Customer Success Story: Mt. San Antonio College

How Mt. San Antonio College leveraged PeopleAdmin to streamline vital workflows

Vanessa Ortiz is a Human Resources Analyst at Mt. San Antonio College, and she works closely with PeopleAdmin’s HigherEd Platform. Right now, she’s involved in streamlining Mt. SAC’s onboarding processes with PeopleAdmin’s Employee Records system, and is excited about the possibilities she’s seeing. When she joined Mt. SAC, COVID-19 restrictions were still in place, so she interviewed and onboarded remotely. The paper onboarding process that the team had in place at the time became more complex when employees weren’t coming to campus right away. When Mt. SAC got the chance to digitize their onboarding process with PeopleAdmin, Vanessa knew it would be a great opportunity for both the HR team and for new employees.

Streamlined Onboarding

The old onboarding process involved a large packet of paperwork. When employees onboarded remotely, they needed to print forms, fill them out, and then upload them back into DropBox for review. The HR team was often left waiting for important documents as new hires made their way through the packet. Paper had always worked well, but it couldn’t keep up with the challenges of the past few years. The digital onboarding processes in Employee Records make remote (and on-campus) onboarding a breeze.

“Turning paper processes into electronic ones frees up our recruiters from manual collections and entry,” says Vanessa, “and it’s user-friendly for the new hires.” One favorite feature of the soon-to-be-implemented onboarding system is that new hires can fill out forms as they go. “The team needs some information right away, such as an employee’s I-9. It’s great that they can fill that out time-sensitive documents and we have access to it right away, without waiting for the entire new hire packet to be complete before returning it to HR.” Now that HR can track new hire progress and store all documents in one central place, there won’t be any back-and-forth emailing, scanning and uploading, or organization in DropBox, saving huge amounts of time.

Vanessa noted that with Employee Records as the primary filing system, everything will be both more secure and more accessible. “Centralized storage will be more manageable, and since we can control permissions, we can give access to anyone who needs it while still keeping the information secure,” said Vanessa. Documents that need to be seen by other departments are easily made available, without building those departments into the workflow. It has also been a good opportunity for Mt. SAC to make onboarding consistent across the college. Temporary hires, including adjunct professors, and full-time hires are handled by different areas of HR with slightly different approaches. Now, the onboarding process will be standardized for everyone, but the personalization and customization mean it can be tailored for every position type.

The personalization goes even further. “Before, onboarding was just the essentials so the paper wouldn’t be overwhelming. Now, we can offer more new hire resources, and we even added a welcome video!” Vanessa noted. “Previously, the president wouldn’t have been able to greet every new hire in person, but with the new virtual process, everyone gets a personal welcome message. It’s allowed us to get creative with our processes.”

Flexibility with Applicant Tracking

Mt. SAC has also been using PeopleAdmin’s Applicant Tracking System to simplify their hiring processes. Vanessa mentioned that ATS is especially useful for the strict deadlines that are part of Mt. SAC’s hiring process. With the increased visibility of a digitized system, the team can clearly see progress and keep on top of deadlines.

“It’s great to be able to see all the hiring information clearly,” says Vanessa. “We can keep track of why someone is or isn’t being hired, and it’s easy to send information to different internal groups for equivalency reviews.” Different types of positions go through different hiring review processes at Mt. SAC, and the support for specific faculty hiring nuances has been helpful for the team.

Vanessa also noted that committees have an easier time keeping track of job postings and reviewing information when it’s all housed in one place. “Saved searches have been key,” she said. “Committees can go into the system and see exactly what they need, without extra filtering or support from a system administrator.” Some positions at the college receive hundreds of applications, so Vanessa says this is a huge time-saver for reviewers.

User-friendly and customizable

The user-friendliness and customizability of PeopleAdmin’s modules have been a significant benefit for Vanessa in working with the system. “I like that the workflows can be specific to us, and that we can name them exactly what we want them to mean,” said Vanessa. “It’s clear even for people who aren’t in the system all the time. They can still make sense of everything without being an expert.”

But Vanessa’s favorite thing about PeopleAdmin is the interoperability. “What I really like about PeopleAdmin is how well all the modules work together,” Vanessa says. “The way things work just makes sense, and it’s nice how you can really customize it to your college and your needs. The way ATS works with Position Management and Employee Records, feeding all the information over from one process to another, makes it so much easier on our HR staff. PeopleAdmin helps us spend less time on the hiring process and focus more energy on personal time with our community.”

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