Onboarding Your Team Through Play
When you are new to a team, there is a learning curve to associating names with people and roles, understanding processes and procedures, and recognizing how others prefer to work. Of course, you can always take the “old school” route with onboarding and follow a boring checklist… or you can take the NASAGA way and implement games, activities and simulations to make the experience more memorable and exciting, for both the onboarded and facilitator.
Onboarding is an essential piece of fostering a positive transition into the team. It is a delicate balance of providing enough information that a new hire feels confident jumping into their role, while not making them spend hours over months doing nothing but rehashing processes that they may or may not need one time over the course of their career. Having too much can be overwhelming and cause them to shut down, while having too little can leave them feeling lost and unprepared for the work they need to do. Traditionally, onboarding is tackled by providing a new hire, and potentially their supervisor, with a checklist of tasks that must be learned and meetings or discussions that must occur. The how or why of these tasks is often left out in a rigidly structured process where new hires are thrown under a fire hose of information.
It is important to question whether your onboarding is developmental or purely an informational dumping ground. Presenting your processes through play can make the tedious task of learning a lot in a short amount of time more fun and easier to manage in a larger training schedule. Research has shown that utilizing games in learning processes not only increases participation, but also fosters social learning and increases participant willingness to take risks. Who wouldn’t want these outcomes as part of their onboarding? Onboarding should both build hard skills and foster team interaction and trust; when something comes up outside of the scope of onboarding, the new team members know how to problem solve to find the answer and/or feel comfortable asking for help from the team.
So how do you transform your onboarding into instructional play? Glad you asked. Here are a few suggestions that you can implement, depending on the time you are able to commit to the initial process:
Little Time
So you have onboarding around the corner and don’t have time to commit to a complete overhaul of your process or maybe don’t have the authority to change what is in place? No worries, start small! Start with scheduling a “get to know you” session and bring a few games. By playing a game or two, even just over an hour-long session, you can build trust and learn a lot about others by adding debrief questions to the activity.
Not sure what to try? Here are a few sample games that work well for new teams and make space for engaging in conversation:
Telestrations: It’s like playing the telephone game mixed with Pictionary
Fluxx: It’s a card game that has ever-changing rules
Rhino Hero: It’s an advanced game of jenga
Hues and Cues: It’s based on color matching
Be sure to select a game that is accessible to everyone’s needs and abilities. Most importantly, encourage adaptations of the game. For example:
Telestrations: Use work terms instead of provided terms
Fluxx: adapt “keepers” to needed items for an upcoming event
Rhino Hero: build the physical work space rather than a random tower
Hues and Cues: only use terms that relate to the office
And having prepared questions to prompt discussion is always helpful:
How does this relate to what we do in the office?
How did we solve the issue when it arose in the game, and how can we do better as a team in the future?
What terms were mentioned in the game that we haven’t covered in your onboarding that I can provide context here?
Even if you solely play the game as created, you will still be fostering relationships.
Some Time
So you have some time set aside to take another look at your onboarding, but you’re not quite ready for a complete overhaul? Great! You likely have time to create a purposeful game-based learning opportunity that retroactively fits into a game structure or even create an activity or simulation to add into your program. To do so, start by picking a singular task on the list. Not sure where to start? Here are some examples:
Maybe you have a routine meeting with various folks across various departments. This can easily be turned into a game of Guess Who by creating a board with folks’ names and faces. Pair this with a previously-collected checklist of fun facts (or just titles and responsibilities) to encourage the new hire to figure out whose fact matches with each person on their board.
Does the role have a requirement to facilitate events or briefings? You can use the Powerpoint Karaoke concept to teach them tips focused directly on their actual materials. Haven’t used Powerpoint Karaoke? The basic concept uses a set of 3-5 slides with random pictures on them; players give a fake presentation based on the images as they are shown. This adaptation would use an actual presentation for the organization, allowing the new hire to practice giving the presentation while receiving constructive feedback on their presentation skills. Bonus: the new hire may often show different interpretations of your material that never occurred to you!
A last example would be to convert your company rules and policies into an escape game. There are some great tools available through BreakoutEdu! By converting some of the driest pieces of onboarding into more of a scavenger hunt that unlocks each level, you can inspire inquisitive learning. Rather than a list of dos and do nots, they become a quest of answers to unlock further clues to solve the puzzle.
Overhaul Ready
If you have the time, the brainspace, and the dedication, you can fully convert onboarding into a more gamified and game-based process. Although this can include many of the components listed in the first two sections, it also takes a look at the bigger picture. Attaching point values and rewarding successes can incentivise learners to participate in the program. This is a great opportunity to also expand beyond just the initial onboarding process, into ongoing professional development.
Warning: This does take a lot of fore-thought! This is more than just assigning point values to your previous training lecture or meeting; you are crafting each experience into something that is quantifiable with a reasoning behind the point system. Whether these positive incentives are microbadges, of monetary value or other benefit, these need to be weighted according to your goals of the program. You could even add options for participants to choose their own adventure rather than a prescribed path.
Whatever route you choose, be sure that the sessions and requirements for the gamified version are more than just the button-clicker form of information. You know the kind: the training that you can click through 60 minutes worth of information in 10 seconds and say you’re done with the green checkmark? Learning is not happening in those environments. However, implementing those embedded pieces such as a personalized breakout experience can show whether the new hires learned the rules
Onboarding can be a positive and impactful experience that is FUN for both the new hire and onboarding team. It is way more exciting to watch a breakout experience or other activity than sit through a checklist or one-sided meeting. Whether you have just a few minutes, or a few weeks, these impactful changes can be just what you need to take your onboarding to the next level.
Bethany Carr, MS, currently works at Beta Theta Pi Fraternity as the Associate Director of Leadership and Education. She is a previous Board Chair of NASAGA and is in her final year at the University of Dayton School of Law. Her favorite game is Carcassonne.