In an effort to better define and focus my class project I will put it down in words in order for all to see. Simply put, I'm looking to develop an on-boarding solution for my company. At B&L Bike Shop we have had roughly an 80% turnover in the last year. New employees are constantly being quickly and sloppily trained in an effort to pick up the slack from being under staffed. New employees receive basic overviews on how to use the computer system and then are required to "shadow" a more experienced employee for a week or two in order to learn procedures. Most of the time, new employees have little or no bicycling experience, thus, they are attempting to learn store procedure, inventory and general bike knowledge all at the same time. The result is a drop in service quality for the customer and an increase in workload for experienced employees.

I do not aim to try to immediately solve the inventory knowledge problem for new employees. Only they can do that. What I would like to do is to be able to develop a sustainable resource by which new employees can learn B&L policies and procedures.

The first option one might consider is to simply make an employee hand book or a policy and procedures manual. However, I have already explored this route. In a conversation with the owner's influential advisor it was explained to me that B&L would never have a policy manual because they are (paraphrasing) just a means by which HR professionals aim to ensure their own job security.

Given that any sort of formal, written document appears to be off the table, I am aiming to develop a less formal and thus less threatening tool by which new employees can learn all they need to know in order to not be a drag on the rest of the employees.

This new tool will need to be sustainable. It will need to be relatively simple for everyone to share their thoughts and experiences. If the user interface is not simple and self explanatory then people will not use it. If the contributed content is weak and incomplete, people will not use it.

In order for this tool to be successful, a large percentage of my coworkers will need to use it. Traditional business forms of motivation will not work in this instance because the manager will not initially be on board with the idea. My thoughts are that it will need to be easy enough to use so that experienced employees will want to take some of their own time to make contributions. I fully intend to play on peoples inherent want to be needed and to be appreciated. On top of that, in theory, this tool should make every one's life a bit easier, thus hopefully motivating everyone to help.

The last obstacle that will need to be addressed will be legal and privacy issues. As Employee Manuals are often sited in lawsuits, I wouldn't want the site I create to put management in a compromised situation. It will need to be incredibly well documented that this program is not monitored or endorsed by B&L ownership (not initially anyway). The other issue I will need to address is privacy. As internal B&L policies will be discussed on this website, it will be important that the information cannot be searchable. I don't think security encryption is crucial, as there shouldn't be too many people who are super interested in the internal employee policies of a local bike shop. However, it would be best if none if it were easily accessible over the internet.