How UC San Diego Improved Employee Onboarding Process

Kristin Kielich, a Senior Strategic Initiatives Analyst at UC San Diego, and her team of problem solvers, set out to make the hiring process faster and easier for every party involved. Their goal was to streamline and clarify the process to increase the completion of the on boarding form to 100% and ensure 100% of new hires are properly set up and able to work on their start day.

The team found that the median time to onboard was 7 days, but 25% of the process took 20 to 104 days.
30 pieces of data were required to be input by the HR Department, while Hiring Managers had 40 and Senior Managers had 5.
184 email notifications were being sent out per new hire.

Lean Six Sigma Tools Used: Executive Summary, Project Charter, SIPOC, Gemba Walk, Voice of the Customer, Customer Critical-to-Quality, Data Collection Plan, Process Walk, 5 Whys, Fishbone Diagram, Value-Added Flow Analysis, Root Cause Hypothesis, Implementing Improvements, Reducing Process Steps, Developing Knowledge Guides, Updating the User Experience, Monitor & Response Plan, Executive Summary

After the team verified their hypothesis and conducted the necessary research, they implemented process improvements:

To address the issue of confusion and non-value-added steps, they redesigned the form so that it was grouped by stakeholder sections while also eliminating unnecessary fields.
To address the absence of knowledge, they created a reference guide for all Hiring Managers on all common questions that was initially causing them to take longer to complete the previous forms. The forms were also pre-populated to help expedite the process.
They tailored notification content by adding footers that noted how to complete the onboarding process.

The Improvement Results: