Business White Paper Improve HR Efficiency and Employee Retention with Software AG’s Employee Onboarding Process Framework Dave Brooks Director, Strategic Business Solutions, Software AG Conchi Garcia Manager, Government Strategy, Software AG August 2008
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Improve HR Efficiency and Employee Retention with Software AG's Employee Onboarding Process
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Busi
ness
Whi
te P
aper
Improve HR Efficiency and Employee Retention with Software AG’s Employee Onboarding Process Framework
Dave BrooksDirector, Strategic Business Solutions, Software AG
Conchi GarciaManager, Government Strategy, Software AG
August 2008
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ContentSIntroDuCtIon 4
the eMployee onBoArDInG proCeSS 5
eMployee onBoArDInG proCeSS FrAMework CoMponentS 6
key perForMAnCe InDICAtorS to MeASure the eFFeCtIveneSS oF eMployee onBoArDInG 9
BeneFItS oF A StreAMlIneD eMployee onBoArDInG proCeSS 10
uSe CASe: SoFtwAre AG leverAGeS ItS own teChnoloGy to StreAMlIne hr operAtIonS 11
next StepS For your eMployee onBoArDInG proCeSS 12
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ABStrACtonboarding new hires has long been an administrative headache for larger organizations.
Triggering a complex mix of business processes - from finding desk space to provid-
ing access to IT systems - each onboarding exercise touches multiple departments and
numerous IT systems, making it increasingly difficult to manage the end-to-end process.
And given that employee onboarding impacts the speed with which new hires become
productive and has a direct bearing on compliance-sensitive processes, optimizing this
process has tremendous payoffs.
onboarding is no longer the new hire “orientation” of the past, it also encompasses the
variety of tasks and requirements involved with acclimating and engaging a new em-
ployee in the company. Innovative organizations understand that first impressions persist,
and recognize that the first impression new hires get of their work environment is critical
to improving employee retention rates. In today’s environment, support for new hires
is not only executed in the recruitment efforts but more importantly in a well defined,
formalized onboarding process.
An optimized employee onboarding process involves forms management, tasks man-
agement, and socialization in the company culture. organizations that incorporate these
three components are those companies that will achieve optimal return on investment
(RoI) from their onboarding activities.
Using a process framework or model that is based on industry standards, best practices,
and peer experience can dramatically assist an HR organization in improving the em-
ployee onboarding process. This document describes Software Ag’s Employee onboarding
Process Framework and discusses the benefits that can be achieved by leveraging the
framework to maximize HR efficiency through ongoing process improvement efforts. See
how your organization can increase employee satisfaction and reduce costs by automat-
ing processes, fostering process visibility and transparency, and eliminating sources of
errors.
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IntroDuCtIon
The HR buzzword these days is onboarding. Ac-
cording to the onboarding Benchmark report from
the Aberdeen group1, seventy-six percent of com-
panies are implementing or plan to implement
a formalized process. despite this relatively high
percentage, many companies struggle to grasp the
fundamentals of onboarding. Ninety percent of
companies believe the first six months are critical
to an employee’s decision to stay at the company,
yet many are unaware of the impact onboard-
ing has on employee retention rates and time
to productivity. Instead, most companies rely on
paper-based solutions that create added costs and
often leave a bad first impression. In fact, thirty-six
percent of companies still do not use any technol-
ogy for their onboarding solution.
An automated solution can help organizations
address pressures to reduce the time until a new
hire can start being productive and increase em-
ployee satisfaction. The pressures shown in Figure
1 reveal future-looking, long-term strategies that
affect the needs of both the organization and the
employee.
Software Ag created the Employee onboarding
Process Framework to assist our customers to
manage the new hire onboarding process with
greater precision and control, which not only helps
to save costs and streamline HR operations, but
1 Onboarding Benchmark Report, Aberdeen Group, August 2006, http://www.aberdeen.com/summary/report/benchmark/RA_Onboarding_MT_3393.asp
also to increase employee satisfaction and reten-
tion rates. leveraging best practices and our lead-
ing technology, we have helped many organiza-
tions optimize their onboarding process to deliver
tangible benefits in a short period of time.
Software Ag Process Frameworks use industry
standards as a baseline and leverage Software
Ag’s unique domain expertise at the intersection
of the industry, business process and technology
to help define a unifying reference model for cus-
tomer requirements definition. In effect, Process
Frameworks serve as a requirements starting point
that enables our customers to build quickly and
confidently upon our knowledge and experience.
Process Frameworks combine a comprehensive
understanding of the subject process, documented
challenges that companies face in process im-
provement, a set of key performance indicators
(kPIs) that are significant to understanding and
perfecting the process, and related technology as-
sets and artifacts that help advance requirements
discovery and accelerate the requirements defini-
tion process for you – our customers.
Figure 1 – top pressures for employee onboarding, Source: Aberdeen Group, 2006
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the eMployee onBoArDInG proCeSS
DescriptionThe broad description of Employee onboarding
is the process linking recruitment of new hires
to productive roles within an organization. While
the maturity level varies from organization to
organization, traditional employee onboarding is
a manual or semi-manual activity done by an HR
individual who typically organizes and executes
the tasks in a “top-of-the-stack” linear manner,
transcribing data from paper or from source sys-
tems into multiple back-end systems to fulfill the
hiring requirements and guide the candidate into
productive employment. When an HR employee
is onboarding multiple new hires or multiple HR
employees are sharing tasks, variations and incon-
sistencies can occur as the process of onboarding is
carried forward in chaotic or ad hoc manners dur-
ing company growth and seasonal surges in hiring.
In the context of all central HR processes (see
Figure 2), Software Ag separates the Employee
onboarding process into 4 discrete phases (see
Figure 3)
Pre-Hire (Identified to offered)•New Hire (Acceptance to Employee Transition)•Provisional Employment (First day to Vested •Employment) Vesting (Full Employment Hand-off to Perfor-•mance management)
The scope of Software Ag’s Employee onboard-
ing Process Framework is focused on the first
two phases, Pre-Hire and New-Hire, since these
phases demonstrate a majority of diverse roles,
requirements, and automation opportunities for
employee onboarding. Pre-Hire begins when
recruitment identifies a candidate, and it includes
activities and tasks that culminate in a “cleared to
hire” status and a job offer with a transition from
this hand-off from recruitment through employee
acceptance of the offer up to the employee’s
orientation. “Identified to offered” includes the
tasks to organize a new hire’s orientation and
the triggering of the New-Hire process. New-Hire
continues until employees are ready to begin their
first day on the job.
While some organizations have industry-specific
requirements when it comes to employee on-
boarding, there are many cross-industry similari-
ties in the onboarding process. Typical process
tasks include:
gather paperwork and obtain requisite signa-•turesPerform background checks and validate work •historyAssign workplace and issue needed equipment•Issue Id badge and set-up necessary system •accounts
Even though these high-level tasks are fairly simi-
lar across industries, the details can differ greatly,
even within the same organization. For example,
the onboarding of a call center agent will be very
different from the onboarding of a senior execu-
tive, with each role having significantly different
timeframes and risks.
Further, onboarding efforts might also be exposed
to additional scrutiny and audit. For example,
many employers include probationary or ap-
prenticeship/training periods, drug testing, and
security evaluations that must be successfully
Figure 2 – Central hr processes
Figure 3 – employee onboarding process phase
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completed before an employee is fully vested. All
of these activities typically include human actions,
data and information capture, and interaction with
multiple and disparate systems.
An equivalent process area where the content of
this framework would be applicable is Employee
off-Boarding, which could be the same steps but
in reverse order. While off-boarding is actually not
as simple as reverse onboarding, the approaches
for onboarding and off-boarding require similar
tasks to be executed and documented to assure
the right outcomes. The task methodology and
role progression for off-boarding can just as easily
be drawn, rendered, and automated through an
automated solution similar to the one presented in
this onboarding framework.
Business ChallengesSo, what is preventing HR departments from
smoothly executing the onboarding process?
Beyond the typical issues faced in managing hu-
man relations in complex global institutions or
high-profile employers, analysis of HR onboarding
methods reveals these common stumbling blocks:
1. Processes are complex, manual, and labor
intensive, and most activities are paper-based.
Frequent manual interventions introduce pre-
ventable process bottlenecks.
2. Necessary information and data is held in
multiple system and database silos.
3. Issue resolution requires numerous access
points to critical applications and dispersed
information.
4. limited visibility into where the candidate
stands in the process.
5. Employers have fragmented, redundant opera-
tions where process steps are unnecessarily
duplicated numerous times.
6. There is ad-hoc and error-prone exception
handling that not only fails to follow a consis-
tent remediation procedure, but is often not
documented.
7. Employers fail to fully leverage existing invest-
ments and technology to satisfy regulatory
compliance needs.
An automated, customized onboarding solution
from Software Ag can help HR organizations to
overcome these challenges and go beyond mere
process automation and obtain a payoff over the
long term. The ultimate objective is to create a
technology infrastructure that allows HR ana-
lysts and managers to configure and modify the
automated business functions they need for their
day-to-day operations, leaving IT professionals in
charge of the underlying systems, security and
programming that power the infrastructure.
eMployee onBoArDInG proCeSS FrAMe-work CoMponentS
Business process Management Suite (BpMS)The core of Software Ag’s Employee onboarding
Process Framework is the webmethods Business
Process management Suite (BPmS), which allows
an organization to go beyond mere HR process
automation and achieve real-time data access, kPI
analysis, reporting, and ongoing process improve-
ment. With webmethods BPmS, an executable
process model is created based on a documented
or existing process. The BPmS automates the hu-
man workflow, integrates data between disparate
systems and executes the business rules controlled
by the process model. on an ongoing basis, it also
records snapshots of data that allow the process to
be not only measured end-to-end, but monitored
in real time and corrected easily when the need
arises.
Software Ag’s technology covers the entire life-
cycle of the onboarding process (see Figure 4),
including:
Process Modeling
modeling is the first step and it requires the analy-
sis and graphical development of a process (see
Figure 5). Flexible tools are utilized for modeling
the onboarding process, creating user interfaces,
specifying task routing rules and defining key
performance indicators (kPIs). HR specialists can
work together with the IT department in this
unified tool to design, document, generate, and
implement process-oriented applications. By using
one graphical modeling tool, users can create the
both the process and the corresponding front-end
application. And integrated simulation capabilities
allow simulating the performance of the process
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and optimizing resource requirements under real-
world conditions, prior to deployment and with no
risk to ongoing HR operations.
Process Execution
After the process has been modeled, it can be
implemented; that is, made operational. At this
time, the process can be tested and debugged and
the IT staff can integrate the process to existing
applications, both in the HR and other depart-
ments. The process is managed both at task level
and as a whole.
Figure 4 – Automated employee onboarding process
Figure 5 – Sample of a process swim lane design
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Definition and Implementation of Business Rules
Business rules allow for different processing paths
based for instance on employee type, geography,
etc. many times, an HR department will need
to create or change relevant business rules as
required without affecting the onboarding process
flow itself. A business rules engine enables the
HR department to define the specific rules that
concern the onboarding process in simple tables or
more complex visual decision trees and to validate
them.
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)While the onboarding process is running, BAm
provides real time analytics and monitoring of
tasks, kPIs and the process as a whole – all in real-
of rich and interactive interfaces: end-user work-
spaces that are easy to understand, and easy to
use. HR employees see on a single interface their
daily activities, tasks, and all information they
need to collaborate and perform tasks (see Figure
7).
Each task that is presented in the Task Inbox
represents an action to be taken, a decision to be
made, or an activity of work required to be accom-
plished. Within this inbox, tasks can be opened,
Figure 6 – Sample of a dashboard screen
Figure 7 – Customized hr employee screen, including task views and task Inbox
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assigned, delegated, escalated, or rejected. Any
task in an inbox can be measured and implies
ownership of the task and responsibility for its
accomplishment. In this manner, clear responsibil-
ity is assigned to HR employees, and it is visible
within the process management of the automa-
tion. Task analytics provide visibility into the way
in which people impact process performance,
better enabling business users to prioritize their
tasks and managers to more effectively coordinate
staff workloads.
key perForMAnCe InDICAtorS to MeASure the eFFeCtIveneSS oF eMployee onBoArDInG
Employee onboarding is an activity that is rich in
useful and meaningful metrics. Process automa-
tion and monitoring facilitate the harvesting and
use of the broadest set of metrics to benefit senior
management, HR, finance, and department/hiring
managers. onboarding key Performance Indicators
(kPIs) can be grouped into three main segments
reporting on:
1. Process performance
2. Fulfillment of jobs
3. candidate profile information
process performanceProcess metrics are directly measured for the
process automation. These metrics are represented
by three process measurement types:
Volumetric counts: they measure and report •meaningful indicators like the number of ap-plications submitted or how many applications are in a specific process stage or any other step in the processVelocity metrics: time-based, they quantify •the pace of process performance, measuring the elapsed time between each task within the process and additionally the end-to-end process performance of each new employee’s status through the onboarding activityError metrics: system and process errors are in-•dicators of process health and success. System errors include defects like a failure to insert data from the process into a backend system or other infrastructure health signatures, like excessive transaction time-outs
Fulfillment of jobsmeasurement of these metrics focuses on the
success in fulfilling the demand for new employ-
ees. Examples of metrics in this are the number
of open positions, the number of applications
by position, the number of new hires, etc. These
metrics can be dimensioned by work location and
work level and by reporting against these metrics,
an organization can show the success or failure of
the onboarding activities and how (or if) they are
meeting the demand of the organization for new
hires.
Candidate profile information In some cases and for some employers, the gath-
ering and reporting of profile statistics might be
required, e.g. the education level of candidates,
their years of experience or the recruiting source.
Extracting and analyzing this type of data can
reveal interesting and significant patterns in re-
cruitment that might need to be changed in order
to attract the desired candidates.
Figure 8 shows a sample set of kPIs that Software
Ag has found to be critical to the success of our
customers in the onboarding process.
To make the most out of an automated onboard-
ing process and process monitoring, kPI measure-
ments must be captured and integrated across the
process in real-time and must also be expected to
vary within acceptable norms. once an organiza-
tion has determined which kPIs are important,
the next step is to find and integrate that specific
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14
About the Authors
Dave Brooks is a Director of Global Strategic
Business Solutions for Software AG where he is
a member of a team of highly skilled resources
who are responsible for solving critical business
issues and generating quantifiable ROI for the
company’s Fortune 2000 customers. Mr. Brooks’
career covers over 20 years of Wall Street and
Silicon Valley experience, including consulting
and software sales in the high tech manufactur-
ing vertical across the supply chain. He initially
developed his business processes experience
while working for Applied Materials, where he
led a team responsible for the design and
implementation of globally-deployed business
applications. Mr. Brooks is a graduate of Brown
University with a BA in Organizational Behavior
& Management.
Conchi Garcia is Manager of Government
Strategy with Software AG, where she is
responsible for defining solution and go-to-
market strategies for the government sector
worldwide. Ms. Garcia has more than 8 years of
experience in industry marketing and business
consulting, with working experience at the
international level and in several countries. Ms.
Garcia holds a double degree in International
Business and in Marketing & Sales from the
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
ABoUT SoFTWARE Ag PRocESS FRAmEWoRkS
Software AG Process Frameworks are solution
reference models designed to guide
requirements discovery and definition, and
enable users to build quickly and confidently
upon Software AG’s knowledge and experi-
ence base in key process areas such as
order-to-cash. Built upon Software AG
technology and practices, and informed by
our collective customer experiences, the
frameworks reflect a deep understanding of
the subject process and the challenges
companies face in improving the process.
The Process Framework artifacts use industry
standards as a baseline and leverage
Software AG’s unique domain expertise to
help accelerate the requirements discovery
and definition process for our customers. For
key process areas, Software AG Process
Frameworks can assist with selection and
modeling of critical process flows, definition
of Key Process Indicators and metrics that
allow measurement of progress on key
success factors, and guidance for activity and
task management, root cause analysis and
exception handling.
The goal of the frameworks is to maximize
our customers’ efforts in addressing their
process improvement strategies and to help
them gain control over their performance in
the challenge areas most critical to their
business.
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T O F I N D T H E S O F T W A R E A G O F F I C E N E A R E S T Y O U ,
P L E A S E V I S I T W W W . S O F T W A R E A G . C O M
Take the next step to get there – faster.
ABoUT SoFTWARE Ag
Software AG is the world’s largest independent provider of Business Infrastructure Software. Our 4,000 global customers achieve business results faster by modernizing, automating and improving their IT systems and processes to rapidly build measurable business value and meet changing business demands. Using our solutions, organizations are able to libe-rate and govern their data, systems, applications, processes and services – achieving new levels of business automation and transparency.
Our industry-leading product portfolio includes best-in-class solutions for managing data, developing and modernizing applications, enabling service oriented architecture, and improving business processes. By combining this proven technology with industry expertise and best practices, our customers improve and differentiate their businesses – faster.
The name Software Ag™, webmethods™, Adabas™, Natural™, ApplinX™, EntireX™ and/or all Software Ag product names are either trademarks or registered trade-marks of Software Ag and/or Software Ag USA, Inc. other company and product names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. SA