Best Practices in Employee Onboarding in Courts
The 2024 State of the Courts report predicts a slight easing of staffing deficits, with 8% fewer respondents expecting shortages in their own organization over the next twelve months. Turnover coincides with the increased presence of new technologies in courts, such as virtual hearings, e-filing, case and document management, and generative AI. These factors have contributed to a “snowball effect” in the legal sector. As knowledgeable legacy employees retire, those remaining experience an increased workload, steep learning curves, and increasingly complex legal matters and technology.
New team members require additional onboarding resources. Gallup’s Tips for Leaders on onboarding reports that only 12% of U.S. employees rate their workplace as excelling in this area. This can have a devastating impact as research and practical application demonstrate that effective onboarding procedures dramatically increase employee engagement, productivity and retention.
Orientation vs. Onboarding: What’s the Difference?
Orientation includes completing new hire paperwork and routine tasks that are specific across all hires. Onboarding (per The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM)) is a longer, immersive process which integrates new hires into workplace culture – shared habits and beliefs within an organization – helping employees to reach their full potential more quickly. By connecting new hires to organizational beliefs and the “why” behind processes, organizations can achieve greater retention, higher employee engagement and increased productivity. Gallup describes an effective onboarding process as one which addresses beliefs, employee strengths, introduces new hires to their strategic partners, and outlines their future within the organization.
Many organizations focus on two of the Four C’s that SHRM identifies as a part of effective onboarding: compliance and clarification (ensuring that new hires understand their role.) However, the C’s of culture and connection are important to help employees fit into organizational norms and form meaningful connections with their colleagues.
Best Made Plans, Pre-Pandemic
In 2018 King County Superior Court (Seattle, WA) partnered with Praxis Consulting to develop a comprehensive, year-long employee onboarding program. with funding from a State Justice Institute Technical Assistance grant. Dr. Brenda Wagenknecht-Ivey, CEO of Praxis Consulting and Linda Ridge, Chief Administrative Officer for King County Superior Court met with us to discuss their ambitious onboarding program and the necessary pandemic pivot. Geared around reduction in turnover, boosting employee confidence, and shortening the time from hire to full productivity, the All-Aboard: Your Passport to Success onboarding program was scheduled to launch in 2020, but the organization would instead spend the next three years adapting and pivoting through the COVID-19 pandemic.
All-Aboard, in its original format, consisted of four phases over the first year of employment. It focused on
Welcoming and socializing new employees to their team, department, and Court.
Connecting new employees to their co-workers.
Communicating expectations and teaching new employees their day-to-day responsibilities.
Integrating them into the Court by engaging them in fulfilling the Court’s purpose, demonstrating the core values, and achieving goals.
A Post-Pandemic Pivot in a New Landscape
Post-pandemic, King County Superior Court now operates in a dramatically different workplace landscape. For context, King County Superior Court consists of 54 judges, 10 commissioners and over 300 staff members. Weathering the pandemic involved a significant number of temporary hires to integrate new court technology and support judicial proceedings in unconventional spaces. Internal organizational data from 2023 notes that over 60% of the judicial bench has turned over in the last five years, and while judicial officers and bailiffs are 100% onsite, two-thirds of Superior Court staff now have some form of remote capacity for their role. 25% of employees in 2023 had been with the organization less than 5 years and the organization has new faces in the Court Chief Administrative Officer role, Deputy Chief Administrative Role, and numerous other managerial and director level roles since 2019.
The churn of organizational turnover has brought some managerial-level concern that there simply isn’t enough time to engage in a comprehensive onboarding process at this scale. Leadership disagrees, stressing that cultural and connection-centered onboarding are more important than ever before in this new(er) hybrid work environment. Gallup data points to a lag in connection to mission and purpose among all employees post-pandemic.
The original All-Aboard program was designed to reduce the chances of employees feeling siloed – they would have the opportunity to understand the larger organization by observing court proceedings, touring the County’s three court facilities, and meeting with various organizational leaders beyond their supervisor. These elements will remain a part of the reimagined All-Aboard program, anticipated to be formally re-launched later this year.
Technology Solutions to Reduce Training Time Burdens
The time burden of onboarding often falls heavily on those responsible for training new employees. Documentation of training materials ensures that training is executed consistently, and resources are available on-demand in the future. The North Carolina Bar Association suggests that organizations dedicate time to documenting processes and workflows internally. Workflows and procedural documents can be developed using existing tools in Windows 10 (Snip and Sketch, Steps Recorder, or PowerPoint screen capture) or Microsoft 365 (Stream, OneNote). These documents ensure consistent procedures across the organization and create a shareable resource for both new hires and current employees to access step-by-step instructions as a refresher.
Reducing time spent on compliance and clarification training allows more focus on meaningful connection and culture exposure for new employees. Gallup’s Tips for Leaders recommends incorporating mentor programs into onboarding processes to foster new employee connections. King County Superior Court is incorporating a “New Employee Buddy” program as a part of the relaunch of All-Aboard, where high-performing colleagues (not supervisors) will be paired with new hires to serve as their “go-to” resource for the first three months of a new hire’s tenure. While check-ins can occur online with the new technology in place in King County, leadership still stresses that in-person connection is an important part of employee onboarding.
As Courts continue to weather retirements and employee turnover, developing highly effective onboarding processes is a critical investment. By prioritizing consistency in processes and documentation of how things are done, institutional knowledge can more effectively be retained, and training burdens can be reduced. In remote, onsite, and hybrid workplaces, onboarding processes which promote connection to mission and organizational culture help new hires to see how their role connects to the larger organization and can lead to more satisfied and productive employees.
