International Dairy Queen

International Dairy Queen – Creating a “Sweet” Experience for Both Employees and Managers

New hires have described it as the easiest onboarding they have experienced.  It has saved our store managers all time, allowing our managers to focus on managing their restaurant rather than focusing on new hire paperwork.  We now plan to extend our onboarding program to provide additional support for new hire success.”

— Wendy Harding

A Sweet Experience for Employees and Managers

As a company who provides a “sweet experience” for consumers across North America, International Dairy Queen (IDQ) recently underwent an initiative to make both employees – and their managers – have an equally sweet onboarding experience.  “We set out to create a completely different new hire experience to engage employees and give our managers back time to work on what truly drives the business,” said Wendy Harding, director, HR Operations and Talent Acquisition, IDQ.

The goal for the new experience focused around superior service, articulated in the company mission: “Create positive memories for all who touch DQ.” “We wanted to look at employees more strategically—how do we get them inspired about IDQ quality,” said Harding. “It was equally important to make life easier for our managers by simplifying administration.”

To transform their program, IDQ selected SilkRoad Strategic Onboarding to build a journey for both employees and their managers that creates positive memories, inspires the best service and saves everyone time.

The Challenge: Shift from Compliance to Culture

IDQ’s paper intensive new hire process, built around compliance, was the first target for change, including elimination of paper forms and packet transfers between hiring managers and HR. The second target focused on creating a richer employee experience to connect new hires to the company mission.  

SilkRoad Strategic Onboarding provided a robust platform to meet all of IDQ’s needs, offering the ability to build a new hire journey connected to culture, easy-to-do paperless administration and high flexibility for future growth.

Managers Win, New Hires Win

SilkRoad Strategic Onboarding enabled IDQ to expand its onboarding program from a pure compliance focus to a more strategic program built around culture, the employee role and continued support of compliance needs.  

The onboarding process has been reduced from a few days to a few hours and has gone 100% paperless. “We’ve given our managers back time in the stores, which is critical to supporting our service goals,” said Harding. “We also can now customize HR forms to comply with privacy requirements – another big productivity boost.”

IDQ created an employee experience focused on culture, emphasizing core values including teamwork, honoring the rich company history and supporting the community. New hires say it’s the easiest onboarding they have ever gone through and it’s incredibly well laid out. “The feedback we hear is ‘easy and intuitive,’” said Harding.  “Our new hires are ready to start the first day. They are culturally aware and ready to go.”

Future Plans—Expand Employee Experience

IDQ plans to expand onboarding to 120 days in the near future for a much broader new hire experience that gets even deeper into culture, development and community support. And that plan goes beyond new hires with a focus on creating an integrated employee experience across recruiting, onboarding and agile performance. 

“SilkRoad matched everything we wanted to do,” said Harding. “Most importantly, as a customer-facing organization, it’s critical that we pick vendors that align with our customer service values and SilkRoad is a true partner in customer service.”