UCSF Financial and Administrative Services (FAS)

One Good Thing

This week we talked with Cecilia White in Facilities Services about how their FAS Value Improvement project using Smartsheet to coordinate onboarding has helped new employees, hiring managers and internal teams. Plus, learn more about the new round of FAS Value Improvement projects, the new FAS Lean Glossary, how to hold more inclusive events and this week’s Hot Jobs at UCSF.

Photo of Faciliites Services team members

“The onboarding process is very important to a new hire. It sets the foundation. If we do it right, it helps with retention and sets a good first impression. If it’s not smooth, we waste time duplicating work, and we could potentially see lower staff engagement. “ Cecilia White Admin and Communication Analyst Facilities Services, Campus Life Services

Cecilia's Smart Onboarding

Several years ago, Cecilia White, who works in the Facilities Services Assistant Vice Chancellor Office, got involved in a process improvement project for onboarding because of her role supporting new hires. Onboarding is the process of integrating a new employee into your organization and may take as long as six months. “There are so many steps involved in bringing in new employees,” Cecilia said, “We needed more visibility into what was happening.” We talked with her about how Facilities Services leveraged the FAS Value Improvement program to help them improve their onboarding process and how good onboarding helps new employees feel a better sense of belonging.

Why is this onboarding project important? What problems are you are trying to solve?
The onboarding process is very important to a new hire. It sets the foundation. If we do it right, it helps with retention and sets a good first impression. If it’s not smooth, we waste time duplicating work, and we could potentially see lower staff engagement.

How are you improving the onboarding process?
We discovered we were wasting so much time on processes, for both our new hires and our managers. By using Smartsheet, we can automate all the steps involved in bringing in a new team member. For example, if a new employee will begin on a certain date, the Smartsheet has a “trigger” for that employee and will automatically request new work shoes from the appropriate person by the start date, without any effort on my part. The manager can also look at the sheet at any time to see where a new employee is in the hiring process, giving us powerful visibility into what’s happening. We are also experimenting with using it for offboarding.

We added an option so that the automatically generated emails are in their preferred language—right now offered in English, Spanish or Simplified Chinese. This helps our new team members feel comfortable and helps them feel welcomed.

What did you learn through the FAS Value Improvement program?
We learned how to identify and eliminate waste. It has helped us work smarter. It’s made us think differently about how to save money and get a return on our effort. We also learned we needed to have a Smartsheet subject matter expert to make complex forms work properly. It’s a work in progress, but we are already sharing it with other FAS departments, like UCSF Real Estate and plan to roll out a template so it’s easily adoptable by other departments.

If you’d like to adopt the onboarding Smartsheet for your department, please contact Cecilia White (cecilia.white@ucsf.edu) or Sean Aloise (sean.aloise@ucsf.edu).

Cecilia's Favorite Cookie Jar Treat:
Classic Chocolate Chip

FAS Celebrates 19 New FAS Value Improvement Projects for FY22-24

We are excited to share that our Value Improvement portfolio has expanded to include 19 new projects for FY 22-24 (PDF). Some noteworthy features of this set of projects are that more than half of them are initiated and led by frontline staff and include projects which aim to impact areas such as engagement, sustainability, and FAS collaboration. Watch out for a formal announcement next week with more details.

Plus…have you ever wondered what ADE or PDCA meant? Thanks to the Program Management Office (PMO) for publishing a new FAS Lean Glossary, helping us build a shared language: https://improve.ucsf.edu/fas-glossary.

But wait...there's more!

Religious Holiday Schedule 2022-23

Are you leaving out important members of your community when you schedule events? See the helpful resource from UCSF's Graduate Division on Scheduling to Avoid Conflict with Religious Holidays for 2022-23.

HOT JOBS at UCSF

Check out this week's HOT JOBS:

Campus Contracts Manager, UCSF Real Estate
63081BR | http://tiny.ucsf.edu/jPswOx

Project Manager/ Senior Project Manager, UCSF Real Estate
63297BR | http://tiny.ucsf.edu/gaZOtd

Design Construction Assistant, UCSF Real Estate
63588BR | http://tiny.ucsf.edu/xtDocq

GMU Finance Manager, Graduate Medical Sciences Unit
63650BR | http://tiny.ucsf.edu/GEv7pS

Research Financial Analyst, Orthopaedic Surgery
63655BR | http://tiny.ucsf.edu/IxkCJz

About One Good Thing

You like good news and we want to share more of what’s good with our FAS community. One Good Thing is the “cookie jar” of emails: open it up for a quick, sweet break in your week!

See the last One Good Thing Finding Francesca and the web for all stories.

January 26, 2022

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One Good Thing

Cecilia's Smart Onboarding

Cecilia's Favorite Cookie Jar Treat: Classic Chocolate Chip

About One Good Thing

Have a good story idea or feedback?

Cecilia's Favorite Cookie Jar Treat:
Classic Chocolate Chip