Nest Labs

SERVICE DESIGN FOR HR OPERATIONS: building a culture to weather the storms of exponential Startup growth

Welcome Home: an employee onboarding experience at Nest Labs

At Nest Labs, it's important to the leaders that the employee experience match the same quality of the customer service.  When I joined Nest there were around 50 employees and we grew to 300 within a couple years. Together with my mentor and supervisor, Jose Cong, we brainstormed and designed an on-boarding program for incoming talent that would set the foundation for their employee experience and influence the high quality products they built for Nest's customers.

Taking a service design approach, we designed the program to incorporate the needs of all stakeholders: managers, team members, executives, office administration, finance team, HR, and of course the new incoming talent.  Touch points included the offer letter design, branded and personalized orientation invitations, a group orientation presentation, fresh baked croissants at orientation (baked in-house), a personalized welcome package of on-boarding material, a new employee scavenger hunt assignment, a specially designated buddy from their new team, and a series of followup events.

Nestling INTERNSHIP PROGRAM: systemic organizational impact

The Nestling Internship Program was born at Nest Labs in 2012 from a collaborative partnership with my mentor and supervisor, Jose Cong, as well as managers and fellow Nest employees across various teams. Together, we designed the company's first internship program to be a rich learning opportunity for everyone involved, from interns to managers.

My role in building the Nestling Internship Program included co-creation with the marketing, creative, and finance teams as well as executive management. After the initial program startup, I managed the program thereafter as well.  

The Nestling Internship Program was branded to be a truly immersive, very personalized experience that was felt even after the interns flew away.  From the hoodies to the welcome packages, the touch-points of this experience were designed to reflect the company's philosophy of a lean startup with the utmost passion for details.  The welcome packages included hand-baked cookies, in the shape of the Nest logo, sent over-night to the incoming interns at their university locations.

The first batch of Nestling interns, 25 of the brightest students who were hand-picked out of more than 1000 resumes from 14 different universities, made up one-fifth of the entire company at the time.  The program spanned 4 months from May to August and included weekly "campfire sessions" with internal and external high profile guest speakers, monthly team-bonding events, and, most importantly, a personalized experience working on real products with exposure and critique from the company's founders, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers.

Read more about the first Nestling Internship Program here.