How Upstream Eliminated the Manual Headache of Onboarding Coordination

About Upstream‍

Upstream is a non-profit organization dedicated to bridging healthcare gaps by revolutionizing family planning solutions.

The Challenge

As Upstream scales quickly, its lean People Experience Team faces a growing challenge: efficiently onboarding 25+ new employees per quarter while ensuring they embody Upstream’s mission from day one. Their existing onboarding process required 70+ hours per new hire, making it difficult to keep up with their rapid growth.

Without a centralized system for managing people programs and communications, Upstream encountered several roadblocks:

• Lack of Visibility: No clear overview of communications before, during, or after a new hire’s start date.
• Inability to Drive Improvements: No way to track which communication strategies were effective, resulting in a lack of data-driven decision-making.
• Low Engagement Rates: Ineffective messaging led to low open, click-through, and response rates, increasing the time spent answering repetitive questions.

The Solution: ChangeEngine

Upstream turned to ChangeEngine, a System of Communication that integrates with 30+ HRIS systems, enabling HR and People Teams to automate, track, and optimize employee communications with ease.

Using ChangeEngine, Upstream’s People Experience Team was able to:

• Streamline Onboarding – Reduce manual work by leveraging and automating hundreds of best-practice templates for key employee moments, complete with recommended messaging, channels, and engagement strategies.
• Enhance Brand Consistency – Create brand-aligned graphics that are 6x more memorable, reducing dependency on marketing teams.
• Improve Communication Visibility – Showcase onboarding and engagement sequences to leadership with intuitive timeline and calendar views.
• Boost Employee Engagement – Track communication open rates (82%) and click rates (60%), far surpassing industry averages.
• Increase Participation in People Programs – Personalized, action-oriented messaging led to a significant uptick in referrals, Glassdoor reviews, and new technology adoption.

"ChangeEngine has been amazing and will continue to be amazing. The automation is a key piece—just having things run on autopilot is a major sell. I’ve been in HR for years, and I would have given anything to have ChangeEngine!" – Keisha O'Marde-Jack, Chief People Officer

The Impact

By implementing ChangeEngine, Upstream’s People Experience Team saved over 500 hours per year on just automating onboarding alone while enhancing engagement across their organization. With a scalable, automated onboarding process, Upstream is now able to focus on strategic initiatives rather than administrative tasks.

• 500+ hours saved per year
• Higher engagement with 82% open rates & 60% click rates
• Improved onboarding experience for 25+ new hires per quarter
• Greater visibility and optimization of People Team program