Onboarding Center Celebrates 10th Anniversary

When the Onboarding Center at NC State celebrated its 10th anniversary on June 14, staffers Emily Harrell-Hilburn, Angela Nicholson and Amy Grubbs were particularly jubilant.

All three have worked at the center since it opened, so they are especially proud of its success.

The center celebrated its anniversary by inviting special friends — those who served on the committee that recommended creating the center, campus partners and former center staff members — to a celebration at the Joyner Visitor Center, the Onboarding Center’s home. About 30 people attended.

“There were a lot of emotions for sure,” said Nicholson, an Onboarding Center specialist. “We have a lot of pride in the center and how the university has embraced the onboarding process. It has been exciting to see the university and new employees benefit from the service. It was humbling to have so many people come to the celebration, some of whom had to travel quite a distance.”

The Onboarding Center opened its doors in June 2013. NC State created the center to establish a consistent onboarding process and experience for new employees. During onboarding, new employees do the following:

• Meet one-on-one with an Onboarding Center specialist to make sure they complete required paperwork.
• Attend a benefits orientation session.
• Attend a new employee orientation session.

“We get comments from people joining us from other institutions, and they’ll say, ‘I’ve worked for several universities, and by far, this is the absolute best onboarding experience I’ve ever had,'” Nicholson said. “That’s because the service the center provides helps them feel welcome and settled, and they can start their new jobs successfully and not have to fumble through the onboarding process on their own.”

Part of the center’s mission is to help employees feel connected to NC State. To do that, the center offers tours of the university. Since the center opened, it has been taking employees who attend new employee orientation on a campus bus tour and treating them to an on-campus lunch. The center began offering tours for all employees in 2014.

“We are here to serve the employees and help them get started at the university on a good foot,” said Emily Harrell-Hilburn, an Onboarding Center specialist. “We want to make them happy and proud of being an employee of the university.”

The ‘benchmark for higher ed onboarding’

As a result of the center’s success, other universities — including Penn State, Michigan State University, Vanderbilt University and Auburn University — have reached out to the center to learn how NC State established the center and how it operates, said Grubbs, who manages the center.

“There are not a lot of dedicated centers who have staff solely dedicated to onboarding,” Grubbs said. “A lot of the folks who do onboarding at other institutions also do other things. We were definitely on the forefront of creating a center like this.”

The center has participated in two webinars for the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources to discuss its onboarding processes and plans to participate in a third one in September. In June, Grubbs presented “A Case Study in Onboarding” at the CUPA-HR 2023 conference in Boston. Earlier this year, Grubbs wrote an article about the Onboarding Center that appeared in Higher Ed HR Magazine, a CUPA-HR publication.

“They kind of use us as their benchmark for higher ed onboarding,” Grubbs said.