The challenge
SCAD is a global university specialisingspecializing in the creative arts, with over 17,500 students enrolled and over 100 academic degree programs. Their mission at SCAD is ‘to prepare talented students for creative professions through engaged teaching and learning in a positively oriented university environment’ (SCAD). The university employs over 2,100 people and has three main campuses: two in Georgia, United States, and one in Lacoste, France. With their HR team centralisedcentralized in Georgia, they support hiring managers across all locations.
As a university, SCAD employs staff and faculty who have different needs and require varied hiring and onboarding workflows. On completion of a successful hiring process, preparing an offer, new hire paperwork and a new starter’s first day was a time consuming task for multiple HR team members at SCAD, with various administrative processes in place. This was taking away valuable time that could have been spent towards creating a meaningful onboarding experience.
“Prior to PageUp, we were working with different processes in different places, and I’m scared to say some still existed on paper.”
Sarah Witcher, Senior Director of Employee Development and HR Communications at Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD)
The focus
1. Focus on the moments that matter
When beginning a journey at SCAD, they understood the importance of the employee experience. They knew they wanted to create a sense of belonging for new employees by focusing on the moments that matter and delivering a purposeful onboarding experience. To do this, they needed a new system that could streamline and automate administrative tasks throughout the onboarding journey.
During the interview process, to their first day and beyond, they want every person to understand how they play a part in achieving the SCAD mission.
“Whenever we are making a decision to hire or onboard a new employee, whether that is a faculty member or a staff member and across any type of full-time, part-time or contract role, we understand that they are an employee in their own unique way. We want to ensure prior to day one that they have a sense of belonging and step in fully assimilated, ready to do their best work.”
2. Curate & simplify
To improve their onboarding experience, they wanted to ensure they didn’t overload new starters with unnecessary tasks, paperwork, or information. To do this, they needed the ability to tailor the experience with highly relevant, actionable tasks that would support new starters in becoming fully functional within their role faster.
“We wanted to simplify and curate, to only include onboarding tasks that were time sensitive and highly applicable to the individual that was assigned.”
3. Equip leaders to onboard well
Hiring managers are essential in delivering a successful hiring and onboarding experience to new hires. The team at SCAD knew they needed buy-in from their hiring managers and wanted to turn them into champions of onboarding. This included providing hiring managers with the tools and resources to deliver essential onboarding initiatives with ease and confidence.
The solution
SCAD implemented the full talent acquisition suite including Recruitment Marketing, ATS, Onboarding, Learning, and Performance modules. Through PageUp they were able to create and customisecustomize two separate onboarding portals, one for staff and one for faculty. This enabled the team to tailor content and deliver different onboarding workflows that were highly relevant to each individual. They were also able to bring their portals and communications to life with colorful and exciting branding that is consistent across their talent lifecycle.
As part of their Recruitment Marketing solution, they created landing pages with tailored content for their employees. An example of this included developing resource pages with helpful content and information on relocating to work at one of their campuses in Georgia. The HR team has complete control over career site content and candidate communications, allowing them to edit and add information as needed.
“In PageUp you have the ability to create workflows that are different and have different tasks. We took this a step further, creating different portals and landing pages. So not only are my tasks different as a staff or faculty member, but my experience and some of the resources linked for me are different as well. So I don’t have to weed through information that does not apply to me and see what is relevant based on my role.”
“We don’t have to work with our internal design team to go through a long editing process. The HR team has the ability to jump in, make improvements, and add information as needed – PageUp has been great for that reason.”
SCAD staff employee portal
SCAD’s new user-friendly onboarding portals highlight essential tasks and timelines for completion. They added touch points that asked for feedback to help identify any gaps, supporting the team in continually building and improving their onboarding experience.
“We make sure all of our onboarding tasks are highly relevant and actionable, and PageUp has really enabled us to do that more efficiently. We can take digital forms that new hires previously had to print, sign, upload and email. Now we have a seamless process, where they can do that all on screen and sign paperwork within the onboarding portal.”
SCAD learning portal
Through the PageUp learning library SCAD has been able to deliver training on the recruiting, hiring and onboarding experience. This has created a source of truth, where everything a hiring manager might need is located in a customisedcustomized hub that they can access anytime. This has built trust in the onboarding process and confidence in its ability to deliver.
“We use PageUp to put templates and customisablecustomizable resources in their hands. All of our hiring managers have asynchronous on-demand training about how to recruit, hire, and onboard well. Hearing the data and statistics about why onboarding is important is critical to help our hiring managers understand that they play the most important role.”
The results
Prior to PageUp, it required 5+ hours per new hire for offer, new hire paperwork, and onboarding initiation. With PageUp Onboarding workflows, they have reduced the time to 30 minutes per new hire. Reducing the time spent by 90% time saved has impacted the talent acquisition team, compensation team, HR Managers, Hiring Managers, and the new hire.
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“The new hire has the ability to mark tasks complete themselves and similarly hiring managers have tasks on the other end which they can mark complete. This has saved so much time for our HR team as it has been able to hold those individuals accountable.”
Through the PageUp Onboarding solution, they have been able to create a seamless and personalisedpersonalized experience for new starters. Results from a SCAD employees survey have shown that 97% of employees reported being satisfied with the information and support they received prior to their first day and 99% received a comprehensive itinerary for their first week of employment.
“Truthfully, it was one of the most complete and comprehensive onboarding processes I have ever been involved with. Staff from all levels at SCAD went above and beyond at every juncture to ensure we were made to feel welcome and were provided with any information required.”
– SCAD new starter
Watch how SCAD set up their new starters for success in the on-demand webinar and learn more about the PageUp onboarding solution here.
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