The Future of Onboarding: Inside Serviceplan's VR-Based Employee Integration

How do you communicate your corporate culture to new employees in the hybrid world of work? Yves Bollinger, general manager at Plan.Net Studios, knows that virtual experiences take onboarding to a new level.

More and more employees give notice within the first 100 days of their employment. The main reason: the onboarding and integration process did not go as they hoped. New employees often feel left out, they lack a positive experience of the corporate culture and the corresponding sense of belonging. This development is problematic not only in light of the war for talent, but also because companies are wasting enormous recruitment costs. This makes a good onboarding process all the more important. And this is precisely what is becoming increasingly difficult in today’s often hybrid and decentralised world of work.

Recognising these challenges, we created a dynamic, audio-driven environment that ensures a seamless and inspiring immersion into the Serviceplan community – the Überverse. The experience is tailored to the needs of new employees, being the very first touchpoint they have within the company. The focus is on conveying the sense of belonging and to give a very different and engaging introduction to the company culture.

The Überverse Experience

Serviceplan's corporate identity was translated into a three-dimensional world with a unique architecture that brings the group's culture to life. The result is an immersive experience that transforms traditional onboarding elements into an interactive, gamified journey of discovery. Content that would otherwise be lost in PowerPoint presentations and Teams calls was transformed into engaging virtual spaces that invite exploration. In small groups and guided by a colleague from the HR department, new employees experience a playful journey through the company's history and culture, learning about its core values in an interactive way. Individual avatar design reflects the brand architecture and expresses each employee's personality in the virtual space.

The Überverse invites active participation, turning the learning process into an interactive journey that captivates and educates simultaneously. And you don’t need virtual reality glasses anymore: Laptops, PCs, smartphones or tablets are all you need to take part in the multisensory experience. By focusing initially on conveying a strong sense of inclusion and cultural immersion, the program ensures that all new hires start on a common ground, which strengthens their connection to the organisation.

Three Pillars of Effective Onboarding in the Digital Age

Serviceplan's Überverse exemplifies how virtual onboarding spaces can transform employer branding and retention. For companies willing to shape their own digital world, these three core elements are vital:

The storytelling: Which story building blocks are important for onboarding? What does the company want to convey to the new employee? In the virtual experience, information can be conveyed in more than just words. The room itself or objects in it interact with the visitors and actively involve them in the search for information. Presentations, videos or graphics can also be integrated, but must be ‘translated’ into the immersive space.

The architecture: The range of ways in which the virtual space can be designed is gigantic – depending on how a company sees itself and what values it wants to convey. Whether it’s a futuristic sci-fi city, a specially designed eco-friendly building or a changing, dynamic environment. By playing with size, weight and gravity, architecture can help to emphasise the importance of particular corporate values. New employees experience them consciously or subliminally and internalise them.

The Community: Shared experiences forge bonds between people – and that also applies in virtual space. For example, the onboarding process can take place in a small group moderated by one person from HR, and thus acts as an ‘icebreaker’. New employees get to know their first colleagues, can interact with them and subsequently contact them.

The main difference to conventional onboarding sessions is that employees can discover the company’s DNA for themselves – all age groups, but especially gen Z, who are very familiar with gaming and digital worlds, can be reached by such virtual experiences. On their tour through the virtual space, they experience the corporate culture and values intuitively and anchor them deeply in their long-term memories.

At the same time, the company presents itself as an innovative, modern organisation – which can be an advantage in the battle for the best talent. Virtual experiences thus help to inspire new employees and retain them over the long term.