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HCM
Journeys
Scenario
Nissan has been using Workday since 2014 and has continued to grow its Workday footprint across the human resources function over the last decade. In support of its 2030 Ambition initiative, the HR team at Nissan was looking for a Workday partner to help them improve the Employee Journey and ultimately become an agent for cultural and workplace transformation.
Why?
An important aspect of Nissan's culture is supporting employees with overall life harmonization, a.k.a. Ikigai (Iki, gai). This is a Japanese concept that translates to "a reason to live." It's a philosophy that encourages people to discover what's important to them and live a life with purpose and joy.
Additionally, Workforce expectations have been changing rapidly, and Nissan recognized the need to be ready to support generational and diverse workforce needs.
To that end, the HR and IT teams wanted to reevaluate nine pivotal “Moments that Matter” throughout the Employee Lifecycle at Nissan and determine how to increase ikigai for all employees at a consistent, global scale.
The first moment to tackle was where it all starts: Onboarding and Training.
69% of employees are more likely to stay with an organization for 3 years or more if they feel they had a good onboarding experience. *
Nissan surveyed its employees worldwide, and the results of the survey made it evident that Nissan could improve its Onboarding and Training program by ensuring new employees:
- Get the resources they need right away;
- Have a consistent experience across the globe and;
- Understand Nissan’s core values, ethics, and diversity commitments right from the beginning.
Solution
To accomplish these goals, Nissan sought out a partner that could bring creative solutions to the table. Nissan engaged Skillcentrix for an Insights Workshop to establish a foundation for the partnership, which helped identify and prioritize an initial Talent roadmap.
Several priorities immediately became clear as the project began: we had to consider the experiences of new personas and ensure a strong sense of consistency and belonging across these personas. We also needed to benchmark based on needs and experiences vs. just trends and think beyond employee benefits to an overall employee wellness mindset.
With comprehensive preparation and engagement with Nissan's HR and IT teams from the start of the project, Skillcentrix was able to deliver rich prejoining communications and four Journeys to realize the vision for Nissan's global onboarding program:
We launched each journey using the Mass Operation Journey Distribution mechanism. This allowed for more consistency and control over delivery than using a Hire business process step. We didn’t want to have multiple journey distribution steps with lengthy step delays associated with the hire event.
Additionally, each journey was fully translated into six languages and designed for a global audience, with conditional step groups and steps largely dependent on the country and/or region of the worker.
We configured all of the journeys with engaging content about The Nissan Way, eliminating the siloes from the past. We also included thoughtful and relevant imagery to support each journey step.
One of the most creative solutions we developed for this project was the approach to the "Prejoining" phase. The challenge here was the significant gap in time between the acceptance of an offer and the first day on the job for a new employee. For some parts of the globe, this can be months, which can increase disengagement and doubt for prejoiners.
To solve this problem, we knew we couldn’t use a Journey, given that the persona is still in the candidate phase and not yet a worker. So, we embedded Journey-like content and touchpoints into the solution without using an actual Journey. We created personalized communications with interactive and engaging content, prioritizing ease of access to tools for the hiring manager, including:
- 1-click customizable email for managers to send directly, instead of from the tenant
- One-stop shop toolkit dashboard for hiring managers
- Onboarding buddy coordination using mentorship framework
Results
The Skillcentrix and Nissan teams worked together to create a solution in Workday that would ultimately increase ikigai for new hires and employees alike. Namely, an onboarding experience that:
- Creates a sense of belonging
- Is welcoming and consistent, globally
- Is digitally seamless for critical onboarding details and activities
Nissan's Onboarding program now supports strong communication exchanges, includes formal, trackable tasks, and possesses robust feedback capabilities. It's the first “Moment that Matters” in the employee lifecycle, and it was critical to get it right while maintaining a posture of listening for feedback.
So, we continue to gather employee input and leverage Nissan's iterative, design-thinking approach to improvement. We are measuring effectiveness through several KPIs (such as Retention and Attrition and continued employee surveys), with preliminary sentiment being very positive.
We're excited to continue our partnership to optimize the Employee Lifecycle beyond Onboarding and throughout the nine other “Moments that Matter" at Nissan.
To learn more about how Skillcentrix can help you enhance the Onboarding Journey or overall Talent Lifecycle at your organization, contact us.