I co-led a multi-departmental study to recommend improvements on how new and transferring employees are onboarded.
We talked to onboarding support staff, clinicians, and nurses who need access to sensitive patient data software and secure building areas.
Our study encompassed multiple software tools as well as cross-departmental coordination.
Methods
Interviews: 16 stakeholders in Human Resources, Information Technology, Information Security, Employee Education, and several clinical departments.
Journey mapping: from our interviews, we created a map of the process from hire to first day, highlighting current pain points and improvement opportunities.
What we learned
Staff responsible for onboarding did not know what staff in other departments were doing, leading to duplicative work, errors, and misunderstandings.
Software failures led to burdensome workarounds that helped support staff accomplish tasks while also creating new errors.
Support staff used multiple software programs and multiple searches within a single software program to find information they needed to grant employees the right access.
Clinical department office managers struggled to follow the process of submitting necessary ServiceNow tickets.
As a result, many clinicians and nurses started their first day without necessary access to complete their work.
What we recommended
We worked with IT staff to improve a role-based security database for support staff to determine what each new/transferring employee needed access to.
We created an annual review process of this database to ensure access needs are up-to-date.
We helped IT create ticket bundles in ServiceNow to streamline the access process for support staff.
Long term, we encouraged IT staff to use automation features in Workday to facilitate training requirements for new employees. We also encouraged automation between Okta and Epic for security access to necessary patient records access.
Where things stand
A follow-up survey of clinical managers found that the ServiceNow bundle and role-based security improvements did increase accuracy in new employee access. However, the increases did not erase ongoing frustrations in certain areas.
ServiceNow bundles were created, and there are mixed reports of their success by the employees who need to use them.
There was also found to be insufficient promotion of these ServiceNow tools to the people who needed them.
We are continuing work on improving ServiceNow (as you’ll see in the second case study) that will improve this component.