Onboarding + Performance Support
AOAS — Asynchronous Onboarding Assistance System
Onboarding is usually designed as an event that competes for the time of the busiest people in the organization. AOAS reframes it as a support system that answers questions at the moment they are asked.
- Status
- Concept / Prototype
- Capability demonstrated
- Performance support designKnowledge systemsTechnology integration
01
The Situation
New employees entered environments where the knowledge they needed existed, but was distributed across people, documents, systems, and undocumented practice. Access depended on who happened to be available.
02
The Challenge
Onboarding load fell disproportionately on experienced staff through repeated interruption. New hires waited for answers, formed workarounds, or guessed. The experience varied widely depending on start date, team, and supervisor availability.
03
Diagnosis
This was not a training-content problem. Content already existed. The failure was access, structure, and timing — knowledge was not retrievable at the moment of need, and the system depended on synchronous human availability that could not scale.
04
My Role
- Analyzed the onboarding experience and identified access failure points
- Designed the asynchronous support architecture
- Built performance-support artifacts and digital resources
- Defined the maintenance and ownership model
05
Strategic Approach
I mapped the questions new employees actually ask against where the answers lived and how long they took to obtain. Anything answerable asynchronously moved into structured, findable support. Synchronous time was reserved for what genuinely required a human: judgment, relationship, and context.
06
Framework / Method
- Moment-of-need analysisClassifying questions by urgency, frequency, and consequence.
- Performance support layeringJob aids and reference before instruction, instruction before events.
- Asynchronous-first designReserving human time for what only humans can do.
07
What I Built
Resource hub structure
Organized, findable knowledge architecture for new employees.
Job aids and quick reference
Task-level support usable during work, not before it.
Process and workflow maps
Making implicit sequences explicit and reviewable.
Onboarding pathway
Staged progression from orientation to independent performance.
08
Authentic Work Sample
The onboarding application of this architecture is shown in full on the AOAS framework page.
09
Evidence
Supporting artifacts
09
What This Demonstrates
10
Lessons / Evolution
The hardest part was never building the resources — it was ownership. Support systems decay the moment no one is accountable for currency. Every subsequent version of this work has started by naming a maintainer before naming a deliverable.
11
Related Work
Contact
Let's talk about what you want to achieve.
Whether you're building a stronger team, improving onboarding, or looking for someone to lead the work, I'd welcome the conversation.