At the 2024 California IT in Education (CITE) conference on Thursday, Alexander Samo, a systems analyst at MCS, joked that the district's hiring process had not been updated since its founding in 1871. Everything was paper based. Onboarding included more than 50 forms that collected redundant information, included staff contacts that no longer worked for the district, and required applicants to drive to and from the district office to collect and submit them.
“It was vague, ambiguous, no standardization at all, no automation. Everything was manual data entry. I'm pretty sure they just had stacks of paper that would be submitted and would go and be filed in filing cabinets,” Samo said. “Knowing that we need something better, knowing that we have something pretty bad, how do we go about achieving that? How do we go about making that better?”
Samo led the charge. The new online process used Laserfiche software to digitize and consolidate forms, automate email notifications, store documents and reduce redundancies.
Abby Sourwine
Samo said simple milestones, like adding a progress bar so applicants know how far along they are in the process, made a big difference in satisfaction. Creating email templates that automatically populate with information customized to each applicant has also been crucial, he said. Email templates include instructions for applicants and updates for human resources staff handling their onboarding. As applicants or HR staff enter information about the person or position, the form automatically adds or removes steps in the form based on the varying requirements for each role.
Samo said the first step in the process was shadowing HR staff to understand existing systems, identify challenges and understand what requirements — namely from the state and federal government — they needed to consider in the hiring process.
From there, a group of a few HR staff and a few IT staff met several times a week to discuss the best solution. Samo found a few vendors that would meet the team’s needs, and together they decided to use Laserfiche.
The group continued to meet consistently to hold each other accountable as they crossed small tasks off the to-do list. On the HR side, staff updated forms and created email templates for applicants and internal employees. They condensed 50 forms into 20. On the IT side, staff met with the vendor to understand the interface, identified which Laserfiche offerings best met needs, and created the new online forms. Samo also provided updates to senior leadership every two weeks to help get everybody on the same page.
Now, Samo said the team is working on documentation, training and support to ensure the longevity of the new system. MCS is creating instructions and answers to frequently asked questions from the perspective of staff and applicants, in addition to holding staff trainings on the new system.
In the future, Samo said, the team hopes to help the Laserfiche onboarding system communicate with the financial system to further reduce redundancies. However, he said the data would need to be carefully validated before being input into finance systems to ensure there are no errors paying employees.
Additionally, HR staff are in the process of manually scanning past onboarding documents to digitize them. Eventually, Samo said, those records could be incorporated into the Laserfiche online storage rather than sitting in boxes.
