Onboarding Choices for Front-Line Restaurant Employees

A prominent global fast-food chain faced challenges in onboarding new employees efficiently while maintaining their brand's high standards of service, speed, and quality. Traditional training methods lacked engagement, often leaving new hires underprepared for their fast-paced work environment. The organization needed an innovative, learner-centric solution to improve knowledge retention and skill application while reducing onboarding time.

1. Offer training in multiple modalities before hands-on training to reduce onboarding time for new employees. 
2. Ensure quality of service and products are not compromised in the reduced onboarding time.

Tara came into the project as an additional learning manager (project manager) to help shepherd the development of the immersive onboarding program that combined training games, videos, and interactive job aids. 

• Training Games: Storyboarded gamified modules where employees could "level up" by mastering key skills such as assembling menu items, maintaining cleanliness, and adhering to safety protocols.
• Videos: Facilitated brainstorming sessions for writers to develop a script based on the learning design findings.
• Interactive Job Aids: Designed mobile-friendly interactive job aids, such as step-by-step guides and visual checklists. Focused on creating tools that were intuitive and easily understood across diverse employee demographics.

By blending creativity, technology, and learner-centric strategies, I helped this fast-food giant deliver their onboarding program to their employees on-time and under budget, as well as confirming that each module met every performance goal defined in the learning design process. The multi-faceted program, that touches 13 global markets and millions of employees, ensures that each could learn in a dynamic, engaging environment tailored to their roles and responsibilities.