Optimizing Staff Onboarding

When Henry Quiñones joined the University of Vermont’s Technical Services Program—now called the Technical Services Partnership (TSP)—as a biomedical equipment technician (BMET) in October 2004, he remembers sitting in front of the computer for two days learning about company policy, and then being told to go out and work at client sites. T.C. Bugbee had a similar experience in May 2000. “I remember thinking: What am I supposed to be doing here? Each [client] site has a slightly different contract, and I didn’t know what each contract was,” Bugbee recalls. Today, new hires have a completely different experience, as Mark Robinson, BMET II; and Chris Olden, BMET I, who both joined the TSP in early September, can attest. According to Robinson, “the process is very professional and involved. When they do release me to work with hospital clients, I will be very prepared.” Olden agrees. “They do a good job of training us on various types of equipment, and we get great tips from specialists.” The transformation from what Mike Lane, TSP’s associate director, calls a “give-and-go strategy,” in which new hires were given as much information as possible in the shortest period and had to go apply it, to an improved staff onboarding system, did not happen overnight. The team incorporated feedback from new hires, staff, and clients over a period of five or six years, adding several key elements.