A New Employee Experience
Ujima Donalson, Executive Director, Professional & Organizational Development
In 2018 UW Human Resources is introducing Welcome Day — a new opportunity to ensure that employees feel welcomed, engaged, connected, informed, and valued from the very beginning of their employment with the University of Washington. This new workshop replaces Benefits Orientation and in-person New Employee Orientation, combines essential information from both, and will be offered weekly starting Monday, January 8, 2018.
Attending Benefits Orientation became mandatory for select union employees starting in January 2017. Another product of those negotiations was that UWHR create a longer, more comprehensive, and frequently offered session that includes both benefits information as well as policy and engagement content from New Employee Orientation. The new Welcome Day workshop fulfills this commitment, and I believe it will also lead to a more timely, engaging, and relevant onboarding experience for new employees.
As such, our expectation is now that all new employees with home departments on the Seattle campus should attend (excepting UW Medical Centers employees, who have their own highly specialized orientation). While faculty participate in other orientations through Academic Personnel, they are invited to attend the benefits portion of Welcome Day. New employees will be invited to Welcome Day as appropriate, and in the meantime you can look forward to further communications from UWHR about this change.
A new take on orientation could not come at a better time since UWHR has been reorganized to provide better service and support around talent management, soup to nuts. Our new organizational structure has put us in a better position to enhance the entire onboarding process, for both new hires and hiring managers. In addition to connecting employees with crucial information and resources, I believe that we must do a better job of connecting each individual to the larger whole — to what working at a public institution and serving the University’s mission truly means.
I have put together a small committee to review all aspects of our onboarding process within UWHR, from the communications new hires and hiring managers receive to onboarding toolkits for new employees and their managers, online orientation, in-person orientation, and beyond. In addition, I am partnering with Amy Hawkins, executive director of Total Benefits, and other stakeholders in UWHR and University Marketing & Communications to ensure an optimal onboarding experience for new employees.
In 2018 I anticipate the newly formed Total Talent Management will take an increasingly active role with the onboarding process, providing more resources to administrators and managers and being more directive and strategic about what a new employee experience can look like here at the UW. My aspirations include enhancing the UW’s brand as an employer, improving employee engagement from day one, and discovering new ways in which we can support hiring managers and departments.
