100% validated prototype to be implemented for employees across the globe

The first impression is also the last, and you only have one chance. Sonae Sierra realised their employee experience was not up to their high standards, and they want it to be a priority. Together, we developed a concept solution to improve their employees’ onboarding experience and tailored it to their specific context and environment to create meaningful impact. This outcome and action plan will allow Sonae Sierra to improve their retention and adopt employee centricity as a way of working.

Client

Sonae

Challenge

Mapping the onboarding employee journey and identifying opportunities to improve the employee experience, adopting employee centricity as a way of working

Impact

An onboarding concept solution that adapts to the employee’s environment and context, creating a meaningful impact on the newcomers’ experience and retention

Employees come first

Sonae Sierra is an international real estate services and property investment company. Working with investors, developers and owners in multiple markets, their business occurs in several geographies.

For Sonae Sierra, the employees are high in priority. Therefore, the onboarding experience was not according to the company’s high standards (given the challenge of all the different geographies and remote working).

Later on, you can read further about why taking care of your employees is so crucial for the overall success of your organisation.

Starting strong in the employee life cycle

Something needed to change! It was time to co-design the right experience from the employees’ perspective.

Thus, Koos was the perfect partner to help innovate their employees’ onboarding experience, creating a positive impact and impression from the very first moment when joining the company.

Koos team really put themselves in our shoes, understanding our context and reality, with solutions that could actually work for us - and this is very rare to find!

— Joana Oliveira Associate, Learning & Employee Experience

A tailored and impactful onboarding experience

Together with Sonae Sierra, Koos has innovated the onboarding journey and validated the prototype of one of the great solutions created based on real needs. This concept solution will be implemented across the several locations of Sierra’s offices with customised features to adapt to each geography’s specific needs and culture.

 

With this initiative, Sierra will improve the first impact of newcomers joining the organisation: Making a meaningful impact on their experience, creating a better engagement, and aiming for higher retention rates.

 

Apart from this achievement, the HR team was very excited about all the collected insights from the research. The team uncovered and clarified several important beliefs: which events or elements are responsible for an excellent or poor experience and the real opportunity areas for improvement based on employees’ point of view.

This info is precious. The tricky thing is when you do not know what to do! Now we know what to do; we have a plan! I would like to have had this 5, 10 years ago

— Sónia Costa Coordinator Employee Wellness & Workplace

How we achieved it

Sierra’s existing onboarding was very process-oriented with only a perspective from the HR team. Koos designed and gathered employees’ current evaluation through a survey to have a quantifiable’ moment zero’ measurement.

There was a challenge of making it an experience from the eyes of the newcomers.

 

In-depth qualitative research was conducted, counting the contribution of several employees of different nationalities and functions within the company.

After a thorough analysis, the team created a very complete journey visually representing all the particularities of this special moment in the employee ecosystem and life-cycle.

This way, it was possible to identify opportunity areas and design ways to innovate.

Measuring the future impact

Sonae Sierra will now start the implementation phase after the successful design sprint, where the team validated the prototype concept.

At Koos, it is not just about facilitating fun workshops and creating concepts. That is why we have created an actionable plan for Sierra with different possible scenarios.

 

In the future, after the implemented improvements, the evaluation survey 2.0 will be launched to measure the impact more tangibly, comparing both outcomes.

 

It was a pleasure to contribute and help Sonae Sierra innovate their employee experience!

 

Here you can check other Employee Experience projects  and give us a call if you want to hear more 🙂

 

This way, it was possible to identify opportunity areas and design ways to innovate.

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