There are a lot of roads in Western Australia. Not to mention other major transport infrastructure such as ports, rail, airports, and waterways. One government department is responsible for ensuring all those roads and other transport routes stay safe and efficient. That department is the Western Australian Department of Transport (DoT).
To adequately fulfil its role, the DoT needs to get the best people possible for the many positions within the department. With both urban and regional centres that oversee the most complex transport system in Australia, there are more than 1600 employees who make it all possible. In order to attract and retain the best employees to fill these roles, the DoT needs an efficient employee onboarding system to welcome their average of 20-30 new hires each month.
The DoT’s Old System for Employee Onboarding
Until recently, the DoT was using a manual system to onboard new employees. This resulted in a lot of messy paperwork and inefficiency. A new hire’s introduction to the department was a manually sent email with a Microsoft Word document attached. Due to the nature of email, this document was only large enough to contain one of the department’s many important policy documents, as well as some basic welcome information the new employee would need to get started.
The rest of the onboarding process took place after the employee had started work at the DoT. That is, IF their superiors could find the time to bring these new hires up to speed with essential information such as award conditions and other HR policy that could affect them. Sadly, all too many organisations find themselves in this situation.
Making matters worse was the fact that there was no communication between departmental divisions such as IT, organisational development (OD), payroll, and premises, to let them know the new employee had started and needed to be catered for. As a result, each and every new employee’s experience was different and was at the mercy of the circumstances of the day as to when and if their introduction to their new career would roll out smoothly.
The Toll this Old System was Taking
The DoT is the first to acknowledge that the old way of onboarding new employees was frustrating, time consuming, and inefficient. The result was a haphazard system that made the department look behind the times and which wasted valuable taxpayer resources that could be put to far better use maintaining the state’s vast transport infrastructure.
The Solution – HROnboard
Then along came HROnboard. HROnboard represented an entirely new way of doing things. The department’s new hires could now be welcomed using a cloud-based online interface that gave them access to all the information they needed, right at their fingertips. No more clunky manual emails. No more MS Word documents.
Not only did this new system revolutionise the employee experience, showing new hires that they were now working with a fresh, progressive, efficient organisation, but it also made DoT’s back end processes run seamlessly. Now all of the internal departments (IT, OD, payroll, premises, etc.) would be notified as soon as a new employee had been hired and could make the necessary arrangements. No more guesswork; no more leaving it to chance.
Why the DoT Chose HROnboard
The DoT chose HROnboard as their new employee onboarding system because it promised to give their new employees a fantastic first impression. It made the onboarding experience stand out from other employees, catapulting the department far ahead of many other options in today’s competitive employment landscape – an increasing priority even for government departments looking to attract the best and brightest.
This new, fast, and friendly welcome was an induction to remember. The DoT had the foresight to realise it’s often the small things that count when it comes to delighting new hires and instilling in them a sense of purpose.
The New Process
With the DoT’s new cloud-based onboarding system, new hires are welcomed via a secure, branded online portal that includes a custom welcome message as well as all relevant corporate policies. Candidates can now receive and accept their offer of employment quickly and easily, providing personal details such as tax and superannuation details directly via the portal. Previously it took weeks to collect and process this information alone.
With HROnboard’s built in data verification process, accuracy of new employee information is assured. Data is now entered once, and once only, via the user-friendly online portal.
On the back end, HROnboard’s notification centre ensures the right people are getting the right information as soon as it comes to hand.
The result is a department whose newest employees are given the opportunity to hit the ground running. The bottlenecks from the old paper-based system are a thing of the past.
The Result for the DoT
The DoT experienced immediate improvements in efficiency after updating their onboarding system using HROnboard. The amount of paperwork required dropped to next to nothing, representing significant savings in materials and labour costs. The gaps in the department’s onboarding system were filled, resulting in more efficient internal systems. Perhaps most significantly though, new employees are now welcomed into a modern, fresh organisation, resulting in higher morale and better employee retention, which flows through all of the DoT’s systems.
Trevor Wiseman, HR Systems Manager at the DoT, sums up the results best:
“The DoT’s employees are now onboard and ready to roll on day one using an easy and efficient process that everyone loves! Because our new hires have enjoyed HROnboard so much, it’s being rolled out to also include contract extensions and rehires.”