During my time with the HR Department of The Community Builders, I was tasked with the job of revamping their onboarding process, which was in definite need of a refresh. I developed a name, logo, color scheme, and a number of educational and professional development assets that are still in use at the company today.
build your foundation
WHEN?
July 2022 - Jan 2023
Employer branding, video editing, animation
WHAT?
who are the community builders?
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As stated on their website, the Community Builders specialize in developing “high-quality homes for families, seniors, and people with disabilities. Since 1964, (their) mission-driven organization has advanced housing equity through award-winning, affordable, and mixed-income communities. Today, (they) own and manage over 14,000 apartment homes, connecting residents with resources to unlock their full potential.”
what is build your foundation?
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Build Your Foundation is the brand identity I developed for onboarding at The Community Builders. I wanted something that felt relevant to TCB’s already existing brand, and the phrase “build your foundation” felt like kismet. It is both referencing the literal, physical work of The Community Builders and the equally real yet immaterial work of building a career from the ground up. It suggests that onboarding is a multi-step process, but that starting small and building brick by metaphorical brick will ulltimately lead to stability and longevity at the company.
COLLATERAL
I wanted to really put an emphasis on the idea of home and stability with this logo. I experimented with using imagery of a house or apartment building, but ended up landing on these bricks - they’re simple, effective, on-brand, and easily recognizable.
The Community Builders has a color palette with a lot of bright, fun secondary and tertiary colors, but most of their collateral only utilizes their primary red and yellow. For Build Your Foundation, I wanted to throw those additional colors into the fray and make something that felt fun and inviting.
One of my main goals in working on Build Your Foundation was to emphasize the human aspect of onboarding, and make working at TCB feel personal and accessible. Employee features were a large part of reaching that goal. I wanted to show new hires a picture of what their life could look like some years down the line, and give real examples of what current employees felt proud of and fulfilled by - as well as provide advice to get them started. I created a lost of questions, reached out to employees recommended by my superiors, aiming to create a pool of diverse individuals with a wide variety of positions at TCB, and conducted email and phone interviews with those interested and available. These features were created to be email attachments that recipients could scroll through to read.
The Resource List was a concept created by my colleague and myself as a way to centralize useful resources and information for new hires. She worked to gather the content, and I put it together into a PDF with links when applicable, as well as assisting with categorization.
In another attempt to humanize and personalize The Community Builders’ onboarding process, I helmed the creation of a number of welcome videos from higher-ups at our corporate office. After reaching out to a number of candidates, I ended up sitting down with the CEO, the head of Property Management, and an HR leader, and created three videos, ranging from short introductions and welcomes to a more informational videos about company policy. Each higher-up wrote their own script with emphases on the Build Your Foundation brand, and I directed and edited the videos myself.