All Onboard

The Employee Onboarding Process Used by the Pros: How Mitchell Martin Onboards Contingent Workforces at Scale

• Stephen Karaolis • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Join Cleary CEO Thomas Kunjappu as he hosts Dawn Ponico, Chief People Officer at Mitchell Martin Inc., in Episode 4 of the All Onboard Podcast. Discover the strategies and processes used by the pros to onboard contingent workforces effectively and efficiently. Learn about the comprehensive employee onboarding process that ensures compliance, satisfaction, and success for both employees and clients.

Dawn Ponico:

We don't want to have duplicity. We really want to ensure that everything is going smoothly and sometimes there are opportunities for change.

Thomas Kunjappu:

Hello and welcome to the All Onboard Podcast, your go to resource for all things related to employee onboarding. I'm your host, Thomas Kunjappu, Co Founder and CEO of Cleary. Today, we are thrilled to welcome Dawn Ponico, the Chief People Officer at Mitchell Martin Inc, a leading staffing and recruiting firm. Now, Mitchell Martin Inc has over 260 employees across the USA, India, and the Philippines, and has been recognized as one of the top a hundred largest IT staffing firms in the U.S. Dawn is here to share her expertise about onboarding and particularly focusing on the unique challenges of onboarding contingent workers, the customization and scalability of onboarding processes and innovating training that they've done in a hybrid environment. So with that said, Dawn, welcome to the show.

Dawn Ponico:

Thank you so much, Thomas, for that introduction.

Thomas Kunjappu:

Absolutely glad to have you. So let's get right into it. You talk a lot about Contingent workers. Can you tell me a little bit about MMI, where you work and why contingent worker onboarding is so important for you?

Dawn Ponico:

Mitchell Martin, as a staffing agency is in a unique position, we've now started to see this much more fluid work environment where, employees just necessarily hiring their typical full time employee. They're using gig workers, they're using contingent workers and there's been a lot of growth in the staffing industry over the last number of years with our contingent workforce. So that's essentially all the employees that are, employees of Mitchell Martin, but working on assignment at our clients. we've got employees all over the country in about 42 different states at this time, and what's unique about, onboarding contingent workers is that, when you've got our corporate employees, you have to just worry about things that are just Mitchell Martin and, state and federal requirements. But now, we've now made a promise to deliver, a candidate to our clients. So we want to make sure that our clients who are depending upon us, we can make sure through the onboarding process that we're able to deliver, their candidate day one showing up when, the client has asked for them to show up and each client has their own specific requirements. We are now doing client specific onboarding packages to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our clients and assisting them with their onboarding as well. This is fascinating because for most companies, onboarding is, complex enough because you've hired someone and there's a lot of internal layers between HR, IT, the managers, departments and locations, if you're remote work or not, all these things that you have to handle. now what you're looking to solve for is all of that plus the fact that there is not as much direct contact once a person gets going with the employee, because they're actually working a lot more with your client and not to mention the client engagement side to make sure that the person maps to what you need from Mitchell Martin's perspective, but as well as the client's perspective. So talk about complexity and multiple stakeholder management and probably some unique insights coming out of that

Thomas Kunjappu:

did I get that about right in terms of all the different things that you're kind of considering when you're hiring and onboarding in terms of stakeholder management.

Dawn Ponico:

100%. we want to make sure that we're, supporting our candidates who are employees as well as our clients. So making sure that we have that level of satisfaction amongst all the different parties is imperative to our business.

Thomas Kunjappu (2):

So, I've got a simple question, but maybe without such an easy answer. So, how do you do it?

Dawn Ponico:

How do we do it? You know, we really, we've got a team. in some staffing firms that are a little bit smaller, you might have the account management team responsible for onboarding that individual. An offer is extended to that person, and then you might have the account management team doing their new hire paperwork, their I 9s, withholding forms, getting them through the process. We at Mitchell Martin actually have a dedicated onboarding team that also works with the HR team that then folds it down to the payroll and billing team. So we've got three back office, operationally minded teams working together to give our employees that level of attention they need and to make sure too, that we're giving the clients, all the things that we have, promised during that recruiting period and, the onboarding and the, offer and so forth. Those teams work together to do all the things utilizing the right technology too and what I find is that there's always this level of continuous improvement, we talk about our core values, Mitchell Martin, one of them is that, we're agile and that we're never satisfied. I think that those two really pertain to our onboarding because we're always looking for new and more innovative ways to make that experience best in class for our candidates and employees.

Speaker 3:

Hey, it's Thomas here. Hope you're enjoying the episode so far. Are you curious to see how your onboarding program stacks up against the industry's best? Check out Cleary's latest onboarding assessment tool. It offers in depth analysis and customized recommendations to enhance every aspect of your employee onboarding. From pre boarding to company culture integration and more. Whether you're just setting up your onboarding program or you're a CHRO at a Fortune 100 company, this assessment can improve your onboarding know how. Check it out at gocleary. com slash onboarding hyphen assessment. Again, that's gocleary. com slash onboarding hyphen assessment. You can also find the link in the episode notes. Now back to the show.

Thomas Kunjappu:

That's fascinating. So you're talking about different teams internally. Can you go a little bit deeper on that? So I just understand the handoff. So there's a recruiting team that ensures you get the right candidate into MMI and then where does it go from there? and what are the steps from there? You mentioned it's not the account management team, but what are the handoffs?

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah, once the recruiter offers made to the candidate, can accepts now you've got the onboarding team is really aware of the different client requirements. So there might be, one client wants to use one particular background check vendor. Another might have certain signed forms and documents that they want us to make sure that we complete, that we have on file. So when they go to audit us, we've done everything that we need to. Clients will have all these different set regulations and so our onboarding team is very aware of those changing and involving client documents. They're involved when we bring on a new client and finding out all the necessary requirements for onboarding. So then the candidate really works with the onboarding team to do some of the initial client onboarding packages, the background check, the signed offer letter and then once all that's gathered, they then push over into like our HRIS, and now they're working more in like an HR level. The candidate is now working with a little bit of the onboarding and HR team to make sure they complete all their state requirement forms and then getting some of their training completed. Getting their benefits enrollment and getting the information that they need to be able to have those things, making sure they're set up correctly to get paid. and the HR team is then making sure that everything looks good from a pay perspective, because that's something that's so important, right? Everybody just wants to make sure, they get paid correctly and accurately. and then the information goes to our payroll team. Our payroll team then make sure that we've got everyone in our payroll billing system. and from there, we're able to get the employees all set up so that they are good to start. We have different systems that are sometimes our clients even have us do for payroll and time entry. So we work together. Are really set up to be able to support those different client needs and requirements to make sure that they integrate within our own systems and being able to make sure that when it's time to get paid, our employees are getting paid correctly on time and as promised. and at that point, you're the employer of record, you've gotten the paperwork done, it's fully compliant, you got payroll set up and ready to go. and at that point, now you're ready to maybe bring in the account management team and say, okay, this person is ready to get into the training of their actual work and with this particular client, that's exactly it. Now we're doing touch points. We're making sure that we're checking in, week one day 30, now we start getting into the, Hey, how is everything going? Working with the client to make sure that everything is going well, that the experience has been a positive one. We're there really to support the employee throughout the employee life cycle of being on that assignment with that client.

Thomas Kunjappu:

So this is it sounds like a very operationally efficient kind of machine that's working through all these things, but it's very hard to do this at scale and that's what you're starting to get at because you have folks that you're onboarding across the world and multiple, almost every U. S. state. and so how do you think about customization whether it's by role, by individual, by obviously location to ensure that it's still a very smooth process?

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah, that's something that we've thought about because we've continued to grow, and as a company, we have grown exponentially over the last 40 years, because this is our 40th anniversary, but even in the last 10 years to see the amount of employees and the number of states just keeps going up. One of the things we're always making sure of is maintaining that efficiency, and we actually, last year, we started a operations onboarding committee internally, really, to evaluate just such things, looking at our processes, looking at our systems, looking at who owns what within that whole process, and making sure that it's the right person, making sure that it's the right technology, really with the end goal in mind, making sure we've got the right experience for our employees. Keeping our clients in mind and also keeping our internal teams in mind because, nobody wants to have to ever key in something twice. We don't want to have duplicity. We really want to ensure that everything is going smoothly and sometimes there are opportunities for change So for us coming together as a committee, we were able to use the folks that were the strategic thinkers in each of those different groups, the HR team, the onboarding team, the payroll and billing teams some of our senior leaders as well within the organization come together and just say, okay, how can we do things better? Is this giving the experience that we want and that committee has come up with some really great ideas, looking at some of the technologies that we have in place, saying, can we use them a little bit more and it's been really helpful and we've got some really great plans for the future from that committee.

Thomas Kunjappu:

I'd be very curious because we know onboarding is a team sport. If you're going to form such a committee, what kind of functions or titles come together to make such a committee productive.

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah, It's myself. It's our chief financial officer. It's our chief operating officer. It's our director of onboarding. One of our senior vice presidents of compliance. It's our chief information officer our chief accounting officer and also one of the the chief strategy officer. So we've got a number of different C levels in there, as well as the folks that are also running onboarding. Then the folks that are really involved in some of the day to day trenches come in as needed. It's been a really great opportunity to review. our process, mapping it out and each meeting ends up evolving and having its own set of okay, we're going to focus on this today. and then we might bring in some of the folks that are on those individual teams reporting to those, C level executives and directors and helping them, to fill in the blanks and get us on a targeted project plan.

Thomas Kunjappu:

That is a lot of C level titles that I've heard, and also extremely cross functional much more so than, honestly, I've ever heard before. I think it probably speaks to just how centrally important it is to just the ongoing business and operations, of Mitchell Martin. Everyone's investing so much into it and probably goes a little bit back to the complications and how important it is to get all these different factors right. But that's fascinating because I think that would be, getting that kind of involvement would be probably a dream for a lot of listeners out there within their own organizations. and now, do you think that's because of I'm curious how that even came to be? Like, how do you because sometimes what we hear from HR teams is we're looking for C suite buy in to, we know we need to improve and it's really not just onboarding, Process X or, whatever on the HR side for our people, and we need to get more C suite buy in, I'm curious, how did that committee come together? What was the impetus to, hey, say, let's all come and focus in on this together?

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah I think it's a charge was initially led by our chief operating officer where he was seeing some situations where there were folks working in silos. I think that's sometimes an HR trait like where you're like trying to get something done and working at it by yourself but meanwhile there are other things going on in the organization and I will give him the kudos for recognizing that. There's really an opportunity here for us to cross collaborate and in doing so we started with this team really to be able to give each department a voice. to be able to have everyone to come with their concerns, the things that are really important to them. and that's what I really love so much about the committee. It's that when we get together, each of us brings our own point of view and that cross collaboration and allowing us to say I'm seeing it from an employee engagement perspective and our CFO might see it from a billing perspective. and so just being able to get together and now have that ability to see, Oh, that's how it impacts your world. This is how it impacts my world and it's been a great sharing of information and meeting in the minds. Every meeting we have has been really impactful.

Thomas Kunjappu:

So let me ask you a little bit then, Dawn, about training and development. So, we've talked a lot about just getting the person matched to the right role and then getting them up and running efficiently, and then you need to make sure now they are trained to do their work, which again, in your world, there are complications because it's different for every probably role and client. So can you tell me a little bit more about how you think about that aspect of onboarding?

Dawn Ponico:

Yep, I can talk about that from both our contingent and our corporate, but I'll start with our contingent staff, since that's what we've been talking about predominantly, for the most part, we do make sure that from a training perspective, whatever, training that the client wants us to do, we are always happy to help. Especially with our larger clients, a lot of them say, we've got this, you make sure that everything they have is compliant, and then we will make sure from a day to day perspective, they have the resources, the tools that they need other clients might, ask for a little bit more support, and they might say, can just go through different legal training with them, there's a lot of States that have state specific training and our clients do require and ask of us to make sure that those trainings are done. So we do have a pretty vast library of trainings that incorporate, harassment training, DE&I training, ethics training, workplace violence training. and so we've got a number of those that we will make sure that we are able to offer. To those contingent workforce, make sure that they complete it. So that way we have a record of it. and if the client ever needed to refer to that, we keep all of those records from a training perspective.

Thomas Kunjappu:

So then can you also tell me a little bit more about the full time employees?

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah, so under our full time employees, we have a learning and development team internally within Mitchell Martin, and we really have comprehensive onboarding training that takes them through usually their first two weeks, and say probably close to about 20 plus hours. Those first two weeks of immersive training. we love our games. We love, gamifying our trainings. We love making it competitive. A lot of the folks that come to Mitchell Martin are in a sales capacity. when you're training salespeople, you really want to make sure that you're giving a training that meets the needs of those various personalities. So we've worked really hard to make sure that our onboarding training is best in class in the staffing industry. We then also have other immersive programs. Like we do like a bootcamp type style for sales training. We have some folks that end up transitioning after X amount of time within the company. They might go from more of a recruiting focused role to more of a sales focused role. and we have a three day program that we put them through to really immerse them in training for sales. We also, we have done Convergicon, which was launched when we were doing a lot of hiring across the country internally. and so we had, I think they did the first one in November, 2021. and it was really meant to give everyone not only a reinforcement of their training, But also to be able to give them an opportunity to really meet in person, collaborate with other new hires within the organization and also meet the senior leader. So we would get all our senior leadership together with recent new hires and do a two day immersive where we reiterate training, lots of breakout groups. Lots of interactive types of exercises.

Thomas Kunjappu:

So that's maybe not in like the first couple of weeks of joining the company.

Dawn Ponico:

A couple months later. Yeah, usually after the first 90 days or so.

Thomas Kunjappu:

So you're doing that once a quarter or something like that, depending on the cohorts

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah, depending on the amount of hiring that was done, we delivered that first time hybrid, that was a little challenging. But then we ended up doing it a 100 percent in person and that seemed to really work well for us.

Thomas Kunjappu:

Ah, let's dig into that a bit more because that's been in the background of all of this, whether we're talking about contingent workers or full time employees certainly international, right? you have a lot of folks who are remote or hybrid. So how has that, you just touched on how that has impacted kind of an event where you bring people together for training. But I'm curious if the pandemic has changed your model overall for how you hire and or how you onboard in response to that because of where talent is, or in short, how did you evolve, if at all, maybe you're completely prepared and there was no evolution necessary for remote and hybrid work.

Dawn Ponico:

Pre COVID we were mostly I'd say probably 85 percent of our teams were near an office and worked in an office five days a week. As of today, we have a very remote workforce. We've got some that are now hybrid going into the office two days a week. So our model has really significantly changed. Our recruiting efforts changed a lot. We went from just hiring in off areas where we had an office to now hiring in areas wherever the best talent was. it really opened up the ability to get the right talent in the right places. From a training perspective, I have to say, we had that one situation where we tried to do it, where it was ConvergeCon, the first one, we tried to get people, we had a camera, we were trying to, have people dial in and, zoom in and also have people in person without all the right technology. That's a challenging platform to train from and I think now what we've really learned from this is that some trainings are great, with everybody on Zoom or a Teams or whatever your platform is and it's sometimes just best to say, let's get everybody on Zoom on camera. the nice thing is that a lot of folks now are set up. To easily work with a camera and they're very comfortable in doing that. So that's one model. Then we've got some trainings are just better done in person and when you have a lot of for us, a lot of role plays, a lot of training. breakout sessions. Sometimes those are just going to be really well versed in a in classroom. So we'll get people together. the training team or learning development team will go to them and we make it work. I personally found that trying to do a training where you've got some folks, especially if you've got four or five in a room, and then you've got four or five on a Zoom, the four or five that are in a room, they're conversing, they're laughing, and everybody that's on a Zoom feels a little bit left out, like what's going on over there? So from an inclusivity perspective, we've really tried to figure out what trainings are just delivered in the best format and stick to that.

Thomas Kunjappu:

So we've been talking about how the shift with remote and hybrid has impacted your full time employees and how you might even do training there. But on top of that you have a unique perch, I would say, Dawn, because you have, Clients who are demanding talent, from you in different ways. So if you just look around the industry and your client base, how have their expectations changed, In terms of the kinds of employees and working styles they are looking for in terms of requirements for, staffing there. Is it as simple as generally people are now open to remote roles or is it actually a bit more nuanced? What's happening there from your perspective around the demand for talent with respect to remote and hybrid work?

Dawn Ponico:

I think I have two different employee types that probably have different requirements based on our clients. we have a healthcare staffing division and. They have to be on site. I don't really know of any situation over the last four years where many of them were working in a remote type of capacity. So for them, it's been business as usual with the other part of our businesses is technology professionals. and for that, I've seen quite a change and evolving where same like Mitchell Martin structure, four years ago, a lot of our clients actually wanted their IT professionals on site five days a week. I don't think many of them still have that model any longer. You might have some that need it. But for the most part, we have some of our clients that now are 100 percent remote. They don't care where we get the talent. that makes it a lot easier to recruit from if we now have the entire country to look for that, sometimes rare technology professional to be able to place at that client if they're allowing for a remote position. Especially our enterprise size clients right now, it's been about on average, like two or three days a week. So we've transitioned as you're probably seeing across the industry and, reading in the news on a regular basis, not as many clients now have five days a week, 100 percent remote, but they are allowing for two days in the office. three days remote or vice versa. So we're seeing a lot more hybrid now from our clients and it really seems to work well.

Thomas Kunjappu:

So do you believe if you had a crystal ball and you're projecting five years out where do you think the models are headed? And what is the kind of demand for how people expect to be hired, how people expect to be onboarded and what employees are looking for where do you think things are headed?

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah, I think continued speed and efficiency are going to be really important when it comes to onboarding. You start to see clients and organizations wanting to know that they can get the right person in the right seat very quickly. So I think that will continue. I think we'll continue to see like a hybrid workforce. looking down the pipeline and going five years, I think we'll continue to see more of, this gig economy, you're going to see, even more employees that are choosing to go a contract model and choose to work, for six months at a time. I think that is starting to gain some popularity and some trends with a lot of individuals knowing that they also have that flexibility. I think it's really important.

Thomas Kunjappu:

That's a great point because that concept of flexibility is transforming gig work from not just the world of low wage labor where you're not able to find what you need to find, but actually folks who are managing their time, meaning they want the managing the amount of work in their life based on time, right? and you obviously offer a model for those folks to be successful. and that can be an advantage as that trend continues on. looking into the future, do you think about employee retention a little bit, because, when you're hiring remote and the whole world is your labor pool and you don't have offices as central to the work environment it could be easier to hire, but is it harder to retain? are all the practices from onboarding and even beyond needing to evolve further in response to all these factors, including, more of a part time relationship or a gig relationship or a remote relationship for employees.

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah, Thomas, we did. and that actually led us to become an ESOP. So an employee stock ownership program employer. So everyone, once they hit their one year they are then eligible. They are, one year and a thousand hours, they are now going to be eligible to enter our ESOP. and then there obviously is vesting and different rules to our. ESOP plan, but really the goal is that if, they're happy with Mitchell Martin, they not just use us for, one assignment, they keep coming back so that they can continue to use that time to be able to gain, shares within the company. and our goal is to be able to, replace employees and, have them come back to us as well. Love our boomerangs and so therefore it's something that we have used in our retention strategy to again differentiate us from some of the other staffing firms that are out there.

Speaker 2:

Now, you and I might think it's obvious that people are your biggest resource and investing in your onboarding program to make it world class is a bet you want to make. But how do you talk about this with your CEO or CFO so that you can get them on board with investing in an updated onboarding program? They're always looking for something that can save money and boost productivity at the same time. Well, I've got something exciting for you. Check out Cleary Onboarding. com. ROI calculator. It's easy to use. Just enter some info about your current onboarding process and your company and see how much time and money you could be saving with a modern onboarding solution. Head on over to gocleary.com/onboarding-ROI. To give it a try. See what you learn and let us know what you think. Again, that's gocleary.com/onboarding-ROI. You can also find a link in the episode notes. Now back to the show.

Thomas Kunjappu:

Thank you so much for all of this, Dawn, because I have one final thing for you, which is our lightning round of questions. Okay. So we're going to go really fast. 60 seconds or less or less being the emphasis. Are you ready to go? All right, let's do it. All right. What's your favorite color?

Dawn Ponico:

Blue.

Thomas Kunjappu:

if you weren't working in your current role right now, and you're in a completely different job, what could you be doing instead?

Dawn Ponico:

An FBI agent.

Thomas Kunjappu:

If you look back on your career, is there a piece of advice that's really stuck with you that you'd like to share?

Dawn Ponico:

Do what's right, do your best, and treat others the way you'd want to be treated.

Thomas Kunjappu:

Is there a favorite piece of advice or book or concept you'd like to give to others especially folks who are starting off in their career?

Dawn Ponico:

Yeah do what you love. work within your strengths. So that way you feel like you're contributing every day.

Thomas Kunjappu:

So what do you enjoy most about your current role?

Dawn Ponico:

Oh gosh, it's probably a bit cliche, but I really do love the people. I love the opportunity to get to know people on a personal level, to be able to help strategize as an organization to be able to support our employees needs. and really like when it all comes down to it, like people are so important within an organization. So I'm thankful to be part of a department that really supports that.

Thomas Kunjappu:

That's great. Thank you so much. that's a wrap for today's episode of All Onboard. I hope you found the conversation with Dawn today as insightful and valuable as I did, especially for your own onboarding efforts. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and stay updated with the latest tips and trends in employee onboarding. and stay tuned for Thomas's Take where I'll share my thoughts and reactions to the conversation we just had today, Dawn. Until next time, I hope everyone keeps improving their onboarding processes and create a warm, welcoming environment for all of your new hires. Thanks again, Dawn.

Dawn Ponico:

Thank you so much.

Thomas Kunjappu:

Hey, it's Thomas here. Welcome to the Thomas' take portion of the show where I share a take or two about the discussion in this week's episode. Now staffing agencies being ahead of the game and boomerangs in the C suite. This is what sticks out to me. Now, all of our organizations have gotten a little bit more complicated since the pandemic. Recruiting strategies have shifted for most industries. Flexibility in hours has gained importance from the labor market. We're dealing with more turnover than before and tight labor markets with relatively low unemployment rates. This all means that retaining top talent is still a priority. Now with all of this, I've always thought that tech companies have been the canaries in the coal mine facing these trends first, these trends that shape the way we work. While that's true, speaking with Dawn here has been eye opening for me. Staffing firms, as it turns out, might be even more so the canaries in the coal mine. Staffing agencies are faced with all of these trends, and even in a more pronounced fashion than the rest of us are experiencing. They're then, in addition, considering the needs and requirements of their clients that they're placing folks for, and for every step from recruiting to how you enter someone into an HR system to what kind of training you deliver to could all be further hyper personalized by employee type and by customer. So with contingent workers and gig workers, especially the model is built to have attrition. So while an average tech company, especially a startup might have an average tenure of around two years, maybe a bit more, folks who sign up for roles as contingent or gig workers at these companies and staffing agencies might have it for a way shorter period of time. So that means that you're designing for boomerangs. So when I used to work at Twitter, we had a boomerang badge from, the birdhouse, this internal tool that we used for employee profiles. The same thing that actually a lot of Cleary customers have today. It's something that signifies someone who has left the company and then come on back. Now, first of all, this is A OK. Companies should consider the new employer employee contract to be one where this is shared context you gotta keep the door open, much like you would have with customers. Now, I've seen, because of this, a fair bit of evolution in the way off boarding happens, via our customers as well. Now, as a staffing agency, many jobs are designed to produce a boomerang in a best case. The employer employee relationship stays fresh and both are kept on their feet, so to speak, because time is running out and decisions on what's next have to be made. Now, the other element that really stood out to me was C suite engagement. Getting the right structure and processes in place for onboarding can really engage the entire C suite. It is truly a multi pronged process that involves so many different stakeholders to get it done right. It's not crazy at all for you to think that the entire C suite may need to be thinking through together how you might redesign the employee experience starting with onboarding. And if you do that, maybe, just maybe, it's not above their pay grade. That's my take.