New Employee Onboarding

The Coop is a small, locally owned and operated coffee shop and collaborative sales space. The founder’s original vision was to transform a largely-abandoned gas station into a community space where local artists, bakers, chefs, and small business owners would have a place to sell their products. The operations manager was originally a barista at the Coffee Shop, another locally owned and operated coffee shop (which now manages the Coop). After going to college to get a degree in business marketing, she worked for a few years before hearing of the founder’s vision for the Coop. With the help of the Coffee Shop’s owner, she jumped onboard. Over time, her team has taken over daily operations of the Coop, which has now freed the founder to open a new location nearby. The operations manager manages both locations, and provides onboarding and ongoing training to all employees.

The Coop does not have a standardized process for onboarding new employees. Training is provided on an as-needed basis, and does not follow a set procedure or have a structure that promotes uniformity of results. The hiring of 5-10 new employees is anticipated as the result of opening a new location, and there is a strong need for a consistent onboarding process. Though the operations manager desired a customized solution, due to time constraints and business of schedules, she decided to request an eLearning product that would provide newly-hired baristas with the information and skills they would need to be able to interact effectively with customers.

For this task, I decided to employ the ADDIE framework of instructional design. After the client expressed interest, I conducted two interviews- one with the operations manager and one with an employee. We discussed the problems of customer satisfaction rates and giving product recommendations. It was also during the interview process that I realized the business didn’t have a consistent onboarding process. After initial interviews, I spent time observing employees in action at both locations. In the new, Wichita location, I was able to observe the initial training of a brand new employee, which was very informal and unorganized.

I then developed a diversity, equity, and inclusion plan to guide my content and product creation, along with a collaborative planning document to share with the operations manager. It included key content needs, deadlines, and process steps. Next, we collected baseline data, decided together on course and module learning objectives, and discussed parameters/limitations of the project.

After gaining approval to begin content creation, the course map was created, which makes up the bulk of the document below. This included noting alignment with course learning objectives, module learning outcomes, and planning for instructional activities, materials, and assessments. Once the course map was approved, product creation began.

This eLearning was completed at the end of December 2023 and is planned for an early-2024 rollout. As a result, there is no data from which to evaluate effectiveness. The final review of the product came with high satisfaction ratings, with only minimal changes needed to the content and design.