The Challenge: To scale a high-performing creative team across different disciplines.
Everyone's experience of starting a new job is different. I've been leading creative teams for almost 10 years. Since my time as Art Director at The Vita Coco Company, I've onboarded loads of freelancers for short and long-term projects, as well as full-time hybrid and remote employees. Through my consulting practice, I've helped companies figure out how to build the ideal internal teams to suit their needs.
One of the foundations I like to create is a set of comprehensive guides for new hires. These guides help support me and other key members of my team to be able to continue to work efficiently while being there to guide new people with a system meant for growth and performance.
The learning curve for brand-specific collaboration can be very steep. As a creative, you have to understand the nuances of each brand through Brand Guidelines and Design Systems. You also have to get all the personal preferences for the stakeholders involved. On top of that, sometimes you have to learn new tools for workflow and the best touch-points for optimal communication.
Excellent onboarding supports high levels of team morale, engagement, and productivity. It’s also said to save companies time per training and increase employee retention by as much as 90%.*
So when a growth-stage CPG company asked me to onboard four designers with completely different skill sets remotely all at once, I felt like I had to do things differently. I wanted to create something more sustainable and this is how my first Notion Onboarding Hub was born.
It has since become more of an overall Knowledge Hub that people reference years into the job. It’s been one of my greatest wins as a creative team leader. I've gone on to create other great hubs, including one in the works for a film production studio that I'm excited to share soon. Please contact me directly for detailed demos. Read on to find out what my team has to say about the hub and appreciate some of the most valuable insights that creating this tool has given me.
Key insights
Empowered Learning: People enjoy having clear answers without having to interrupt other team members for what seem like very small or repetitive questions. This simple act makes them feel empowered. People feel more successful when clear steps are laid out to hit small wins each day. A series of small wins amounts to tons of knowledge acquired seamlessly.
Accessibility & Diversity: Creating smart tools for inclusion makes diverse communities feel heard. Knowing that everything has been written down already decreases the anxiety that comes from having to memorize many things at once, especially for neurodiverse team members. This promotes accessibility to better learning for a greater variety of people.
Engaged Relationships: The hub reduces the amount of note-taking and processing of new information, opening room for good conversations and team relationships to develop more quickly. People can focus on getting to know their new co-workers and learn deeper facts about certain projects knowing that they can easily reference the basics.
Humanizing Teams: Collaborating is mostly about good communication. Empathy is a great place to start. Having a place in the hub where there are both work and fun personal details about everyone on the team makes it more familiar and easier to get to connect and get to know each other on a personal level.
Team Interviews
Fiorella Nario, Sr Product Designer
What are your general thoughts on the Design Knowledge Hub and how we approached Onboarding you to the team?
I remember thinking back then that the Design Knowledge Hub was an innovative and extremely practical tool for onboarding processes. Despite people at the company being very friendly and receptive, as a newbie, you don't want to bother anyone with random questions, and the Knowledge Hub is perfect for that: it's a place where you know you'll get all the answers. In fact, I still use it sometimes as I still remember what kind of information I can find there, so it's not only helpful to new people, but to everyone on the team.
Onboarding was great and very smooth. I tend to feel a bit nervous about big changes, and for me this represented one: this was the first time I'd worked with an English speaking design team, which is an interesting change but definitely something I've never experienced before. All this nervousness faded as soon as the onboarding process began, since everyone was super patient and kind with me - I really appreciated that, and I'm sure it was a key factor in my integration into the team.
What was the most helpful or valuable part of the Hub to you?
There were two sections I found to be the most valuable: the Glossary of Terms & Teams, to find out what was everyone talking about on project tickets and in meetings and the Team Directory, to get to know my team.
What would you improve now that you’re more familiar with the team(s) and how we function?
To be honest, I think the team works very well as it is. I don't think there's much to improve, the only thing I'd do is create more opportunities for workshops. I think we could find mini courses or masterclasses we could all take as a group to gain new skills.
Would you recommend building something similar to other companies? If yes, why?
Definitely! I think using Notion as an Onboarding tool as this is an excellent idea, as new team members can access the information forever, and it also can be edited and expanded easily.
"I think that it was a great experience. The team made me feel comfortable from the beginning. It wasn't hard to feel part of the company right away. When you start a new job you can feel a little bit lost, but I felt supported during the first weeks."
- Catalina Arcila, Sr UI Designer
Edward Hamel, Sr Designer
The onboarding hub is awesome. The Key Tools and Glossary of Terms were most helpful to me in my first few weeks. I often found myself returning to the glossary to look stuff up when I didn't understand a term or an acronym. The Onboarding Checklist is really helpful too. The act of checking things off helped to make me feel like I'm on the right track.
It could be helpful to add some learning exercises to the hub for each of the design roles (e.g. links to projects like the Blender Donut, or the mobile app design project Idid on Skillshare).
Including the A.I. tools seems a bit pre-mature at this point, but I think they should be included once they're really integrated into our workflow.
Mostly I think this should be expanded to cover the rest of the company, like the team directory should have the whole company. It humanizes everyone so much better than the spreadsheet of names and roles.
Zac Lyons, Production Designer
What was the most helpful or valuable part of the Hub to you?
The Hub as a whole is super helpful and I would even say it has been crucial to the success of our team. It has a sense of object permanence and value because it houses everything relevant to our roles in the same place. Not in several random Google docs stored in various places throughout the cloud or on a Slack buried in a group channel. It's an actual web page we can access from any device and it can't be accidentally moved, deleted, or edited except by our team lead.
The glossary contains terms that are unique to the company. I find myself referring to it often. And the onboarding checklist was great for getting my footing on the various different software we use, like Slack and project management software. It was fun and gives you a sense of accomplishment with tangible learning goals that have an end product to show. The employee profiles are my favorite part! They are cute and thoughtfully made and help us get to know each other as a team and also house our 30-60-90 goals so we know where to access them every time.
What would you improve now that you’re more familiar with the team(s) and how we function?
It would be cool if there was a place to keep recorded meetings that contained training or tutorials we did in the beginning. Ex: The 15-minute Figma tutorial from Erik. The shorter commenter Figma video with Bianca. The blender intro video. The packaging intro with Ozelle. Stuff like that where you might not remember where to start but don't want to ask a team member to show you something again. These things always help jog my memory if I haven't done something in a while.
The Hub would also be a good place to keep our time off request form and vacation calendar if we decide to use something like that. This would be a more team-specific way to see who is out for how long, what to consider when asking for time off, etc.
Would you recommend building something similar to other companies? If yes, why?
Yes! I can not stress enough that all teams and companies should have this. I think there should be a Hub for companies as a whole and each team should have their specific Hub. I feel like it is a lot of work upfront but it's very buildable and saves everyone a lot of time. There’s a lot of awkwardness and anxiety when starting a new job. I know I always have a million questions at random times and don't always want to bother a team member so the design hub has helped me be more self-sufficient and sustainable.
