PERFORMANCE CONSULTING · CASE STUDY

ONBOARDING
PERFORMANCE

Using participation data and stakeholder insight to understand why employees were disengaging from onboarding, then targeting the barriers instead of assuming the answer was more training.

OVERVIEW

A completion problem is not automatically a learning-design problem.

When onboarding participation was falling short, I treated the issue as a performance-consulting problem rather than jumping straight to a course redesign. I analyzed abandonment patterns across roles and teams, paired the data with stakeholder conversations, and looked for the conditions that were making participation difficult.

The work helped distinguish between content issues and adoption barriers, then guided practical changes to curriculum priorities and manager involvement.

THE CHALLENGE

People were not consistently completing onboarding. The obvious answer would have been to rebuild it.

But low participation can have many causes: workload, timing, unclear expectations, manager behavior, access, relevance, competing priorities, or the learning itself. Treating every gap as a content problem risks spending time on the wrong intervention.

What was actually getting in the way, and which changes would have the greatest practical effect?

THE DIAGNOSIS

Start with evidence, then ask better questions.

Look at participation

Reviewed onboarding engagement and abandonment patterns rather than relying only on anecdotal feedback.

Find patterns

Compared drop-off across roles and teams to identify where the problem appeared concentrated or structurally different.

Talk to stakeholders

Used the data to make leader conversations more specific: what was happening around the learning, not just inside it?

Separate causes

Considered whether gaps were driven by knowledge, process, manager support, timing, priorities, or another performance condition.

Protect the essentials

Rebalanced curricula so mission-critical knowledge appeared earlier instead of competing with lower-priority content.

Engage managers

Strengthened manager involvement so onboarding was reinforced as part of the job, not treated as an isolated learning event.

PERFORMANCE CONSULTING

The question was not “How do we make the course better?”

My broader performance-consulting practice used the ASKM framework — Ability, Skills, Knowledge, and Motivation — to test whether a performance gap actually called for training. Depending on the diagnosis, the right response could be learning, a tool, a process change, clearer expectations, manager support, or a combination.

That mindset shaped this work. The point was to improve onboarding performance, not simply to increase the amount of onboarding content.

RELATED ONBOARDING WORK

Move people toward productive work quickly, without losing the fundamentals.

In a separate sales-onboarding initiative, I co-designed and rapidly launched a two-week program under a compressed timeline. We prioritized mission-critical learning and sequenced the experience so new hires could begin client calls by Day 3.

DAY 3 new hires began client calls

Earlier in my L&D career, I also designed and facilitated a recurring week-long new-hire Bootcamp for recruiting, sales, and operational audiences.

WHY IT MATTERED

Better onboarding comes from understanding the system around the learner.

This work made the onboarding conversation more concrete. Instead of treating non-completion as a generic engagement issue, we could use participation patterns and stakeholder insight to focus on specific barriers and prioritize interventions.

The value was not a single redesigned artifact. It was a more disciplined way to decide what needed to change, who needed to be involved, and where learning fit into the solution.

WHAT THIS DEMONSTRATES

Learning strategy starts before the solution is chosen.

Performance consulting

Diagnosing the performance need before prescribing training or rebuilding content.

Data-informed decisions

Using participation patterns to sharpen questions, identify barriers, and guide stakeholder conversations.

Stakeholder partnership

Working with leaders and managers to understand operational realities and reinforce the employee experience.

Practical intervention design

Prioritizing critical knowledge and combining learning with manager support and other changes where needed.