A&M is one of the top-ranked consulting firms in the world, recognised for projects across 32 different divisions. It wanted to create a consistently outstanding onboarding experience for every new hire across the EMEA region, but while divisions work together to tackle complex global challenges, they operate as individual business units with their own teams, structures and processes, making this a challenge. New hires sit within one of the 32 divisions, in 35 locations, 25 grades and 23 countries. Many people could be involved with one employee’s onboarding, and not all information is held in its HR information system. This created a disconnect between candidates and the business and was time-consuming for the company to manage. A&M needed a solution that would manage a complex process while remaining flexible enough to deliver an engaging experience.

A&M worked with Eli over a number of months to understand the issues facing different stakeholders, allowing it to define a consistent process for the whole business that would tailor itself when needed. Each new hire would be assigned a named HR business partner, IT support person, office manager and business admin that they could contact at any time. Eli helped A&M to build a fully responsive onboarding portal: welcome.alvarezandmarsal.com. This meant new hires could get a deep understanding of the company and division they were joining and connect to colleagues and the wider business. Stakeholders were invited to offer feedback, driving continuous improvement.

Since its launch, the new onboarding platform has onboarded 755 new hires, with 95% engagement, and many reporting 100% engagement. Wellbeing among new hires has been rated at 94%, and there have been more than 37,000 page views. Crucially, 97% of new hires felt that the platform equipped them for their first day, and 76% connected with members of their team. In 2024, the new hire probation pass rate hit 86%, a 5% improvement on 2022. It has had a positive impact on employee turnover, reducing it from 21% to 13% over the same period. There has been a reduction of 16 people days per month in onboarding-related admin for the operations team, saving more than £12,000 per month.