Digitizing our onboarding

By Holly Henze, Accountant

Ames Campustown does not rest when the students are done with classes in May and neither does the Media Group! While there are less students in the creative design and news space, the professional staff are actively seeking to make improvements and create opportunities for our students during this time.

I may not be a journalist or a designer, but I am not excluded from this effort. I have found that balancing accounting and HR duties can be a very fun yet challenging task. A frequent question I found myself asking as I approached this summer… how can I be better prepared to handle the new influx of students this fall? I want to ensure I am covering the multitude of human resource tasks of payroll, policies, and compliance while keeping current with my other duties.

My answer to this question came when I remembered that I am working with Gen Z! Our students have grown up in a digital world and they expect to have technology incorporated in everything they do. Onboarding is not the exception and herein lies the solution to my problem. I needed to transition the astounding amount of time I spent manually entering in employee demographic information, setting up payroll, and tracking each employee’s progress over to the digital realm.

I am excited to report that I have been working with our payroll service company to develop a new onboarding portal. The new portal will streamline the onboarding process, track an employee’s progress, perform E-verify for I9 compliance, and be a central location for polices, handbooks, and important updates that both professional and student employees can access throughout the year. Student employees will now be able to complete the onboarding when it works best with their hectic schedules.

I am ecstatically looking forward to no longer having the awkward moments of silence as a student stares at the W4 form and is embarrassed to tell me they have no idea how to complete it without the help of their parents!