"Wikis for collaborative learning, knowledge construction, critical thinking, and contextual application."

Anyone who knows me...knows that I am passionate about employee development and training, employee connectedness to the organization, and employee retention.  I have been in the same global company for 30 years and it is a part of me.  When I first started researching and learning about wikis (last week J), I immediately connected the usefulness of the media platform to company initiatives for global companies.  Although this week’s grad homework is to build a lesson plan using a wiki, I am going to add a twist and make it a company project…one that I would love to facilitate one day.  The target audience for this post and associated plan/project would be any HR professional or manager interested in improving recruitment, engagement, and retention of employees.

With this blog posting, I am going to highlight my ideas for integrating a wiki tool into a company initiative to help aid the collaboration, critical thinking, and eventual presentation for a new “onboarding” program.  The overall purpose of a wiki is to support the team’s needs for building a shared understanding of a topic, goal, or objective; to support team processes such as planning, research, and problem solving; and to create team outcomes through a shared document or set of documents. (West and West, p. 5)

What is onboarding?  “Onboarding” is more that an employee’s first day on the job.  It is also more than a one- week orientation in a new organization.  Onboarding is a means of increasing employee productivity and engagement levels, reducing turnover, and elevating a company’s employment brand in the eyes of prospective hires (Stein and Christiansen, 2010).

Similar to a lesson plan, the initiative would look like this:

Title: Creating a Strategic “Onboarding” Program for ARX Company.

Project Participants: Sampling of the Organization’s HR Professionals – all of whom have some technology skill, experience.

·         Project Lead/Facilitator – Kansas City (Shelly)

·         Chicago, IL (Diane)

·         Hammond, IN (Mary)

·         Petersburg, VA (Phyllis)

·         Sahagun, Mexico (Jose)

·         St. Louis, MO (Matt)

Learning Objective: Research, review, and share content and ideas to create a strategic “onboarding” program to be used by the company to:

                                          i.    Create a competitive advantage.

                                        ii.    Increase employee productivity and engagement.

                                       iii.    Reduce turnover.

                                       iv.    Strengthen brand recognition, elevate the company’s employment brand.

                                         v.   Measure program effectiveness.

Lesson Plan/Project Structure: 8 weeks for all participants

·         Week 1 –

                                          i.    Read Chapter 1-2, Successful Onboarding by Mark A. Stein and Lilith Christiansen, 2010. 

                                        ii.    Post to project discussion board the following by Friday EOD:

1.     Your business units turnover rate

2.    Any initial questions/concerns regarding the project

3.    Three ideas from the text the group should consider

·         Week 2 –

                                          i.    Review and respond to discussion board postings from week 1.

                                        ii.    Read Chapter 3-5, Successful Onboarding

                                       iii.    Watch video “wiki in plain English” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

                                       iv.    Read the article: What are wikis and why should you use them?

 https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-are-wikis-and-why-should-you-use-them--cms-19540

                                         v.    Go to the project wiki sandbox and post one onboarding idea and one relevant picture (practice) by Friday EOD.

·         Week 3 –

                                          i.    Review the wiki sandbox for group posts.  Provide feedback on the project discussion board with experiences – struggles, questions, tools, recommendations to share with the group.

                                        ii.    Read Chapter 6-7, Successful Onboarding

                                       iii.    Go to the project wiki sight and post at least two ideas or past experiences related to “an employee’s first week” requirements by Friday EOD.

·         Week 4 –

                                          i.    Read Chapter 6-7, Successful Onboarding

                                        ii.    Post to the project discussion board the three most relevant insights you learned regarding what hired employees need in the first week, month, and year by EOD Friday.

                                       iii. The project facilitator will create a home page introducing the initiative.  Also, the Project wiki site will have five tabs: (one) First week – HR; (two) First week – Mgr.; (three) Training; (four) Connectedness; and (five) Diagnostic.  Post a relevant idea into tab one, two, or both, from what you learned through reading or experience.

·         Week 5 -

                                          i.    Read Chapter 8-9, Successful Onboarding

                                        ii.    Post a relevant idea on a new programs requirements for tabs three and four in the project wiki. 

                                       iii.    Review the postings in tab one and two and make necessary edits and add relevant requirements from your experiences.

·         Week 6 –

                                          i.    Review tabs one through four and continue to refine.

                                        ii.    Post at least one requirement on tab five for a program diagnostic and your suggested method – survey, journal, etc…by EOD Friday.

·         Week 7 –

                                          i.    Review all wiki tabs and refine.  Make sure the content meets the minimum project requirements presented in the table. Provide/post individual ideas on when, how often, and by whom a diagnostic should be performed in tab five by EOD Friday.

·         Week 8 –

                                          i.    Conference call with group and management to present the strategic plan.                                       

                                          ii.    Group participants complete survey for facilitator on strengths and weaknesses of the project structure, wiki experience, facilitator, and the end-product.

Project Requirements:  The new program must consider/address the following areas, at a minimum.

First Week – HR	First Week – Manager	Training	Connectedness	Diagnostic
Welcome/ swag	Welcome	Company 101	Mentor/ Buddy	When
Forms	Expectations-first 180 days	Products or Service	Relevant Network	How
Benefits	Tool Kit - checklists	Responsibilities	Social/ Community Service	By Whom

Rationale for the use of wiki – as mentioned, above, the use of a wiki for a project that requires collaboration just makes sense.  In this case, with participants scattered around the US and in Mexico, the wiki platform would be very useful.  In addition to research on the topic of onboarding, I tried to provide background, training, and tools (sandbox) for the use of wikis, along with videos about the platform in the project.  As the facilitator, I would also be responsible for responding to any discussion board feedback (struggles/suggestions) from the participants.

I would love to hear what you have to say about my blog…please let me know your thoughts.

References:

LeBar, Z. What are wikis and why should you use them? April, 2017 references on September 25, 2019.   https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-are-wikis-and-why-should-you-use-them--cms-19540

Stein, M. and Christiansen, L. (2010).  Successful Onboarding: A Strategy to Unlock Hidden Value Within Your Organization.  McGraw-Hill books.

West, J. and West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for online collaboration: The power of the Read-Write Web. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.