Using a Cohort-Based Learning Platform for Onboarding: Mentors & Managers

A rich, engaging, and effective onboarding experience requires an intentional approach that moves well beyond checklists, rote tasks, and generic information dumps. Modern onboarding programs not only teach a new employee the basics, they foster connection, collaboration, and community through holistic, highly interactive, and immersive periods of engagement that start on (or even before) a worker’s very first day.

In an ongoing series, we will explore onboarding initiatives centered around the 6 key pillars of learning on NovoEd: Practice & Application, Discussion & Feedback, Mentors & Managers, Effective Facilitation, Team-Based Learning, and Curated & Goal-Aligned Content.

We’ll continue with the Mentors & Managers pillar, a cornerstone of cohort-based learning and an essential component of NovoEd’s collaborative learning platform.

How Mentors & Managers Empower New Employees

There is no substitute for the imprint of personal relationships that contextualize learning and ground it in the reality of the business.

On average, learners are 26% more engaged when they have access to a mentor. As a social and collaborative learning company, NovoEd is deeply committed to fostering a culture of mentorship within organizations, fusing productized insights from users with proven learning science and enterprise rigor.

Mentorship can be interpreted to meet the various needs of organizations and learners. On a macro level, mentoring can also be an efficient way to generate collective wisdom or crystallize institutional thought. At NovoEd, mentoring has been used to generate ideas and innovation in a population at scale, whether a different approach to performance reviews or a new implementation of design thinking. In all these ways, mentoring can be a real strategy for remote and hybrid learning that actualizes culture and workplace principles while upskilling and connecting at scale. 

On the NovoEd platform, mentors can be enrolled as learners while they are mentors; supervisors can have structured roles as mentors as well as mentees; participants can also have more than one mentor. In this way, mentoring becomes a dynamic and fluid concept. Additionally, mentors are prompted to share exemplar work product that may inspire others and can be included in a work gallery that consolidates company thought across all levels of the organization.

Social and collaborative learning platforms offer organizations the ability to structure a comprehensive, multilayered virtual onboarding experience that incorporates elements of in-person onboarding, such as coaching; peer-to-peer practice; team experiences; engagement with mentors, managers, and business leaders; learning in the context of work; formal and informal feedback; and more.

NovoEd analyzed and compiled years of experience with best-in-class programs into a format you can quickly reference as you design your learning experiences. Take these ideas and best practices to incorporate into your current programs or use as inspiration for new activities, new ways to engage your audience with learning, or as an alternative to traditional methods.

Ideas for Onboarding Program Activities That Effectively Incorporate Mentors & Managers

• Guides for new employees with historical context from mentors/HR
• Have multiple manager/mentors for individual learners to introduce them to different leaders in the organization and increase networking opportunities
• Have managers track employees as they progress through onboarding milestones
• Have general courses on basic topics that are widely applicable but differentiate experiences based on mentor assignment
• Assign a “mentor buddy” who was onboarded into the company recently

To learn how NovoEd’s cohort-based learning platform powers meaningful employee onboarding for today’s organizations, request a demo today.

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