Before adopting Abode, American Family Insurance relied heavily on snail mail, generic emails, and LinkedIn groups to communicate with new hires. This approach was far from efficient, resulting in inconsistent messaging, poor communication quality, and low engagement from interns. Weekly communications required each team member to generate a topic and send it out to the interns, leading to a significant investment of time and effort. This manual process, spread across multiple programs, took up to 20 hours a week for the recruiting team.

Important information often got lost in the clutter of emails, causing critical steps prior to the start date to be occasionally missed. American Family Insurance needed a seamless, centralized platform to streamline communication, house resources, improve engagement, and ensure all new hires were well-informed and prepared before their start date.

Interns did not often engage within each other in the LinkedIn groups created for them, leading to a lack of community and connection among new hires. Emails with necessary resources often went unread, and important information was missed, causing delays and complications in the onboarding process and no clear way to track.

The I-9 verification process, which now can be done prior to the start date through Abode, was previously a cumbersome task that took up managers' time and led to a chaotic first day. Similarly, tracking and shipping equipment through email was a logistical nightmare, often resulting in miscommunication and delays.

American Family Insurance needed a centralized approach to manage these processes, reduce the administrative burden on recruiters and managers, improve communication, house all necessary resources in one place, and ensure sustained engagement with interns.

Since implementing Abode in February 2024, American Family Insurance has significantly improved their adoption rate and resource management for interns. By consolidating all necessary information into one easily accessible place, the recruiting team has eliminated the need for scattered emails and multiple communication channels. Interns can now receive all their pre-boarding information with a single click, greatly improving the clarity and consistency of messaging. The engagement tracking feature has been invaluable, allowing recruiters to see which interns have or have not seen certain communications and follow up as needed. It has also enabled clear and consistent communication between the talent team and interns in the Community.

Additionally, Abode has facilitated better organization and timely completion of tasks through its Journeys feature. Having a checklist and key resources outlined for the intern ensures that deadlines are met, and recruiters can easily monitor which interns have completed their required steps. This centralized approach has drastically reduced the administrative workload on the recruitment team.

By implementing Abode, American Family Insurance has created a more organized and user-friendly experience for both interns and the talent team, which can be seen with the high adoption and engagement metrics. It has also fostered a stronger sense of community among interns, as they can now interact through the Forum with both interns, recruiters and managers alike.

There have been many positive changes to the intern pre-board experience with Abode. Interns now feel more connected and comfortable with each other, even in a virtual setting, thanks to features like the directory that help them get to know their cohort. I-9 verification has become simplified and is now at a 100% completion rate, as well as equipment shipment, both of which has reduced the burden on managers for tracking and improving overall efficiency. Internal stakeholders, including the intern and talent team, have praised the platform for its efficiency in extracting and managing data on the program.

Additional key improvements with American Family Insurance: