Streamlining Hiring and Onboarding Processes at Michigan State University with IoT

The customer in this case study is the Infrastructure and Planning Facilities (IPF) unit of Michigan State University. The IPF unit is responsible for construction and maintenance across the main campus’s 5,200 acres and 550 buildings. It also manages IPF’s 1300 employees. The unit was facing challenges with its hiring and onboarding process, which was inefficient and led to lost candidates and reduced morale among the staff. The unit needed to streamline this process to ensure they could hire the most qualified candidates and keep their operations running at peak efficiency.

Michigan State University's Infrastructure and Planning Facilities (IPF) unit was facing significant challenges with its hiring and onboarding process. The process was plagued with issues such as lost paperwork, unclear job requirements, and time-consuming scheduling. These issues often led to lost candidates and reduced morale among the existing staff. The IPF unit, responsible for construction and maintenance across the main campus’s 5,200 acres and 550 buildings, and managing IPF’s 1300 employees, needed an efficient hiring process to keep their operations moving at peak efficiency. The goal was to reduce the time it took to post job openings, schedule interviews, clarify job requirements, maintain paperwork more efficiently, and enhance the onboarding process. However, achieving this was complicated by competing processes that had arisen independently over the course of 50 years, contractual obligations to various unions, and operational differences.

The IPF unit turned to Nintex Promapp®, a tool they had been using to map and manage business processes for several years, to streamline their hiring and onboarding process. They decided to test the solution’s ability to manage end-to-end processes, using the hiring and onboarding process as their proof-of-concept candidate. The process-improvement team first used Nintex Promapp® to capture input from its five-phase RAPID process improvement methodology, a popular framework in higher education. They then hosted an all-day Process Palooza event with key stakeholders from every area of the organization, gathering over 150 pieces of process feedback. This feedback was used to create a new version of the hiring and onboarding process, using Nintex Promapp® features including linked processes, conditionals, parallel processes, and systems tagging. Once the updated end-to-end process was approved, a training session was held for a broad range of staff, who now continue to use Nintex Promapp® as the single, centralized source for reliable and up-to-date hiring and onboarding information.

• The implementation of Nintex Promapp® for end-to-end process capture and management resulted in significant operational improvements for the IPF unit. The tool was found to be extremely easy to use, which facilitated its adoption across the organization. The time to map the hiring and onboarding processes was cut by 50% compared to the Vizio and Word tools previously used. This not only resulted in up-front development savings but also led to a more efficient and transparent hiring and onboarding process. The tool also facilitated collaboration among stakeholders throughout the organization, leading to increased employee morale. The IPF unit now has a single, centralized source for reliable and up-to-date hiring and onboarding information, which has greatly improved the efficiency of their operations.

• 50% faster process mapping than with Word or Visio
• Increased collaboration among stakeholders throughout the organization
• Enhanced employee morale