earthday365 joined our cohort in greater St. Louis after grappling with feedback they received during an exit interview, alerting them to challenges with their onboarding. What they did with that feedback shows the transformative power of small changes. 

Learning about Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) helped them better understand the onboarding experience from the new employee’s viewpoint. This new perspective prompted them to revisit the exit interview feedback and identify specific elements of the onboarding that could be improved. From there, they crafted a plan to test out small changes to their process. 

Thinking with SEE: The Small Experiment(s)

We at reDirect refer to these small changes as “small experiments” because even our best plans don’t always produce the result we hoped for the first time around. And that’s ok! When you think about a small experiment, the risks are low, and you can keep a flexible mind and adjust from what you learn in the process. Rachel Kaplan describes the beauty of small experiments in her piece “The Small Experiment – Achieving More with Less”: 

The key ideas of small experiments derive from these two words: small and experiment. The intention is to keep the effort at a modest scale: small enough to be relatively manageable; small enough that mistakes are not overwhelming; small enough that, in due time, one will have the energy to tackle yet another small experiment. The notion of experiment suggests a quest, a search for an answer.

earthday365‘s story illustrates this quest well– how experiments can lead to clarity.

The Challenge

With the concern that their onboarding might continue to create confusion for new employees, earthday365’s Executive Director and four Board Members joined our cohort in the spring. The timing was perfect, because they were in the middle of hiring several new employees. This period of overlap allowed them to implement and learn from their small experiments in real time.

Small Experiment #1: Onboarding Checklists

When they hired Kara*, a part-time employee already somewhat familiar with the organization, they made an onboarding checklist covering important items from the organization’s perspective. Using SEE, their team then considered what might be important from Kara’s point of view, and how best to share this information.

Later, they hired Madison*, a new full-time employee, and used Kara’s experience to refine the checklist. Madison’s version included additional details that they realized were missing before. She was provided a copy, and encouraged to bring it to meetings and review it with her trainer in order to track progress and make sure that nothing was overlooked. As their organization later came to realize, this approach gave Madison a better picture of what she needed to learn, and her being actively engaged in the learning process contributed to this deeper understanding.

Small Experiment #2: Introductory Meetings

earthday365 asked their existing staff members to schedule one-on-one meetings with Kara so she could get to know her coworkers, learn about their work, and understand how her role supports the broader organization’s mission. While this was an important step in helping Kara acclimate to the organization, their leadership realized they could take further action.

Like Kara, Madison had one-on-one meetings with her coworkers. But this time, with SEE in mind, they were scheduled farther in advance and took place over a more condensed timeframe. This allowed her to more easily consolidate the information she learned from these conversations, without too much time passing between them. 

Small Experiment #3: Training Schedules

Inspired by suggestions from participants in the SEE cohort, supervisors made a schedule for Madison’s first week and shared it with her. Initially hesitant to dictate her schedule this way, they quickly saw the benefits: it would help her more easily create a mental map of the training plan and get a sense for what a regular work week looks like. The shift also enabled earthday365 to plan training sessions “that built on one another and in an order that made sense, to 1) give her the information she needed to feel capable, but also… 2) set a pace that encouraged breaks and…  3) let her voice feelings of overwhelm.”

Small Experiment #4: Forms of Feedback

Midway through the SEE training, they used surveys to assess whether employees felt they had the information, tools, and resources they needed to succeed (Being Capable), while providing another opportunity for employees to give feedback and feel heard (Meaningful Action).

They began by creating a three-month survey for Kara, and later added an additional one-week and one-month survey for Madison to complete. Kara’s responses could be summarized as ‘Everything’s great, I know everything I need to know.” Upon reflection, they recognized how much pressure new employees are under to give positive feedback at the start of a new job, and that they needed to ask more specific questions to get more useful feedback.

Small Experiment #5: Board Buddies

Previously, new employees were assigned to a committee related to their jobs and interests and paired with a “Board Mentor.” Feedback from exit interviews revealed that employees didn’t understand the purpose of joining committees or necessarily feel connected to them. So this time, they gave Kara and Madison the freedom to choose their committee and mentor, and renamed the mentorship role as “Board Buddy.” This change was made to eliminate any potential for feeling intimidated by the term “mentor” while emphasizing one more supportive relationship for new staff members. Both employees communicated that they saw this as a great job benefit for career development.