburg (BSPB) is one of Russia’s largest regional banks. It operates in Saint Petersburg, the Leningrad Region, Moscow, Kaliningrad, Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk and Krasnodar. The bank has more than 4,000 employees.
BSPB strives to maintain its reputation as a reliable and stable employer that gives employees opportunities to grow and develop. Internship programs with subsequent employment help students and graduates, for whom BSPB becomes their first employer, start a career in banking.
Kolomeets
Bank Saint Petersburg
Staff turnover during probation is very costly for the business. Significant financial and time resources go into training and onboarding new hires, and the cost of hiring a replacement is comparable to their monthly salary.
That’s why our bank decided to start a large-scale IT transformation of HR functions with a service for onboarding new employees. After all, the one thing you can never repeat is an employee’s first impression.
Background
The new hire onboarding business process at Bank Saint Petersburg included 19 items. Each part of the process required going to different services and departments within the bank.
The lack of a single point of entry for new employees and the large amount of unstructured information scattered across different sources created unnecessary stress in the first weeks on the job.
Some information was stored on the corporate portal, some in various documents and orders, and on top of that there were mandatory e-learning courses in separate web applications. And the content itself was dry and boring.
But most importantly, HR had no monitoring tool, no way to notice in time that a new employee was failing to adjust and take action.
For the Change Management and Analytics Center team, it was critical to change the very approach to onboarding and make it transparent and clear not only for new hires but also for the company.
They also needed to track not only the new hire’s onboarding progress but also the completion of all onboarding tasks by managers, mentors and other employees involved.
Kolomeets
Bank Saint Petersburg
Alongside the onboarding automation project, our bank is running a project to improve how workplaces are prepared for new employees. This process involves line managers, who are supposed to prepare workplaces for new hires in advance but, for various reasons, often failed to complete these tasks on time.
We decided to combine these parts of the two projects and involve managers in new hire onboarding starting from the preboarding stage.
Challenge
To automate this work, the bank needed a platform that could systematize the entire new hire onboarding process, bring it into a single digital space and keep it under control, while meeting strict information security requirements.
- The opportunity to get to know the company even before official employment, at the internship or offer stage. Future employees must not have access to sensitive information.
- Personal data legislation must be strictly observed.
- Onboarding tracks had to be implemented for both the new hire and their manager.
- Clear analytics and the ability for the onboarding team to monitor the onboarding process and prevent problems in the first months on the job.
Solution
The new hire onboarding solution is built on the Talent Rocks platform. Onboarding begins even before the employee is officially hired.
Preboarding. The onboarding team gives the new hire instructions and a link to download the app. The future employee registers in the service on their own (which protects their personal data until they sign consent to personal data processing upon hiring) and completes the preboarding track.
Workplace preparation. In parallel, the manager also starts preparing for the new employee’s arrival using the manager track: submitting an equipment request, ordering access rights and so on.
Onboarding training. Once hired, the employee gets access to the onboarding track with a step-by-step onboarding learning path: e-learning courses, meetings with a trainer, surveys and other activities.
Pulse surveys. Regular surveys about the past day/week/month help create an atmosphere of care and attention and catch potential onboarding issues before they become critical.
Chat with an onboarding expert. A new employee can message an onboarding expert at any time and quickly resolve any question.
Reference information. Contacts of key employees, office addresses and information about the bank are always at hand.
Manager dashboard. A tool for managers to monitor onboarding progress — statistics and the status of onboarding track stages for employees in their department.
Kolomeets
Bank Saint Petersburg
Previously, monitoring onboarding was very complicated because of the many process elements spread across different services and in-person meetings with trainers.
Now, with a single point of entry and the whole process running on one platform, we can track every stage of onboarding, spot risk areas early on and take action both on the new hire’s side and on their manager’s side.
monthly active users: employees in onboarding and their managers
of new hires log in to the platform daily during onboarding
points — average user rating of the platform
of new users complete all pulse surveys
Results
Today, about 300 bank employees use the onboarding solution regularly every day — future employees, new hires in onboarding and their managers.
According to a user survey in May 2024, the platform’s average score is 9.5 out of 10. Employees gave the highest ratings to the platform’s “Convenience” and “Usefulness.” In feedback forms, employees note how accessible and simple the platform is and that training and onboarding have become clearer and more transparent.
Nearly all (93%) new hires log in to the platform regularly during onboarding. They’re most active in the first month: 95% complete all pulse surveys about how they’re doing. High employee engagement and activity on the platform enable onboarding experts to monitor processes continuously.