From Onboarding to Business Acumen: Creating Learning Employees Choose

2026 Silver Brandon Hall Excellence Award — Best Custom Content

A global healthcare organization partnered with Innovative Learning Group (ILG) to redesign onboarding for new medical hires into a scalable, customizable, and optional learning experience. Designed to accelerate early confidence, role clarity, and cross-functional alignment, the solution used a blended approach with gamification to drive engagement and reinforce key concepts.

Situation

Onboarding was intended to help new hires quickly build business acumen and understand how their roles fit within the organization. However, the existing experience was often overwhelming, time-consuming, and difficult to retain, leaving employees to piece together critical business context on their own.

The Company faced two key challenges: redesigning onboarding into concise, targeted modules that would help new medical employees quickly build business acumen and creating an engaging experience that encouraged voluntary participation.

Solution

ILG designed bite-sized learning experiences delivered through the Company’s existing learning platform, ensuring easy access and minimal implementation overhead. Because participation was optional, the experience emphasized relevance and engagement so learners could quickly connect the content to their day-to-day responsibilities.

To balance engagement with efficiency, the program used multiple delivery methods, including interactive e-learning courses, short videos, quick reference tools, and an interactive PDF. This flexible design let learners engage with content in ways that suited their preferences while reinforcing key concepts through varied formats.

Gamification was integrated throughout the experience to encourage participation and completion. Features included a scavenger hunt, an online board game, and achievement badges, which created a sense of progression and accomplishment.

The learning journey was intentionally structured to help new hires become confident, effective contributors in a cross-functional organization.

Specifically, learners were expected to:

• Connect the organization’s values and associated behaviors to their roles
• Describe the organizational structure and strategic priorities
• Explain how key functions collaborate to deliver integrated healthcare solutions
• Locate available learning resources

Instructionally, content was carefully chunked and sequenced for clarity, supported by real-world examples, reflection points, and practice opportunities. This approach translated complex organizational concepts into practical insights, accelerating onboarding and strengthening cross-functional alignment.

Finally, the solution was designed for sustainability. Wherever possible, assets were developed using standard tools such as Articulate 360 and Vyond, enabling the Company to maintain and evolve the program independently.

Results

This solution transformed onboarding for new medical employees into a flexible, engaging experience built around bite-sized learning, interactive elements, and optional activities. Employees learned at their own pace and gained confidence, early engagement, and a clearer understanding of how their roles supported business objectives. They consistently reported feeling more prepared, connected, and effective from day one.

For the Company, the program accelerated new hire integration, fostered a more self-directed learning culture, and created a scalable framework for future onboarding initiatives. It showed that voluntary learning can drive meaningful participation, faster capability development, and stronger workforce readiness.

To learn more about how Innovative Learning Group can create custom learning solutions to help improve business results, contact us at info@innovativeLG.com.