Onboarding new content designers at GDS

As a new team lead at GDS, I noticed that new staff joining our team were taking longer than I expected to get to grips with their jobs.

I realised it was because we were not supporting them as well as we should when they first started.

I created an induction programme for new starters, grounded on research I undertook with recent hires. This training programme comprised 4 stages of training, designed to introduce new hires to separate parts of the role. Each of these was designed as steps in a programme, coming together to create a better understanding of the whole.
I negotiated with resource managers, so that all of the training could be offered inhouse (as there was no budget to source external trainers).

In January 2020, we piloted this new induction programme on 6 new starters.
At the end of the pilot, I organised 2 retros - one for the trainers and one for the trainees - where we asked for input and feedback on the programme.
I ensured this information fed into the next iteration of this training programme and we ran a second pilot, on the same lines as the first. We then did one final iteration.
Six months after piloting the programme, we launched the formal induction programme for all new content starters.

The induction programme has transformed the experience of new content staff joining GOV.UK Content - resulting in increased confidence, faster learning and the ability to provide added value early on.
All content design staff joining GOV.UK Content are now required to go through this induction training programme.
The programme has been used as the basis for induction training for other communities of practice.

Testimonials