Yale New Haven Hospital

Rival’s (formerly SilkRoad Technology) Onboarding Solution Adopted by Yale New Haven Health System

Yale New Haven Health System is comprised of three hospitals, Bridgeport, Greenwich and Yale-New Haven, and Northeast Medical Group—a physician foundation. The health system is affiliated with Yale School of Medicine.

Yale New Haven Health has escalated hiring activity to meet its rapid 2 to 3 percent annual patient growth rate. As a result, onboarding is a constant and dynamic effort within the organization. The HR team brings on approximately 2,100 new hires per year—from surgical technicians, ER nurses, and physicians to administrative staff and leadership.

Challenges

• Bring strategy, consistency, and discipline to the process of onboarding.
• Move from a collection of manual processes to a single, automated solution that would provide a quality experience for new hires.
• Reduce time and cost of processing new hires by adopting a standard that applies to all organizations in the Health System. Eliminate delays in routing paper documents to different departments for new hires.
• Ensure the new employee data is absolutely accurate, eliminating errors and inconsistencies that can occur in paper documents.
• Help make new employees productive, as soon as possible.

The Onboarding Challenge

Yale New Haven Health wanted a state-of-the-art new employee onboarding system to match its cutting-edge medical care of patients. Yet, the organization’s onboarding system was cumbersome. The system’s HR departments received multiple paper forms from new hires, which were collected, routed to departments for data entry, and filed. The process was highly variable, depending upon the employee handling the onboarding: Sometimes forms were missed or misfiled. In short, onboarding was burdensome for candidates and time-consuming for HR staff.

Without a doubt, Yale New Haven Health had clearly outgrown its paper-based and time-intensive methods of onboarding. After a rigorous evaluation of three software vendors, the organization chose SilkRoad.

Rival Onboard Results

• One consistent, automated onboarding process that eliminated paper, errors in employee records, and data entry for HR and Payroll departments.
• Reduction in time spent on each new hire by 3 hours, allotting more productive time back to HR, Payroll, Parking departments and new hire.
• Decrease in data errors, because all information is type and not handwritten, and forms are pre-populated. Electronic records ensure that new hire information is no longer misfiled.
• A self-service, branded portal that provides experience for new hires, giving them an introduction to the organization and helping the Yale New Haven Health System organizations win in the war to retain healthcare talent.
• Greater transparency and communication across the Health System, since electronic notifications are sent to departments, letting them know when the new hires have completed all their paperwork.

Problem

Yale New Haven Health System is a rapidly growing, nationally recognized healthcare organization, but it was using a manual system for onboarding—requiring enormous time and paperwork for HR and new hires. The organization sought an automated process that would match its reputation and excellence in patient care.

Solution

Rival Onboard, with its sophisticated features and personalized customer support, has completely automated the onboarding process, dramatically decreased time spent per hire, and ensured greater new hire satisfaction.

The Benefits Add Up: Time Savings, Productivity

Rival Onboard has shown Yale New Haven Health System significant time savings—hours that HR and Payroll are using productively to focus on other critical work. Maintaining consistency throughout the onboarding process, previously a headache for HR, is now an easy task. The streamlined onboarding process has also saved time and effort for other departments, such as Parking. Automatic notifications are sent to departments when the forms are completed by the new hire. Because all incoming employee information is stored online and easily accessible, the entire process is transparent and more efficient for everyone involved.

Yale New Haven Health System estimates a savings of 3 hours per incoming employee, a significant metric for a growing organization. In a typical year, Yale New Haven Health System brings on board approximately 2,100 employees. Crunching the numbers, this means that the Rival Onboard saves an astonishing total of 6,300 hours annually—all productive time that can better be dedicated to other priorities.

A High-Performance Solution: Onboarding 3,500 Employees In One Week

The power and efficiency of Rival Onboard were put to the test under pressure in 2012, when Yale-New Haven Hospital acquired Hospital of Saint Raphael, a 511 bed hospital also located in New Haven. As a result of the acquisition, the organization’s hardworking HR team needed to onboard HSR’s 3,500 employees rapidly. Prior to Day One, the team began to integrate the acquired employees into the organization, using Rival Onboard. Benefits and payroll information had to be correct and completed within days, because employees were scheduled to be paid the following week. The Rival Onboard notification feature was used to let the acquired employees know precisely what they needed to do to make the transition. HR was available to answer questions. As a result, the whole operation went forward without a hitch.

Superb New Hire Experience

Healthcare organizations will face significant workforce shortages in the coming years, so it’s imperative for them to retain employees. A smooth onboarding process gives a new hire a positive first impression of the organization. Moreover, it helps integrate an employee into the culture and expectations of the workplace, speeding the transition into a new job. The Health System’s new hires now have the opportunity to review employee benefits, the employee handbook, and campus maps before they arrive for their first day of work. With Rival Onboard’s web-based interface, new hires have two weeks to complete all their paperwork online at their leisure. This includes automatic reminders as a new hire’s due date approaches.

Most important of all, Yale New Haven Health System has elevated the onboarding process, making it more strategic and disciplined. HR now has a sharper focus on other tasks, such as planning to meet the organization’s future growth. And, rather than receiving a flood of paper, new employees are integrated into the organization quickly, so that they can better fulfill the mission of Yale New Haven Health System: to deliver excellent care to patients and the communities it serves.