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Case Study

How One School District Revolutionized the Onboarding Process for New Hires

HR Paperwork and Onboarding Process Made Easy.

District Background


The Challenge: Handling Onboarding Paperwork

Without a dedicated Human Resources department, Lampeter-Strasburg School District was having difficulty managing the sheer amount of paperwork required to keep the district running smoothly. The district had “stacks and stacks of paper” managed by various people across the district, and paperwork was often routed to the wrong person before being processed.

Onboarding new hires and gathering all of the required paperwork was especially time-consuming, as different employee status groups needed different forms. Someone would need to stand at the copier putting together the exact packet of new hire forms each new employee needed. Distributing and collecting the packets wasn’t easy, either — paperwork was often not returned and would need to be tracked down.

The Results: 15-Minute Digital Onboarding Process

“From three hours to wow.”

  • The onboarding process has gone from taking up three or more hours of administrators’ time to no more than twenty minutes.
  • Integrating with Frontline Recruiting & Hiring means new hire information is automatically transferred online — no manual data entry required.
  • Forms and records are all stored electronically in one place, from tuition reimbursement and direct deposit forms to the district’s acceptable use policy.
  • Employees can easily sign new or updated policies online via the digital signature feature, and update their own information when needed.

Bill Griscom, the Director of Information Technology, knew that the district’s time-consuming and manual process needed to be improved before bringing in a new Human Resources secretary. Based on Frontline’s integration capabilities and the district’s history of receiving great support from Frontline, they chose Frontline Central to go digital with onboarding and employee records management.

Frontline Central has made it easier to manage the paperwork employees need to complete or sign across the district, such as direct deposit or tuition reimbursement forms, or the acceptable use policy. But the district isn’t just saving trees — they’re saving time. In the past, employee onboarding had taken administrators three hours or more — but now, it only takes fifteen to twenty minutes. As Penny Tracy, Payroll Coordinator, puts it, the onboarding process went “from three hours to wow.”

Frontline Central built from the ground up to employ the best of breed services provided by AWS (Amazon Web Services). Using AWS Frontline can onboard new customers faster with confidence they are using a robust, standard based, scalable, reliable and secure environment.

“The person who was here previously used to have stacks and stacks of paper. We knew that when the next person came in, they would have to come into a better situation than that. Now that she’s here, her office is dramatically improved because we’ve been able to reduce so much paper.”

Bill Griscom
– Director of Information Technology

The Solution: Implementation of Frontline Central for Onboarding and New Hire Paperwork

After going live with Frontline Central, Bill Griscom said, “It was probably the easiest system we’ve implemented in a long, long time.” It’s given administrators hours back in their day when managing employee forms or onboarding new hires, and it’s easy for staff to use, too.

“From an employee perspective, I love that I can grab forms on-demand and submit them — I’m not hunting down paper in the district office to submit a paper form. I also love that I can see whatever I have submitted because it goes into my record afterwards. I can see the history of what I’ve done, and to have that kind of on-demand access is really great.”

Bill Griscom
– Director of Information Technology

Easier, Faster Onboarding

“Before, when it was August, I would stay late to make these copies so I wasn’t monopolizing the copier. Frontline Central saved me tons of time, that’s what I like best about it. It saves me tons of time and there’s no filing.”

Penny Tracy
– Payroll Coordinator

In the past, somebody in the district would have to put together new hire packets specific to each employee’s status group, and spend hours copying the right papers. Then, district administrators would have new hires come in for an hour or more to pick up and review onboarding paperwork. While they loved meeting with employees in person, it would take three or more hours to have all of the paperwork completed, filed and transferred to other departments. That took up a lot of time they just didn’t have — especially in summertime, when the district office was busiest.

Now, it takes about fifteen minutes to onboard new hires, and they no longer need to come in to pick up or drop off paperwork. Instead, new employees can come in to pick up their parking tag and other first-day materials, without needing to sit down for an hour or two talking about benefits and paperwork. They receive all of their new hire paperwork prior to their first day, and can complete it all online.

“I think the future employee also likes being able to go on and fill out the forms online instead of having all this paperwork.”

Penny Tracy
– Payroll Coordinator

Penny no longer has to worry about standing at the copier making new hire packets, or filing all of their paperwork in the right places — Frontline Central handles it all.

“The system is pretty much handling all those things for us. The time savings could even be more than three hours, just because you’re not dealing with logistics of people handing you packets of stuff that you then go file, then go hand to the next department… Now, it takes no longer than 15 minutes. You send the packet out, the packet comes back, you put the information in.”

Penny Tracy
– Payroll Coordinator

The system imports new hire data from Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, saving time and eliminating the need to key employee information into multiple systems.

“We hire them and they automatically convert over from Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, and that’s a big thing because we just have so many systems. The fact that those two talk to each other is a really big deal.”

Bill Griscom
– Director of Information Technology

One Place for Employee Paperwork

After the onboarding process, Frontline Central has proven to be an invaluable system for managing paperwork across the district. Administrators love that they can access all the forms and onboarding paperwork they need electronically from any device. It’s also simple to gather all of the signatures needed if policies change. If the district changes their acceptable use policy, they can automatically send it out to all the faculty and staff to sign online via the digital signature feature in Frontline Central.

Not only does it provide administrators with a secure way to store and access employee information, but it also allows employees to update their information more easily when needed. For example, if an employee decides to change to a new bank, they can update their direct deposit information through Frontline Central.

“It has saved us paper and time copying and filing all these forms. They’re just filed directly in Frontline Central. Another thing is that we used to have HR and payroll files, but now we’re not going to have payroll files anymore because everything is in Central.”

Penny Tracy
– Payroll Coordinator

A Streamlined Strategy

Lampeter-Strasburg found that implementing Frontline Central provided a great opportunity to revisit their processes. By moving to a digital employee records system, Bill explains they were motivated to “be a little bit more strategic with what we were doing and smarter about how we were doing it.”

They found that some of their prior processes were not as efficient as they could be, and by partnering with Frontline’s implementation team, they worked out more effective ways of achieving their goals.

“Because we had the right people at the table and because we were flexible enough, we could really look at it and say, ‘Are we doing that because we’ve always done it that way, or are we doing it that way because it makes sense?’ What we found a lot of times that it was the former, not the latter, and we could change it.”

Bill Griscom
– Director of Information Technology

Keeping an open mind to more effective practices has contributed to Lampeter-Strasburg’s success with Frontline Central.


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About Frontline Education

Frontline Education is a leading provider of school administration software, connecting solutions for student and special programs, business operations and human capital management with powerful analytics to empower educators. Frontline partners with school systems to deliver tools, data and insights that support greater efficiency and productivity, enabling school leaders to spend more time and resources executing strategies that drive educator effectiveness, student success and district excellence.

Frontline’s broad portfolio includes solutions for proactive recruiting and hiring, absence and time management, professional growth, student information systems, special education, special programs, Medicaid reimbursement, school health management, inventory control and asset management, payroll, benefits and financial management, and analytics solutions that help district leaders tap into their data to make more informed decisions for the benefit of their students and communities. Over 10,000 clients representing millions of educators, administrators and support personnel have partnered with Frontline Education in their efforts to develop the next generation of learners.