Easier Hiring with Digital Workflows at Livingston Parish Public Schools

Livingston Parish Public Schools, located just outside of Baton Rouge in southern Louisiana, is known for its educational excellence, innovation, and historic school sites (one of which is even listed on the National Register of Historic Places). In partnership with families and the community, the district strives to create a supportive climate that enhances learning for over 26,000 students. To ensure student learning goes uninterrupted and that teacher absences are always filled, Livingston Parish relies on comprehensive, time-saving solutions.

Drowning in Paper

Bruce Chaffin began his career with Livingston Parish Public Schools as the Personnel Director before coming on board as the Human Resources Director. After transitioning into his new role, Bruce dedicated time to evaluate the district’s HR processes, which were completely managed on paper and spreadsheets. Manually keying employee information and phone calls back and forth to the central office were the norm, which was far from efficient or time friendly.

“We were still 100% paper, and we were killing trees left and right.”

Whenever principals had an opening for a specific position, the secretaries in HR would open a filling cabinet, sift through paper resumes, and load them on a truck to be sent over to the school. The process took weeks. And that didn’t include the interviewing or hiring. Once a candidate was selected, they would travel to the central office to fill out packets and sign their paper contracts. If employees wanted visibility into their personnel file or to track their absences, they too would travel to the central office to sift through the filing cabinet for their information.

Multiply this by 44 sites and 4,000 employees, and the stacks of paper and number of man-hours add up!

Bruce knew there was a better way to update their processes, save time, and quickly find qualified candidates. It was time to go digital, and Livingston Parish found the solution with Frontline.

Taking HR Digital

To fully streamline the recruiting, hiring, and onboarding process at Livingston Parish, Bruce began his search for a system that was fully automated and would allow HR staff to easily sort through candidates digitally (no more paper resumes!).

“When I came on board as the HR Director, I knew we needed to go paperless as much as possible.”

After implementing Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, the district was able to expedite their hiring process, gain even better visibility into open positions, and access an entire dashboard of qualified educators.

Frontline’s Absence & Substitute Management was already in place, but Bruce realized there was a way to bring these solutions together with even greater functionality through Frontline Central. Now, he would be able to tie all employee information and data together into one location and send new hires their onboarding packets, job descriptions, and contracts with the click of a button. With these solutions in place, HR staff at Livingston Parish were able to focus on their people instead of tedious administrative paperwork.

With tools that support proactive recruiting and absence management in a centralized location, the Human Resource department in Livingston Parish is no longer bogged down by back-and-forth phone calls and endless stacks of paper. Staff can automate HR workflows, save time, get more strategic with data, and support outstanding education.

Goodbye Filing Cabinet, Hello Easier Hiring

Before automating their systems, HR had to rely on a more reactive recruiting approach. This meant on-site staff had to call the central office to request a resume after a teacher retired or a position became available. Now, Livingston Parish is using Frontline Recruiting & Hiring to proactively fill open positions with qualified educators.

If there’s an opening for a sixth grade Chemistry teacher, principals can remotely sort and filter candidates by that exact category through an online job board. No more sifting through resumes in a filing cabinet that aren’t relevant to the job description and don’t match specific requirements.

The solution has improved the employee experience, and made hiring so much easier for HR.

“When I look back, I think, ‘How did we hire anybody?’ Now, if a teacher resigns, principals might already know who they want to hire to fill the position or what candidates were available before the central office is even notified of the opening. Without an online platform, that could never happen.”

Bringing It All Together

Frontline Central empowers employees in Livingston Parish to manage their own information. Whether it’s looking at past evaluations, job descriptions, or tracking absences, the data is at their fingertips.

And when staff login to Frontline Central, they don’t have to remember multiple passwords or keep track of which platform houses what information.

With 4,000 employees across the district having access to vital personnel documentation in a centralized self-service, Bruce and other HR staff save a ton of time.

“The difference with Frontline Central is night and day. We do everything through the platform. All of our onboarding packets, our contracts, our absence tracking, our job descriptions…everything.”

Forms…Fast

Prior to Frontline Central, staff in the central office would print every single district employee’s contract and stuff them into 44 different envelopes to send to 44 different schools. The delivery process took nearly two weeks. Once principals were in receipt of their designated envelope, they would hand out the contracts, put them back in the envelope, and load them on the truck to return them to HR.

Now, Bruce can ensure forms are completed on time with automatic reminders to route them to the right people through customized workflows.

“One thing that I love about Frontline Central is the form building. Before, I felt like I had to become a coder to build forms and it would take me a week just to create one. Now, I can whip out a form in eight seconds.”

Onboarding, the Easy Way

Livingston Parish uses onboarding to make a great first impression on their new hires, and to ensure employees are set up for success even before their first day. Rather than spending day one in the central office completing paperwork, they can dive into their new role!

With Frontline Central, the district can:

• Easily generate and distribute customizable onboarding documents
• Electronically send onboarding documents to new hires
• Build out staff profiles
• Allow new hires to digitally sign handbooks, policies, and more

Tracking and Reporting on Attendance

Livingston Parish was struggling to track teacher attendance after severe flooding ripped through the town and damaged 17 schools in 2016. To overcome this challenge, the leadership came up with an innovative plan.

The most crucial part of making the strategy work revolved around tracking attendance rates at each of the 44 sites in the district. Frontline’s Absence Management gives Bruce the reporting capabilities he needs to access each school’s attendance data, so he can keep a running tally to share with school leaders every month.

“I’m able to go in the report section and run a report each month. It takes me about 30 minutes to do 44 sites and come up with the percentages for the schools.”

They’re Never Going Back

With Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, Central, and Absence Management, Livingston Parish Public Schools is meeting their strategic goals, managing the entire employee lifecycle, and supporting an excellent educational experience.

“If I tried to do away with any of these Frontline programs, our nine staff secretaries in HR would dismember me and scatter my ashes across the swamps of South Louisiana. That’s the best way I can describe it. There is no way we could go back to the way we did things before Frontline. It will never happen.”