Case Study: Suncorp Group

The Challenge

Suncorp Group manages its general insurance, banking, life insurance, superannuation and investment brands across locations in Australia and New Zealand with approximately 14,500 people in its employ. The strong link between the customer brand and the employer brand means that it is crucial that Suncorp employees have a positive experience. Each business unit’s employment brand needs to convey unique differentiators while supporting the enterprise brand.

Suncorp welcomes approximately 4,500 new hires each year, the opportunity existed to improve onboarding processes with the overarching goal of having new employees job-ready on day one. But, the company was challenged with:

An onboarding process that relied heavily on manual administration of paper-based offer letters, forms and checklists.
Delays in processing new employees onto payroll due to the reliance on postal services, data input errors and missing or unclear information provided by new employees.
A lengthy onboarding cycle, which averaged 8.4 days for offer acceptance documents to be received from new employees and subsequently trigger onboarding activities.
More than 50 percent of new employees beginning work without the proper equipment or system access due to delays in the processing of employment details.

“We are delighted with our new online onboarding approach. Our new starters are now offered roles online, and are job ready within three days of receiving their offer. In the past, this could take up to two weeks. Apart from the cost savings from moving to a paperless approach, our candidates have a great onboarding experience before they even start!”

Amanda Revis,
Group Executive Human Resources

The Focus

Using LEAN methods, Suncorp undertook a focused three-day exercise to understand its business challenge. This approach facilitated a swift analysis and in-depth understanding of the problem and required solution. Suncorp then partnered with PageUp to achieve a more streamlined and efficient onboarding process. As an existing partner, PageUp was able to deliver a solution that met Suncorp’s needs for simplicity and speed of delivery using an agile approach. Suncorp also saw the benefit of increasing the functionality of its current system to provide an integrated and unified onboarding process.
Effectively onboarding employees is a key element of an overall talent management strategy. The Suncorp onboarding solution represents an extension of the recruitment process, rather than a standalone activity and system. Cross-collaboration between Suncorp’s Human Resources, Procurement and Business Technology areas and PageUp also helped to ensure a cohesive solution was delivered in a short timeframe. To complement the launch of the new onboarding system, PageUp helped design and deliver a program of targeted communication and training activities to educate hiring leaders and recruiters. Just-in-time training resources and toolkits also were developed to drive new onboarding practices as part of “business as usual.” This program aimed to ensure the widespread and effective adoption of the new onboarding system and related processes.

The Solution

With the PageUp Onboarding in place, Suncorp automated the onboarding process to provide chosen candidates with a seamless transition into their new role. The new streamlined process has delivered an immediate return on investment for Suncorp, with quality improvements and time and cost savings resulting from reduced administration and enhanced process efficiencies. The total turnaround time from when the offer is made until the new starter is job-ready has been shortened from an average of 15.5 days to 3 days. By eliminating paper-based New Starter Packs and associated costs, Suncorp will achieve a significant savings each year. Furthermore, the cost of processing new employee offer documentation is anticipated to be reduced by approximately 40 percent.In addition to these hard cost savings, the new process has notably improved workflows and administrative requirements for the onboarding support and recruitment teams. The PageUp solution has revolutionized the way the Suncorp team works and frees them up to concentrate on more specialized tasks. The solution also has met the organization’s need for simplicity and efficiency while still satisfying all the business’s onboarding needs and eliminating the former paper-based processes. Long-term outcomes include decreased time to productivity, enhanced new starter experiences resulting in increased talent retention, improvement of Suncorp’s employer brand to assist in recruiting top talent, and greater visibility of the onboarding process for hiring leaders.
Suncorp Webinar – Onboarding