SWCA rolls out standardized, scalable new hire onboarding program

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EdgePoint’s consultative approach helped guide us in developing a training program that resulted in standardized training across all of our sites.

  • industry
  • Professional Services
  • size
  • 1,001-5,000 employees
  • location
  • U.S.
  • approach
  • Custom Development

Key Wins:

  • Developed standardized new hire onboarding program across U.S. sites
  • Guided SWCA from initial strategy to roll-out and ongoing maintenance
  • Dramatically improved SWCA's new hire retention rates after roll-out

Background

A 100% employee-owned firm of scientists, planners, and technical specialists, SWCA Environmental Consultants combines scientific knowledge and technical expertise to create solutions for a wide variety of environmental projects and corporate sustainability initiatives. With offices throughout the U.S. and its territories, they have the ability to quickly respond to clients in a number of public and private sectors to overcome environmental challenges and move projects forward.

Challenge

Even with thousands of employees across the U.S. and its territories, SWCA Environmental Consultants didn’t have a standardized employee onboarding process. Each individual office executed the task very differently, with little consistency.

New hires needed to learn about SWCA’s values, mission, and culture in a standard and scalable manner, and the current system wasn't working.

Solution

SWCA Environmental Consultants needed a new hire onboarding program that could be readily accessed anywhere in the world. They reached out to EdgePoint Learning for help.

The learning experts at EdgePoint created online and self-paced new employee orientation programs. These courses featured consistent information reflective of the company’s core values and culture. In addition, EdgePoint developed modules that clearly explained employee benefits, basic policies and procedures, OSHA and safety requirements, and other common new hire questions. EdgePoint Learning also worked with SWCA to set up an easy process that would allow their team to make updates to the modules independently, as needed.

After the new eLearning courses were released, SWCA could finally provide timely and consistent onboarding for their new employees, no matter which site they were at. From day one, new hires now have a clear understanding of the company’s core values and culture. Due to this, new hire retention rates increased dramatically. Overall feedback from employees was positive, with many expressing that it helped them immediately recognize their value to the organization.

With EdgePoint's support, SWCA was able to finally build a cohesive company culture that would only grow within their employee-owned organization.