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Michelle Lee © 2024
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Embark highlights the best practices and protocols to overcome imposter syndrome in digital onboarding. As a result, new hires are less likely to feel self-doubt, insecurity, and anxiety throughout their journey.
Imposter syndrome or phenomenon, termed by Clance and Ines, is the tendency of high-achieving individuals to feel their success was not earned. Instead, they attribute their success to luck or a mistake.
Embark was based on some of my own experiences of impostorism as I navigated my career into the tech industry and some of my poor experiences with onboarding. My goal for this project was to boost confidence by designing a targeted and systematic digital onboarding experience.
In order to get a holistic view of my problem landscape, I conducted both secondary research including a literature review, market research which included a competitor analysis and finally primary research, which consisted of a survey with tech workers and user interviews with tech designers.
Imposter syndrome, affects an estimate of over 70% of the population at some point in their lives and can act as a barrier in particular for underrepresented groups during career development.
Imposter syndrome appears to be more common when people are going through transitions and trying new things. The pressure to succeed, combined with a lack of experience, can trigger feelings of inadequacy in these new roles and settings. Certain personality traits have also been linked to a higher risk of experiencing imposter syndrome including low self-efficacy, perfectionism, and neuroticism.
The lack of fit describes the difference between the perception of attributes of an individual and the perception of the job’s requirements to determine the assessment of fit. For example, a female tech worker is considered less of a fit than an equally qualified male tech worker for a leadership role, which is typically perceived as a masculine position in tech. The lack of fit model helps explain why women and minority groups feel fraudulent in the workplace.
After conducting a competitor analysis, I realized much of the onboarding techniques in the industry were developed for in-person environments. The gap I discovered was Digital onboarding. Digital onboarding uses technology to deliver new hires' information in a bite-sized manner through the use of blended online and classroom learning.
Using technology in digital onboarding means pre-boarding or earlier onboarding can occur, improving an individual’s self-confidence and self-efficacy. Lastly, it offers personalized engagements and interactions so employees can assimilate quicker and join groups, programs and initiatives.
To motivate new hires to use the technology in digital onboarding, the Technology Acceptance Model argues that if a technology is perceived to be useful, it is more likely to be accepted and used by employees.
For my primary research I conducted a survey with 23 responses from tech workers. The survey results showed a gravitation in work conditions towards a hybrid or fully-remote environment. They viewed onboarding and development as the two biggest pain points in their current experience and hiring and recommending their company as a great place to work as the highlights of their experience.
I interviewed 5 tech designers, and summarized the top three insights.
Next, I interviewed 4 experts, who were actively involved with the hiring and recruiting process, and summarized the top three insights.
To synthesize my findings from primary and secondary research I created this journey map, which would also serve as the navigation for my prototype. I split it into onboard, engage, and grow, where I discovered pain points to identify design opportunities.
I conducted this design exercise with new 4 tech workers looking to generate content and ideas for my prototype. I summarized the top three insights to inform my persona and design wireframes.
1. New hires struggled with making connections
2. Expressed feelings of self-doubt, insecurity, anxiety
3. Wanted some platform to share or express feelings
I developed this persona following the design exercise to summarize many of the common user needs.
I designed low-fidelity wireframes in Figma based on the journey map I created.
I iterated my prototype based on usability testing and participant feedback. Participants expressed several pain points with the mood pulse modal on the left. They found it abrupt and disruptive. I wanted to also change the language used in the modal to one where Alexis can use as a personal reflection to be more mindful of her feelings.
The second piece of feedback I received was ‘how do users know when a task or activity is due?’ Rather than creating an activity with set deadlines, which could add more stress for the new hire and contribute towards an perfectionist mindset, I wanted to have suggested time frames for completing an activity within daily, weekly, and monthly spans with the ability to unlock virtual badges and achievements.
My application Embark, takes the new hire, Alexis, on a journey to remove self-doubt and build confidence as she onboards in a digital environment. In this prototype, I have laid out the 8 best practices and protocols for remote onboarding.
1. Ease anxieties with pre-boarding activities
2. Manage expectations for important milestones (day1, week 1, month 1)
3. Accentuate the positive with weekly reflections
4. Celebrate little wins together when you finish an activity
5. Build open relationships from the start through onboarding buddies and community groups
6. Spotlight career success and failures setting the tone that it's okay to make mistakes
7. Develop strengths and knowledge to refine design and technical skills
8. Provide managers with relevant training on the various signs of impostor syndrome, and provide trainings for them to in turn let employees know that fears and self-doubt are a natural part of work life.
For next steps, I’m very interested in continuing this project in the future. I want to build out my manager persona to brainstorm more long-term solutions between the manager and employee.
I also would be interested in making this application as feasible as possible so building out a product website to market and sell this as a solution to tech companies was something I wanted to also do.
