Hilti: where onboarding goes into overdrive with digital technology

At Hilti Italy, the strategic plan shifted the frame of reference, which meant personnel needed to acquire a new skill set. This applied not only to salespeople but also to support functions, to enable them to engage with customers and build partnerships over the medium to long term. So more than 700 people had to be trained in four years’ time, employees who were vastly different in terms of experience, age and seniority. But more importantly, the onboarding process had to be completely overhauled. This was a company priority as it affected on average 300 new hires a year, of whom around two-thirds would be filling sales-related roles (based on 2022 data).

A multi-function project team (HR, Sales, Marketing and Channels), which included stakeholders from ten different countries, worked on revamping the existing process to achieve four essential objectives: creating a structured onboarding process that would go hand in hand with gradual learning grounded on work-related activities (70% on the job learning, 20% social learning, 10% classroom learning); fostering a sense of belonging and bonding with Hilti during the first year with the company; cutting time to performance; and enhancing Hilti’s attraction to increase talent retention.

The logical principles that inspired the redesign and the setup of the new onboarding process are as follows:

• Learner-centric onboarding means learners always taking the lead (shoring up self-learning with digital tools and measuring engagement during the ongoing process).
• Support and skills development, necessarily grounded in the context and in work-related activities, would take place gradually and align with the different steps in the onboarding process, with clear expectations for new hires and team leaders on the timing and methods for addressing relevant topics.
• Collective and concerted action by myriad actors support new hires along their learning paths, with responsibilities formally assigned to each role: the team leader (Area Sales Manager), the Buddy (a colleague who acts as tutor and mentor), the Subject Matter Experts, and the training team from Learning & Development who monitors and manages learning at training centers or online.

Today this process, which is called WIN, lasts 12 months and consists of four phases: I know my team (months 1&2), I know my role (months 3&4), I do my part (months 5-9), and I continue with my personal development (months 10-12). For each phase, there are set targets, work plans, contents and KPIs, all tools that learners use to become independent in developing their guided path, supported by all the different people involved in the process.

Digital tools expedite the new onboarding process. Specifically, there is a social learning platform (FUSE Community) entirely dedicated to WIN participants, with different interfaces and interactive maps for learners and all participants in the learning process. On this platform, users can access content in real time, along with specific sections on the five pillars of learning, where topics needed for skills development are structured in the form of a learning plan to support skills acquisition and knowledge metabolization. What’s more, process participants have time to apply what they’ve learned on the job as they move through the various phases.

Available on the platform are links to interactive modules, teaching contents, and storylines for key topics to clarify the pathways and the expectations for every phase for participants and for the people who support them. All this in addition to videos and tutorials that reinforce on-the-job learning, accessible via various devices (PC, tablet, or cell phone).

Last comes Yammer, the corporate social network that supports new hires and their managers in the onboarding process. Yammer serves as an accelerator, allowing these employees to get to know their work teams more quickly and facilitating peer interaction.

Since March 2017, all of Hilti’s new hires have been onboarded and trained with the new approach.  As talent retention data shows (91%), results in terms of employee satisfaction are exceptional, and engagement is also very high. But the most meaningful indicator is process effectiveness, in other words, the capacity to turn learning into concrete outcomes. For example, in January 2019, from a focused analysis of new hires in sales-related roles who followed the onboarding path in 2018, data show that their performance on average was only 2.6% lower than their senior colleagues.