Herning Municipality – Onboarding that meets employees where they are

When onboarding needs to be more than a staff handbook

Herning Municipality is a large workplace with more than 7,700 employees spread across more than 150 workplaces and more than 90 different professional fields. Every month new employees start who need to find their footing in a large and diverse organisation.

The challenge was not whether information existed for new employees — it did. The challenge was that individual managers had to find the time and methods themselves to introduce everything that really belongs to the shared whole.

Herning Municipality wanted to create onboarding that conveys the municipality's culture and at the same time prepares employees for their new employment — without it feeling like reading a staff handbook from cover to cover.

A welcome with genuine voices

The core of the onboarding material is a welcome video titled "Welcome to Herning Municipality".

The video is not a polished branding film. It is made with real employees from Herning Municipality who talk about their everyday work — honestly and directly — and address questions such as:

• What is the best thing about working here?
• How are situations handled when things do not work?
• What challenges do you typically encounter?

Short films instead of long documents

Instead of digitising the staff handbook, we developed a series of short animated films that explain practical matters such as holiday, absence, pay, senior arrangements and parental leave.

The films last 2-3 minutes and are produced in Vyond. They function as independent units — meaning new employees do not need to watch them all at once. It also means they can be used on websites, on the intranet, and in the Learning Management System (LMS).

The thinking behind it is simple: When you start a new job, you do not need to know everything about the parental-leave rules in the first week. But the day you need it, the information must be easy to find and quick to understand.

It is a deliberate choice to move from "everything you need to know" to "what you need to know — when you need it."

Staff benefits — clear rules, easy to apply

A separate module covers topics such as staff associations, staff benefits and rules for receiving gifts.

The topic may sound simple, but in practice it is an area where uncertainty easily arises: May I accept a bottle of wine from a citizen? What about a Christmas hamper from a supplier?

The purpose of the module is to make the rules clear and easy to apply — so employees can act correctly without having to search through policies and guidelines.

The new employee's perspective as the starting point

The development work has throughout been based on the new employee's perspective — not on the organisation's need to "inform".

This means we have asked questions such as: What questions arise in the first week? What is relevant after the first month? And what should you be able to find the day the need arises — perhaps six months after you started?

The material is built with free navigation and a flexible structure, so employees can adapt the order to their own needs. Emphasis has been placed on keeping the language simple and the communication direct.

It is about conveying the right thing at the right time.

Format

The material consists of:

• A welcome video with employees from Herning Municipality
• Short animated films developed in Vyond
• A complete course in Articulate Storyline, SCORM-compatible and interactive

You can see the material live on Herning Municipality's job page.