Onboarding Center

About the Program

Category: Personnel Management, Employment and Training (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

Creating a successful onboarding experience affirms an employee’s decision to join Wake County. Prior to 2021, Wake County’s onboarding program was fragmented and inconsistent, leading to new hires receiving different information and sometimes joining the organization with no one to greet them, no desk, and no computer or email access. In 2021, Wake County established a centralized Onboarding Center to manage three program areas: onboarding, background checks and offboarding. The Onboarding Center’s goals are to create a seamless onboarding process, ensure consistency, and provide a world-class employee experience. By mapping onboarding and hiring processes, Human Resources revealed a staggering number of process steps, bottlenecks, and wait times that negatively impacted onboarding. In collaboration with key stakeholders, HR increased onboarding preparation time before a new hire starts from 6 to 11 days. Staff also designed tools and resources to improve the onboarding experience, while reducing urgent requests to our operational support teams. Ongoing new hire survey feedback is monitored to evaluate and optimize the program. The improved processes have resulted in 30% more employees being onboarded with access to systems, 93% indicating they have tools needed for their job, and 100% giving a positive rating for recommending Wake as an employer.