TEA Winner: Enhancing the Employee Onboarding Experience

• Industry: County/Education (K-12)
• Location: Fauquier County, Virginia
• Number of Employees: 2,000
• Population: 70,000
• Tyler Client Since: 2012
• Tyler Products Used: Enterprise ERP [powered by Munis®], Time & Attendance [powered by ExecuTime™], Enterprise Permitting & Licensing [powered by EnerGov™], Content Manager

Challenges

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauquier County Government and Public Schools new hires were onboarded in person with a paper-heavy process. This outdated process was very much in need of an update, especially during the pandemic’s work disruptions when communities were limiting in-person interactions. Fauquier County was forced by the pandemic to reevaluate its onboarding process and learn how to improve it.

Mary Wyckoff, assistant director of human resources, said Fauquier County used the pandemic’s challenges “as an opportunity to fast forward some of those electronic processing projects that we had been looking at but just really hadn’t had the time to really sit down and implement.”

The HR team at Fauquier County has the critical role of providing HR services for their county government and school division. Wyckoff knew they needed to continue to onboard employees to make sure they were able to meet the needs of citizens. Also needed were “tools that we could use to maximize efficiencies and support our employees,” she said.

That is when Wyckoff and the team turned to Tyler’s Enterprise ERP solutions for support.

Solution

To continue supporting their community, the county’s HR department worked to transition the in-person and paper-based process into an electronic one.

Fauquier County is no stranger to Tyler’s solutions, having used Enterprise ERP’s payroll module since 2014. By 2020, the team had discovered useful Tyler solutions that enhanced their existing practices. Task lists played a huge role in the county’s transition, making it possible to complete goals while also allowing employees to be more self-sufficient. Thanks to the new system, the county has saved time and empowered employees.

“We moved our paper process and in-person orientations to an electronic process," Wyckoff explained. "We created several task lists based on employee type, which allowed employees to receive their new-hire paperwork in a timely manner in an electronic format.”

Results

This new process uses about 70% less paper, as employees now receive their paperwork via Tyler’s Employee Self-Service module, which allows employees to receive and send necessary documents.

“The benefit to our organization was a more streamlined process,” Wyckoff said. “We were doing a lot of paper, especially during the onboarding process. Moving it to an electronic process now allows our HR department to focus on more strategic projects and goals to build connections with our employees. Instead of just asking and getting the paperwork process to make sure that they can be paid and all of that, (this change) allows for a more worthwhile connection with our employees.”

Today, all new hires at Fauquier County process their paperwork through the task list function, and a large majority of the onboarding paperwork is now electronic through Content Manager. In addition, Fauquier County now uses the solution for offboarding, helping to improve and advance another process.

“We’ve received a lot of support from Tyler and the Tyler community. It allowed us to collaborate together as a team and to really not only streamline the process for our employees, but also streamline the process for us as a department and really looking at what the needs of the employees were and then building those connections and improving our processes as a whole,” Wyckoff said.

Looking ahead, Fauquier County wants to continue to connect its community using technology. The county plans to build on its success by improving operational continuity and increasing employee empowerment to create more meaningful relationships with employees.

Wyckoff notes that other organizations could benefit from a transition to electronic HR processes.

“The implementation of tasks lists has helped our department evolve and move toward a more electronic process,” Wyckoff added. “The implementation of this function would be beneficial to other organizations as they move away from paper processes and toward increasing customer service and employee empowerment found in a technology savvy world.”