Why going digital is the key to this government agency’s success
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is responsible for helping government agencies improve their digital services to make them simple, fast and clear. Established in 2012, they were keen to explore improvements to their inherited, outdated systems. Being driven by manual tasks, heavy paperwork, and multiple security checks meant that the average time from offer to acceptance could be more than 4 weeks.
DTA’s commitment to improving people’s experience with government agencies meant that they needed to be pioneers in digital best practice. Revolutionising their onboarding experience for new hires was simply a reflection of living their values while gaining operational and financial efficiencies. Michelle Harwood and Olivia Cummins-Carney from the DTA shared their journey transitioning their HR processes to digital.
Onboarding New Hires Securely
“There was a lot of paperwork. A lot of manual intervention. We were producing a lot of documents and repetition of data entry meant we were experiencing more errors.” ~ Michelle Harwood
Government departments and agencies are mandated to extensive security checks that can be time consuming and slow down the recruitment process. Compliance procedures ensure privacy and security needs are met and can mitigate risk. Noone can deny the advantages far out way the repetitive and tedious task required to fulfil the regulations. However by creating digital checks and prompts across departments you can ensure that procedures are strictly followed and are unbound to human error.
“When we were working with HROnboard to launch the program, the daunting thing was: we are government. We have so many hoops to jump through. It’s going to be really challenging. How are we going to meet our security processes?…….It’s not going to be possible right?It absolutely is! HROnboard has been fantastic with tailoring things to our needs and configuring the system to use on all different employment systems.” ~ Olivia Cummins-Carney
Compliance adherence is one of the top priorities in 2020. It’s no surprise that government departments must find ways to ensure their rigorous requirements can stand up to scrutiny.
Since developing their digital onboarding program with HROnboard, they have saved approximately 13,980 pieces of paper and with it multiple manual errors. Automation takes human error out of the equation and leaves more time for other rewarding tasks.
Engaging Government Employees
Providing an employee journey that met their users needs was a high priority at the DTA. Olivia attributes the use of the onboarding checklist at HROnboard to forming the foundation of their employee experience.
“It was really an opportunity to start fresh and build something for our users that met their needs. It’s really tailored to the individual, how they learn, their style and it’s at their own pace.” ~ Olivia Cummins-Carney
Some of the ways that they have implemented engaging interactions is to create messages from the heads of departments welcoming employees. This has freed up executives to communicate in a way that suits their schedule. Creating memorable information like advising of parking options and cafes nearby before day one gives the users the chance to engage before even walking through the door.
“From capability development: you know this is what we offer, this is what our policies are. We link to our intranet pages so they can go to another location within our domain.” ~ Olivia Cummins-Carney
Providing vital information that contributes to the individuals success can increase retention by enabling engagement within the first few months of onboarding. Government departments can be information heavy and being able to communicate within a digital space can alleviate missed information. Candidates can now complete the compliance requirements within 3 days rather than weeks, making it easier for them to accept their offers.
“We have minimised our human error. We provide our users with the flexibility of when and where they can accept their offers.”~ Michelle Harwood
Monitoring the onboarding journey
Part of implementing a digital program has given Michelle and Olivia the opportunity to really analyse all of their processes from recruitment to onboarding and transferring between government departments. They are also keen to implement an offboarding program with HROnboard in the near future after the success of their digital onboarding.
“As backend users, it is so easy to use. It is intuitive. It is highly configurable.” ~ Michelle Harwood
As HR professionals, their time is split between conflicting priorities. Automating a large part of their procedures while visually managing them in their dashboard has made it easy to see where they are at in any given moment. Being able to pull reports and look at workflows is only part of the ease that a digital platform can bring to human resource departments. Working in a government department where they are dealing with hundreds of people has made these tasks and insights easy to scale up in times of peak onboarding. Executing change within a large workforce can be daunting. For the DTA, using a digital platform can assure communication of changes are flawless and makes it easy to implement progressive change when required.
“Automating the whole process. Capturing trends. Being able to analyse those things. So we can build a better workforce and better processes.” ~ Olivia Cummins-Carney