Helping Capgemini UK engage with future employees - engaging candidates for a successful Day One.

The Business

A global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation, Capgemini is at the forefront of innovation to address the entire breadth of clients’ opportunities in the evolving world of cloud, digital and platforms. 

The company works with the world’s leading brands to enhance and transform the way they do business. Passionate people are Capgemini’s Ace of Spades.

The Opportunity

Capgemini has digital transformation at the heart of its organisation but understands that business value cannot be achieved through technology alone. For Capgemini, it starts with people: experts working together to get to the heart of individual business objectives and develop the most adapted solutions to fit these requirements.  The UK team recognised that the way they onboarded new hires needed to be reviewed and improved.  This was a critical point in their relationship with new starters, and a tech led experience would demonstrate that ‘digital’ was at the heart of their culture too.

HR and Recruitment teams had a clear purpose in mind when they began re-engineering their onboarding process.  Their aim was to deliver an inspiring employee experience, preparing individuals for life at Capgemini long before day one.  To make this a reality, two priorities were front of mind.  #1 Improve the overall onboarding experience and reduce the duration of their Induction event from two days to one, and #2 Ensure candidates were ‘kept warm’ during a lengthy notice period.  But more than that – improve and strengthen the relationship so they felt increasingly more committed to the firm, and more likely to start on day one.

“But we recognised it was a risk” – says Ben Rubery, Apprenticeships Lead for Capgemini in the UK.  “After all, when our aspiration is to deliver a tailored experience throughout our recruitment process, it felt a little counterintuitive to depend upon any technology which would automate parts of our approach.

We were delighted when it had such a positive impact – firstly with our experienced hire community and latterly with graduates and apprentices”. 

Their high levels of interaction from users and exceptional feedback soon demonstrated that Hollaroo was far from a low impact, automated technology solution.

The Hollaroo-tion

Capgemini deployed Hollaroo’s onboarding solution in 2016 for the experienced hire population, and shortly after for graduate and apprenticeship recruitment.

By making content available in a portal, called BeReady, which can be consumed at a time and place to suit the individual, onboarders can prepare for day one. Whether that’s watching videos, reviewing content about benefits and company history or by asking questions of their colleagues, this has resulted in the face to face induction event being reduced to one day. In fact, 90% of onboarders are actively using the platform and visit on average 10 times during their onboarding journey.

Delivery of consistent, accurate information has provided a great experience and personalisation can still be achieved without 1:1 connection through email. Better still, onboarders can have direct contact with business representatives to find out what it’s like to work in their new business area, learn more about future projects and events, and start to build a rapport with their colleagues before joining Capgemini.  Onboarders are also encouraged to connect with their peers in their Induction group.

Over time and supported by the team at Hollaroo, they have refined their approach further and have launched version two of BeReady. With more granular insight into candidate behaviour, they’ve been able to better understand the preferences of different audiences and develop impactful ‘moments’ of engagement.  Hollaroo has developed a unique algorithm which identifies onboarders who are at risk of not joining; this allows recruiters to reach out and either prevent attrition or at the very least understand the reasons behind it. 

Karen Nicholson Jones – Hollaroo’s Customer Success Director says “the onboarding programme for Capgemini has developed over time.  We’ve been continually improving the experience for both onboarders and ambassadors.  It’s all about focusing on sometimes subtle and small changes which can have a great result.  Unlike most HR systems, which can sometimes be rather clunky, I’m most proud of the now personalised, and enjoyable experience we’re able to deliver.”

Don’t take our word for it, here’s what the Onboarders have been saying;

“This is really useful tool. After watching all videos and reading most of the contents I feel really excited and looking forward to be inspired”

"This is by far the most professional and organised new joiner process I have experienced. Great work guys and I’m super excited to be part of the overall Capgemini team.”

“A wealth of information all put together nicely providing key information to a new starter…”

Capgemini continues to monitor the success from their people initiatives and will be looking for ways to evolve their processes further.  Working with Hollaroo, the team will consider how they can encourage increased levels of interaction on the platform (using the principles of Nudge Theory) ahead of programmes beginning.