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Most people will know the Preem brand, but not many will have heard of the ambitious journey the company is on: making the switch to a carbon-neutral value chain by 2035—a fundamental change in every area of a business that has revolved around delivering fossil fuel for decades.
As with any transformative project of this magnitude, success depends heavily on expert leadership. That’s why so much hinges on Preem’s ability to onboard and develop their next wave of leaders over the coming years.
Currently, Preem has a rigorous process in place for introducing new leaders. The hiring manager receives an extensive checklist facilitating introductions to key stakeholders, setting up access to IT systems, and more. Also, there is a portion of the introductory experience dedicated to HR-related areas that an HR business partner is responsible for.
The HR-related parts of the manager onboarding covers areas like:
Historically, this part of the manager introduction consisted of two main steps:
Håkan Gustavsson and Ola Hall, both HR business partners at Preem, approached Knowly with a desire to elevate the process beyond this more traditional approach to a level that matches Preem’s ambitious leadership goals. Together, we identified a set of key challenges with the current approach and discussed opportunities for an elevated experience.
Historically, the content of the HR introduction for a new manager relied heavily on the HR business partner who got assigned to deliver the introduction, and their decisions on what to emphasize and what to exclude. It was discovered that even if all team members used the same slide show, reliance on the HRBP's individual presentation made it problematic to create a unified experience for all new managers.
Since the HRBP’s face-time with the new manager was largely focused on presentation, there was minimal time for discussing the specific support needed by each manager. For instance, a manager hired internally may be well-versed in Preem’s culture, but may require additional assistance in understanding labor laws, since this is their initial role in people management responsibilities. Conversely, while an externally hired manager may be well-versed in legal mandates, they may require more guidance in familiarizing themselves with Preem’s organization and culture. The setup as it stood didn't allow much opportunity for this type of tailoring.
On the flipside, we quickly identified several opportunities for a new process.
As our discussions continued, three distinct opportunities emerged:
Initially, we discovered that using a digital means to convey the essential information to new managers, rather than depending on HR business partners to present it, would result in a consistent look and feel every time. This added benefit of consistency would help facilitate the ability to iterate the experience over time, which wasn't possible with only face-to-face interactions.
“Now that we have a first version of a standardized experience for the HR-related parts of the manager onboarding, we can finally start to iterate and create a second and a third version. That simply wasn’t possible before, when the experience varied so much from one HRBP to the next.”
– Håkan Gustavsson, HR business partner
By relieving HRBPs of the burden of delivering so much content, they can dedicate their energy to providing targeted support to new managers.
Pushing the flipped-classroom concept a bit more, the new manager could be prompted to think about their specific needs prior to the first meeting. The HRBP could then receive these reflections automatically and use them to prepare for the meeting, possibly bringing in customized resources for each person.
We ended up creating an automated learning journey—a so-called individual learning journey in Knowly—that starts a few days after the new manager’s first day on the job.
The journey consists of daily micro-trainings sent to the new manager each morning that covers one isolated area at a time.
Here is an example of the email invitation they would receive as an introduction to the journey.
Pressing the CTA, the new manager lands straight in the micro-training of the day, without having to enter a password.
Below is what the learning journey looked like. In the image, you see the first five micro-trainings. Each takes about ten minutes to complete and consists of short content nuggets and prompts to share expectations. Topics range from support from HR to company values and leadership profile.
“I liked the format a lot, with short nuggets each day that had a clear start and end. Before, I was used to instructions like ‘Go to the intranet and read about this if you’d like’, which wasn’t a clear-enough task, so it was hard to assess how long it would take to complete. Here I just had to follow the predefined steps each day, which I knew would take so little time that it could be done in a break between meetings.”
– New manager who got to experience the first iteration in the pilot project
The micro-trainings included rating questions to assist the new manager in determining the areas where they needed the most support. See below.
The answers were shared with the HRBP and the hiring manager to serve as a foundation to prepare for the one-on-one conversations to follow. Here's an example.
“Me and my HRBP started our first conversation by looking at what I’d written in Knowly, where I had explained which areas I needed support in and where I already felt fully comfortable. The rest of the time we had set aside then revolved solely on the areas where I actually needed support, which made the whole experience feel really tailored to me.”
– New manager in the pilot project
For the hiring manager, this took the form of nudging emails that were automatically sent out when the new manager completed important milestones. Below is an email sent to the hiring manager when the new manager submitted their self-assessment:
“I was notified every time [my employee] completed a part of the learning journey, and prompted to read the reflections they wrote that day. Reading those daily tidbits was a great way for me to prepare for our first one-on-one, which could then revolve around the areas where I as the hiring manager felt I could contribute.”
– Hiring manager in the pilot project
To ensure we build in a natural cadence of improving this experience, we include a survey that will be automatically sent to new managers six months into their tenure. We can compare this to a “net” that helps us identify areas for improvement in the onboarding experience from the new manager’s point of view. Rather than actively seeking feedback, we can effortlessly prioritize improvements by periodically emptying our “feedback net.” See what the survey looks like below.
The journey is still in its infancy, but has already shown significant signs of promise. As Håkan Gustavsson puts it:
“As an HR professional, I love to get into in-depth conversations with managers around leadership, tricky situations or professional development. Talking over a slide deck for two hours with very little back and forth, however, is not something I love. That’s why I’m so stoked about this new process: Since we built all the ‘broadcasting’ parts into Knowly, I no longer need my Powerpoint when I meet with new managers the first time—they already know all the content bits! Instead, I prepare by simply reading through the reflections that they’ve written in Knowly, and then facilitate a much more fluid conversation around the areas they expressed a need to talk about.”
– Håkan Gustavsson, HR business partner
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Want to get in touch with Håkan? Connect on LinkedIn here.
Want to explore what something similar could look like in your organization? Schedule a call here.
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