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People Mentality Inc will be featuring a series of HR Tech partners to share more about their background stories as well as how users can benefit from engaging them. No tool is perfect, but every one of them is unique in their own way which is where the value lies for the various users. Find the best tools that suit your needs, mix and match based on your context and grow your business from there!
In this week’s issue of People Mentality Tech Feature, we are excited to have with us Rich Boldock, Head of Growth and Strategy, to share his thoughts on the onboarding tool. Find out more about the story of Enboarder and how users can benefit from this HR Tech app.
Interview Summary
Sam: What was the spark that led to Enboarder?
Rich: After being in the HR industry for over 20 years, Brent Pearson, Founder and CEO of Enboarder had the realisation that most of the HR Tech products were heavily focused on creating efficient, and customised task management systems to help HR relieve the pain points faced during the onboarding process (Offer & contract creation, Employee provisioning, TFN forms etc).
Even though the Tech solutions were effectively making HR team’s life easier, most of them were completely ignoring the human experience, leaving ‘Employee Engagement’ as one of the lowest priorities in organisations.
After reading through academic research conducted by Daniel M. Cable, Francesca Gino and Bradley R Staats, that proved the impact first impressions have on business results, Brent Pearson had his ‘aha! moment’. He knew there was a huge opportunity for businesses to increase their employees’ performance, satisfaction and retention by creating significant and impactful experiences when engaging new hires.
Enboarder was then brought to life to put people before paperwork, allowing HR teams to create, test and deploy beautiful communications and experiences that will not only WOW but engage new employees from the moment they signed their offer letter. The platform also coaches managers through the onboarding process, helping organisations build more positive and healthy cultures.
Sam: How did the name Enboarder come about?
Rich: It was a really painful process! For three days, Brent Pearson, Founder and CEO of Enboarder and Christos Roussos, Creative Director at Enboarder, locked themselves in a meeting room with a whole set of name generating tools, apps and whiteboard markers with the mission of finding the best possible name for the platform they’d envisioned. Their two main goals were to find a name that highly resonated with their customers while being an available and affordable domain.
To make the process more collaborative, they asked their HR advisory partners to evaluate their five best ideas at the end of each day. In day one and two, the advisory panel weren’t fans of names put forward, but on day three something clicked. The name ‘EnBoard’, the combination of Engagement and Onboarding, received some strong positive feedback. Brent and Christos went one step further in the creative process by adding the “er” at the end of the name, making ‘Enboarder’ a thing instead of a process.
Sam: How did the idea of Enboarder evolve along the way? Why did it transform the way it did?
Rich: The business idea hasn’t changed much since the company started. Enboarder’s vision has never wavered. On Brent Pearson’s desk, you can find the original sketchbook from when the business was crafted; and those mental maps and concepts pretty much still apply today.
The original design, right from the beginning, has worked really well because of the way it was created. The modular nature of the product has allowed the business to expand organically by adding new functionalities and layers without having to re-design the platform. So what the company has been able to do instead is to constantly be looking for ways to create a stronger and more powerful platform.
The business is very much customer driven, so most of the product enhancements are based on our client’s feedback and innovative ideas. Right from the initial prototype the company has been able to evolve based on that constructive approach. Clients such as oOh! Media, Bupa, Me Bank, Device Technologies and WT Partnership have been a key asset in getting the product to where it is today.
Sam: What was the most memorable moment during this startup journey? What lessons did you learn?
Rich: The most memorable moment was probably the first time the product really worked, allowing us to see the vision fully come to life.
Brent had recently made Carlie Herbert, Enboarder’s first Customer Success manager, an offer. There were only three other people at the company at that time, and the technology was just at the point where it was actually sending its first SMS and bringing the content up into the mobile screens.
To test it, Brent added Carlie into the first Enboarder workflow and in a few minutes, she received the SMS. It was the first time an external person was able to experience the product and the feedback was amazing!
As a business, we experience that same feeling every time we present the product to a new client. Being able to build the workflows, craft the content pages and instantly engage the client by using their mobile phones is fantastic. It is super exciting watching them experiencing the product. When clients can quickly build something that is beautiful and easy in front of our eyes, then receive it on their mobile phones, it’s still a buzz for us.
I think there are two main lessons we learnt from this process. The first one is, sales always take three times longer than what you think. So it’s important to be flexible, consistent and patient in the process.
The second is to never compromise on the people you hire, and to make sure you build the best team possible. At Enboarder we have some really talented people and I think that makes the difference. If we haven’t had hired the same developers and designer, the product would have never been built and designed to look as good as it does.
Sam: Why do you think organizations are not actively focusing on onboarding at this moment?
Rich: There are two really interesting trends that are climbing up the priority list in the HR industry: Onboarding and Employee Engagement. We believe that organisations that are not actively focusing on onboarding might have bigger problems they need to address first. It’s clear though that many organisations now understand that Onboarding is the second most influential thing after recruiting when it comes to impressions on the culture, employee retention, satisfaction, and performance. The next step for these organisations is to take that knowledge further by implementing HR strategies that deliver fantastic experiences for employees.
Sam: Who would you recommend to use this tool?
Rich: Pretty much every organization that is focused on improving employee experience and understands the high impact Onboarding strategies have in business productivity. We think Enborader is the most powerful onboarding tool in the market from the employee experience perspective for a few reasons:
- The platform is incredibly easy to use. Clients are able to deploy and run beautiful onboarding campaigns in minutes without involving any expensive consulting firms, IT or creative departments. The product also allows HR to have real-time analytics to easily report, change and test their campaigns.
- In contrast with other product offerings that are web-based, Enboarder was designed for mobile from the ground up, making campaigns more personal, effective and impactful by reducing the email noise. This also increases engagement as there is no need for log-ins, or app updates.
Enboarder also easily integrates with many ATS, iPaaS and HRIS/Payroll systems to make sure the experience is not only pleasant for the new hires but also for the HR team.
Sam: Where can people find out more if they are interested?
Rich: They can visit the website www.enboarder.com, where they can experience the product themselves and request a demo.
Closing Thoughts
Onboarding is a critical yet often overlooked piece of the employee life cycle. With a good onboarding process, employers are basically setting the new hires up for success and starting off the engagement journey on the right note.
Some might find this process tedious or low value-adding. However, it all starts from having a people-first mindset. Once that’s in place, ensuring that the employee is well equipped from the point they sign the appointment letter becomes second nature.
Tools like Enboarder is there to further enhance and enable the process and experience that organizations can deliver when managing new hires. Coupled with the right mindset, the onboarding process can easily be a game-changer for organizations.
We have come to the end of this week’s People Mentality HR Tech Feature on Enboarder. Stay tuned for the next one which will be out real soon!
Together we can create a better workplace for tomorrow.
