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Sally Chacatte, Group Head Of Human Resources, Knight Frank

Sally Chacatte, Group Head Of Human Resources, Knight Frank

Sally is the Group Head of HR at Knight Frank having joined the real estate industry in HR over 30 years ago. Before she went into HR she was a PA for a Senior Partner at Cushmans. After a couple of years’ career break she was approached by Knight Frank to be their HR Manager for the UK and the rest is history. Her role at Knight Frank is to support the business in recruiting and retaining the best real estate professionals and support teams across the Knight Frank Group

•In your opinion, how has the Employee Onboarding landscape evolved over the years?

What are some of the advantages of the current technological evolution? The employee onboarding landscape has evolved over the years from a paper-based snail-mail process with ad-hoc meet and greet to a paper-free, individually tailored sharing of essential data and cultural information that engages people prior to and upon joining an organisation. Knight Frank thankfully went totally digital prior to Covid-19, however, even those organisations that hadn’t digitised at that time had little option than to streamline their paper-based processes to meet the needs of a pandemic world. The inability to meet people for face-to[1]face interviews and when they first join a new organisation has been unprecedented, however, virtual Teams and Zoom calls have definitely saved the day. We recruited and on-boarded over 400 people in our UK business during the past year. Onboarding apps and systems that are a part of the current technological evolution are changing the way people engage with a business; from their first approach to that business as a potential candidate, through to how they manage their onboarding, their tenure in the business and their offboarding.

•What according to you are some of the challenges plaguing the Employee Onboarding landscape and how can they be effectively mitigated?

Some of the challenges faced in the employee onboarding landscape include the desire to send too much information, too soon, to new joiners and also to standardise it too much so that people feel they are in a ‘sheep dip’ of onboarding rather than it being specific to their needs and engaging them individually. Another issue is that HR teams may not link their onboarding processes to the other parts of the onboarding process, such as IT or comms, to ensure both the new person and the business are fully equipped for them to start their journey with the firm. Having digitised our whole process in HR we are now working on a full review of joiners, movers and leavers. This is to ensure the experience across the board; from approaching us as a candidate, getting an offer of employment, to when they start on their first day is all seamless. This includes ensuring they have all their equipment and are fully engaged with our L&D programmes from the get go.

•Which are a few technological trends influencing Employee Onboarding today?

What are some of the best practices businesses should adopt today to steer ahead of competitors? Technological trends influencing employee onboarding are now around fully integrated onboarding platforms. These use technology to link to the talent attraction, application and onboarding process – as well as feedback on how the business has done in these areas after having had time to reflect on the experience. Feedback from new joiners is vital to inform the development of the process. Onboarding surveys and ongoing engagement surveys enable an employer to make the experience for its people the best it possibly can be.

•Do you have any advice for industry veterans or budding entrepreneurs from the Employee Onboarding space?

Develop apps that can link to current systems rather than having to implement whole new HRIS, which is just too expensive. Make them sufficiently flexible to be tailored to different needs of different populations of new starters and always include the opportunity for feedback surveys to ensure the process is constantly evolved for different generations’ and diverse needs.