Regional Onboarding

Project Completed

Problem Statement

In a centralized Onboarding team model, sometimes the hiring needs for departments cannot be addressed quickly or uniquely enough to serve their business. As an example, a hire who cannot come to in-person Onboarding but needs to teach a course on Monday, but a department has given HR two days notice. In other cases, some Departments want certain populations, such as permanent or Career staff or faculty, to be treated in a manner that is different than temporary, seasonal staff -- yet in the current process they are lumped together. Departments have requested more personalized and timely Onboarding processing by having this work be performed by their regional HR staff.

Business Case

More than ever, Onboarding processes cannot be inefficient, delayed, or impersonal. The Bay Area education (and other) sectors are extremely competitive, so to acquire, onboard, and retain top talent, it is important to be quick, responsive, thorough, and personal with Onboarding activities.

Objectives

  • Affiliate Onboarding Improvements to reduce turnaround time by eliminating handoffs to the Central Onboarding team. This effort will require the creation of a DocuSign PowerForm to intake Affiliate Onboarding paperwork as well as informing departments about the new steps.

  • Provide training and process steps to the regions on how to handle their own Onboarding for smaller, high-touch populations or urgent hires.

Success Metrics

  • For the Affiliate Onboarding Improvemets:

    1. Implementation of the new process to reduce the handoff and improve turnaround time for affiliate onboarding/hiring.

    2. Implementation of the DocuSign PowerForm.

  • For the Onboarding Training and Process Steps for Regions: TBD

Project Leaders

  • Sponsor: Marc Fisher
  • Project Manager: Isabel Nguyen

For more information on this project, contact:

Prior Accomplishments

Project accomplishments from prior months are noted here.

DateAccomplishments
Nov 2021

Sponsor agreed that we could make changes to the Regional Onboarding goals, due to the issues with resource and budget constraints. The new objectives for this effort are: 1) Affiliate Onboarding Improvements to reduce turnaround time by eliminating handoffs to the Central Onboarding team and 2) Provide cross-training to the regions on how to handle their own Onboarding for smaller, high-touch populations or urgent hires.
Oct-Dec 2020 Agreement and training documentation created for regions to provide "surge support" for the Central Onboarding team when there are peak periods and not enough Onboarding appointments time slots. After observing how this surge support work goes in January (the peak period for ASE/GSR hiring) 2021, this could help us to evaluate whether regions could use this same approach for urgent, last-minute, or priority Onboarding appointments for their region. It is a possible pivot from the initial proposal for regions to do all Onboarding services in their region while still providing more services and meet the needs of the departments and a way to complete Regionalized Onboarding in 2021.
Jul-Sep 2020

Regional leadership have developed an initial scope and timeline for developing an onboarding team within their own region. But due to resource constraints, we will need to review which regions will continue with the Regionalized Onboarding implementation for their region and on what timeline. The current expected completion date for this project is end of 2021.

Risk/Issue History

Project risks and issues that have been resolved or closed are noted here. 

DateRisk/Issue
Nov 2021
  • Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the university has been under budgetary duress and this has impacted staffing and resources greatly. The initial scope of the project was to provide better service through more personalized, in-region Onboarding; but without staffing, this kind of work must be scaled efficiently by remaining central for the larger hiring populations, like ASE/GSRs, Students, and Lecturers. But remaining centralized could negatively impact new employee experience for the regions. 

Mitigation Plan:

  • Meet with regions to discuss other options and ideas for how to provide service to their regions without taking on Onboarding themselves. Present ideas to leadership.