Over the last three years, relocation services company Cartus integrated offices from a merger, bringing 10 U.S.-based and six international offices and employees into its company culture, systems, and processes.
A measure of success was to retain both the client base and the skilled employees who came with this acquisition. To accomplish this, Cartus took a diligent approach to onboarding. Instead of providing generic training and rushing these employees into new processes, Cartus carefully assessed the needs of each office and the clients they represented.
Program Details
Over the years of integrating these nearly 400 global employees, Cartus established tried-and-true practices the organization now uses to onboard any group to its organizational processes:
- Prepare Managers and Directors: Managers and directors of the onboarded offices first attend training at corporate headquarters. This provides ready access to leaders and subject matter experts (SMEs) who can be contacted further once the managers/directors return to their respective offices. Training this group first ensures smoother transition of clients, which positively affects everything from customer initiation to client billing.
- Institute Participant-Driven Learning: Consultants—the front-line employees who work with the customers—are provided three weeks of hands-on systems training. Training content is reinforced with participant-driven review exercises and skills assessments. One especially successful element includes a pre-assessment review where participants each demonstrate one segment of the steps they will follow and receive peer feedback.
- Include Post-Training Support: Post-training support is provided by an onsite SME from the home office, offering immediate assistance with issues. Additionally, Learning & Development (L&D) established a dedicated Consultant HelpLine to assist with urgent situations, as well as manager support calls to discuss ongoing issues.
- Utilize In-House Expertise: Particularly for the manager training sessions, L&D leverages the expertise of 23 subject matter expert presenters. This not only allows participants to meet the contact they’ll later need to call if issues arise, but also gives them a deeper understanding of what is most critical and the potential impact of errors.
- Create a Resource Roadmap: To create global consistency, the topic delivery reflects a “Life of a File,” demonstrating the sequential steps for a successful customer relocation from beginning to end. Additionally, a “resource roadmap” was created as a post-training job tool, providing the topic, subject matter expert name, and list of any training resources available. The tool includes links for immediate access to the resources (i.e., a podcast on Cartus’ intranet or a course found in the learning management system).
Results
The effectiveness of these methods was demonstrated following Cartus’ office onboarding in Paris (June 2015). Some early onboarded groups required nearly two years of ongoing post-training support; however, the Paris group—benefiting from all of Cartus’ best practices—needed additional assistance for only two weeks following training before they felt comfortable enough to proceed on their own. Success was reflected in retention rates of nearly 93 percent in the U.S. Client Services group, and 89 percent in international offices, both exceeding Cartus’ 88 percent retention goal as an organization.
