Onboarding Documentation

Director of Digital Media @ Alpha Kappa Psi

Problem Statement

I held the director position of historian for my business fraternity in Fall 2021. Three position holders later, I realized that they hadn’t been transitioning each other properly. Tasks were not getting completed and new historians would always ask me for help on things that they should have already been told about. 

Even though it was no longer my job to be involved in the role of historian, I took action because I felt the importance of increasing the efficiency of my fraternity’s workflow for future generations.

Research & Development

I first reached out to the VP Administration who is in charge of overseeing the transitioning of position holders. These are some of the pain points that came up in our discussion:

• Current transition document is generalized to all positions. As you can see on the right. 
  
• Past position holders forget to mention things during their transitioning interviews because they happen at the very end of the term.
  
• More questions arise throughout the new position holders term, causing them to re-interview past position holders.

I concluded that detailed guidebooks would solve many of these miscommunications. I took on the job of creating the Historian guidebook because I wanted to prioritize setting up my successors for success.

Outcomes

The guidebook has now been used for a full term and has succeeded in eliminating the pain points I mentioned earlier. Due to its success, I decided to make a guidebook for my more recent position as Director of Digital Media. 

Reasons for success:

• Centralized information: Users can find all the answers to your questions in one place
• Maintains consistency through time
  
• Gathers helpful information during the term, not at the end
  
• Users only see what they need
• Layout limits cognitive load bu using contrasting colors & type