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Three Ways Digital Transformation Will Improve Federal Personnel On-Boarding

Appian Contributor
December 5, 2017

Think of the ways that technology can improve how agencies achieve mission success; including the critical function of on-boarding. Instant communication is now possible, around the country and the globe. Constituents can go through every step of their customer experience with the government without ever leaving their home. And now personnel on-boarding has gone digital. In this edition of our Twelve Days of Digital Transformationblog series, we take a look at the future of on-boarding.

Hiring great employees, especially with the comprehensive government vetting process, can become time-consuming and costly. But hiring these quality employees is just the first step in the process. Training these new recruits on your agency's background and educating them on your culture and values can be challenging and is pivotal to ensuring a seamless expansion of your workforce.

On the front end of this process, human capital management professionals lean on integrated applications that can sift through thousands of job seekers' profiles to identify the right one for the job. Yet, many agencies are still stuck in the stone age of paper forms and printed employee orientation handbooks. Beyond the environmental and efficiency issues, conducting processes that handle personal identity information (PII) also poses a large security threat.

Technology can easily improve the on-boarding workflow experience, both internally and externally, while also keeping vital information secure. Here are three advances in technology that can change the way that agencies can conduct the on-boarding process:

Create a Paperless, Compliant User Experience

For many companies, the process of on-boarding includes new hires manually filling out HR forms. So they are locked away in a conference room with a stack of paperwork and a pen. But by using paperless forms that can be accessed via a mobile device, new hires can complete them anywhere, anytime and save time with autofill features.

In an environment of government hiring freezes and RIF's, human capital metrics have become the key to making the most of an organization's workforce.

However, a shockingly low percentage of organizations use paperless, mobile-friendly forms. By embracing this on-boarding technology, new employees can get through all the boring forms more quickly and spend more time focusing on getting up to speed in their new position. Additionally, your agency's human capital management team becomes more efficient as they gain valuable time back allowing them to focus their attention on other priorities.

Regulatory compliance is also extremely important for your agency's human capital team as on-boarding practices must be up to date with the latest regulations. Your agency should be able to confidently confirm they have the right forms from the right employees and deadlines for each are being met. Paperless systems make staying current on on-boarding processes not only easy, but less worrisome.

Capture On-Boarding Metrics

Agency leaders are consistently searching for strategies to increase their organization's efficiency while operating with a shrinking budget. In an environment of government hiring freezes and RIF's, human capital metrics have become the key to making the most of an organization's workforce.

Across both the public and private sectors, organizations are using big data and analytics to make their operations more effective and efficient. When determining the effectiveness of your agency's on-boarding process, you need metrics that will help you determine how efficiently new hires can come in and make an impact on their team and your organization. Ensuring the new talent you hire is prepared to succeed from day one is critical to engagement and productivity.

Additionally, organizations and human capital professionals need to consider the growing regulatory environment that we are in today and the mountains of required documentation. Technology can support your agency's audit readiness with a fully documented case history for reporting.

Achieve Integrated Process Automation

Process automation can provide a number of significant benefits for your organization, including the support of even the most secure of on-boarding procedures that your agency's newly hired personnel require. Process automation technology has enabled the support of background investigations, with workflows that guide users through the e-QIP completion tasks, while also allowing for collaboration between the case investigators.

Users can then check for reciprocity if data is available, resulting in reductions to adjudication time that helps organizations meet on-boarding SLAs. Additionally, your smart card requests can be managed end-to-end, from request, to issuance, to pickup, guaranteeing a clear chain of custody and minimizing the risk of a security breach.

By automating the process, task management is improved because priorities and schedules will be linked across your organization. Tasks and calendars can be available to all users, which allow the work to be shared and managed in an efficient manner. It also allows you to see the status of a process in real time, so that you are better equipped to identify roadblocks, resource constraints, and opportunity for process improvement.

The Platform Advantage

Technological advances of all kinds have made everyday life easier. But now it's time for the on-boarding process to catch up.

Appian offers agencies a modern employee on-boarding application that supports this complex, end-to-end process. Appian's enterprise application platform can also centralize all tasks and activities related to on-boarding new employees and contractors, providing an audit ready view of the process.

By learning more about, and incorporating the Appian platform into your organization, it becomes simpler to get every new hire set up for success quickly, which can directly benefit the efficiency of your agency in 2018 and beyond.

Appian for the Federal Government