USA Staffing Onboarding platform’s effort to make hiring easier garners top innovation award | Federal News Network
The Office of Personnel Management significantly upgraded its USA Staffing Onboarding platform in 2015, but agencies may not have realized its true value or benefits until the last six months.
The coronavirus pandemic made clear, more than ever before, the ability to bring new employees on board in a “touchless” and seamless way.
As of the end of July, OPM spokesperson Tim Rice said agencies used USA Staffing Onboarding to bring 211,622 new employees into federal service, and transmit over 1 million forms and 1.4 million documents electronically to the electronic official personnel file (eOPF) system in fiscal 2020.
More specifically, Rice said the Department of Veterans Affairs used USA Staffing’s Onboarding capability to manage the onboarding process for over 20,000 new hires in the third quarter (April through June) of 2020.
The project was one of 40 finalists for this annual competition to highlight technology innovations in the public sector.
Attendees at the two-day virtual event picked the USA Staffing Onboarding platform for the top Igniting Innovation award, earning 68% of the total vote.
“USA Staffing Onboarding interface was built to meet agency needs for an automated, standardized onboarding capability. Onboarding users benefit from an automated forms process allowing new hires to efficiently complete forms on-line by answering an ‘ask once, use many’ customized questionnaire,” OPM wrote in its competition narrative. “It also allows agency HR professionals to manage forms and communicate with new hires using a streamlined, standardized and automated process. It is seamlessly integrated with the main staffing functions of USA Staffing and is designed to accommodate agencies’ unique onboarding processes. Onboarding has integrated identity management systems to reduce time to provide key new hire data by transmitting data securely and automatically.”
OPM’s Rice added the USA Staffing Onboarding capability also scored an 88 on the 2019 Verint [formerly ForeSee] E-Gov Experience Index, which places its usability in the top 5 for the 2019 E-Government Rankings.
The use of USA Staffing Onboarding platform continued to be important during the pandemic. Last year, OPM says its customers used the portal to onboard 253,338 new hires and transmit more than 1 million forms and documents into electronic personnel files last fiscal year, It’s likely agencies will meet or surpass that figure in 2020.
OPM also credits, in part, USA Staffing for cutting the time it takes to hire new employees down to 98 days in 2018 from 105.8 days on average in 2016 and 2017. The data for 2019 is not yet available.
Past winners of the overall price for Igniting Innovation also include the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, the New York City Department of Transportation, the Health Resources and Services Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Other Igniting Innovation award winners included: