Most companies struggle with onboarding at scale. When you're bringing in dozens of new hires every week, the typical approach falls apart fast. You're constantly re-uploading presentations, wrestling with version control nightmares, and burning hours on manual setup. However, all that extra effort still doesn't deliver the smooth experience your new hires deserve.

The Onboarding & New Hire Experience team at Cognizant has transformed the onboarding journey into a high-impact, scalable, and deeply engaging experience, setting a new benchmark across the organization. In this playbook, we'll walk through one of their onboarding programs and show you exactly how they transformed their weekly new hire sessions for hundreds of associates across North America.

• Streamline logistics with automated workflows and custom reporting
• Boost engagement and retention through immersive onboarding experiences
• Enhance flexibility and continuity with easy access to key resources

Amanda's team at Cognizant structures their onboarding program as a series in Goldcast. The smart move? They duplicate events monthly instead of creating them too far ahead. This keeps their backend clean and makes updates much easier when things change.

Their three-session format is straightforward: a 30-minute optional pre-joining session, followed by two one-hour sessions. They build polls, surveys, and other interactive elements like buffer videos directly into their event templates, making it simple to duplicate everything for future cohorts.

With corporate onboarding at a company this size, there's no shortage of documents and resources to share. The team uploads 10+ supporting files (IT setup guides, I-9 instructions, how-to videos, etc.) so everything appears automatically under the Docs tab where new hires can find it easily. The whole process stays streamlined because everything lives in one system.

Each week, Amanda and her team upload their new hire cohort in bulk. Goldcast makes this painless with just three required fields (email, first name, last name) and a simple CSV upload handles the rest. No more administrative busy work.

The platform offers both standard and custom email templates, so they can automate session reminders while keeping their messaging consistent. Since these templates are duplicable, they're saving time with every cohort.

💡 Pro tip: their registration confirmation email pulls double duty as a welcome email with an onboarding checklist attached as a clickable button.

97% of Cognizant's new hires report being highly satisfied with the onboarding process. The team has found their groove by streamlining the process and focusing on delivering real value.

The Q&A feature is their secret weapon. Anyone who's been the new person knows how overwhelming it gets trying to figure out who handles what. The Q&A feature lets facilitators manage questions efficiently instead of wading through chat streams.

They're strategic about engagement too. Polls and in-session surveys break up content without adding extra time, keep people involved, and generate metrics they track for internal KPIs and session improvements. They also embed videos at key intervals to give natural breaks, and everything gets recorded for on-demand access.

Just a quick flashback: before Goldcast, their previous vendors were inconsistent headaches. Tracking questions was challenging, they had to re-upload their 45-slide, 65 MB presentation deck for every single session, and audio-video issues would also disrupt sessions randomly.

💡 Pro tip: want to save even more time? Set up your events as simulive experiences where pre-recorded content appears live, paired with live Q&A for real-time questions. It's perfect for consistent delivery without forcing facilitators to present the same session over and over.

• 97% satisfaction rate among new hires, a 15% increase since implementing Goldcast
• 20% increase in operational efficiency across onboarding programs
• 15% improvement in scalability, with more enhancements planned by year-end
• Hundreds of associates accommodated weekly with minimal overhead

Content differentiates great onboarding from good onboarding, but the right platform behind it makes your team dramatically more efficient so they can focus their creative energy where it matters most. When you standardize templates, automate communications, and deploy smart engagement tools, you create an experience that actually works for everyone involved. Cognizant’s success shows how strategic thinking combined with the right tools can turn onboarding from an administrative burden into a competitive advantage.

Lisa Kraus, Head of Onboarding & New Employee Experience at Cognizant: "At the heart of this transformation is the strategic deployment of Goldcast. Far beyond a webinar tool, Goldcast has become a cornerstone of our onboarding architecture across North America."