YMCA of Greater St. Paul and Metropolitan Minneapolis

Kronos-Tandem Select Solution Creates Time Savings and Efficiencies in YMCA Background Screening and Hiring Process

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The YMCA is a social services organization dedicated to building strong kids, strong families, and strong communities. The YMCA of Greater St. Paul and YMCA of Metropolitan Minneapolis provide fitness and wellness programs; child care; youth, teen, and family programs; and team-building programs at 24 branch locations, seven overnight camps, 10 day camps, and more than 50 program sites throughout the Minnesota/Wisconsin area. Through a shared human resources department, these organizations employ approximately 4,000 year-round team members and hire an additional 1,500 summer season staff. More than 1,500 volunteers also support the organizations’ numerous activities.

The YMCA has an obligation to provide a safe environment to its members, program participants, and staff and uses background screening to identify potential hires and volunteers who pose possible safety and security risks. "Background screening was a very time-consuming manual process," says Angie Burke, director of HRIS and payroll. "Each location, which had its own account with the screening vendor, faxed a candidate's or volunteer's form to the vendor, and results were returned to each location. When a discrepancy appeared in the results, the location forwarded the information to HR, where staff manually reviewed the background check, made a hiring determination, and communicated the decision back to the location." Additionally, the manual process didn’t always provide a complete picture of a person’s background. 

Integrated application and background screening: faster, more informed hiring

The YMCA wanted to automate the background screening process, free its staff from time-consuming manual tasks, improve hiring consistency, and receive a more complete view of each candidate's background. Two years prior, when the YMCA was seeking a new workforce management solution to handle its complex organizational structure and pay policies, “Kronos® stood out among the rest,” says Burke, and the organization implemented the Workforce HR, Workforce Timekeeper, and Workforce Payroll applications. The integration between these solutions and Workforce Talent Acquisition — an automated hiring solution that identifies applicants who are best-suited for positions — was a key reason the YMCA later added this Kronos module to streamline the hiring process, she adds.

An attractive benefit of Workforce Talent Acquisition for the YMCA is its integration with Tandem Select’s background screening solution, IntegraCheck™, which has replaced the previous labor-intensive process. “A background check now begins with just a few clicks of the mouse,” says Burke about the automated solution. “It’s like magic, and hiring managers love it.” The YMCA now enjoys a vastly more efficient background screening process that delivers better information about applicants within the same turnaround time as before, as well as invoicing by location and central account management. And the risk that someone might be hired before passing a background check has been eliminated.

Increased ROI and significant HR time savings

All applicants apply through Workforce Talent Acquisition, and the hiring manager initiates a background check from the solution’s hiring management console. Applicant information is automatically sent to Tandem Select, which conducts a comprehensive background check. When the background check is complete, instead of having to review every background check result, each applicant’s record is marked with a simple “Pass,” “Fail,” or “Needs Review” ranking within Workforce Talent Acquisition, according to the YMCA’s unique background check hiring criteria.

Mitigating safety risks, automating identification of ineligible hires

With paper-based screening, the YMCA relied on hiring managers to contact HR if a background check uncovered a problem. If a manager failed to do this and hired the applicant, HR was unaware until a problem surfaced. “Those ranked ‘Needs Review’ are the only results that require HR’s intervention,” says Susan Gall, director of organizational effectiveness. “This takes a lot less of our HR time, and consistency is greater, which reduces our risk on those borderline calls.”

To close the loop on the screening process, at the YMCA’s request, Tandem Select automatically informs candidates who don’t meet the YMCA’s background check hiring criteria by sending the required adverse action notifications on the YMCA’s behalf.

Workforce Talent Acquisition also enables HR staff to designate former employees as ineligible to be rehired. Before, if they were terminated for cause at one YMCA location and applied at another where no one knew them, they might get rehired. Not any more.

Streamlined volunteer screening

Screening of volunteers is now automated as well with Tandem Select’s AppliCan™ applicant order entry solution. “After implementation, it was clear that using AppliCan would enable us to take advantage of the same enhanced background check process as with employees,” explains Burke. “AppliCan is far more efficient than the previous manual process. To initiate the background check, we simply email a link to potential volunteers, who submit their information directly to Tandem Select via a secure YMCA-branded website, which includes an electronic release for the applicants to sign.” Additionally, just as with the Workforce Talent Acquisition solution, the YMCA staff is freed from having to review every prospective volunteer’s background check by receiving ranked results according to the YMCA’s unique hiring criteria. 

PROJECT BENEFITS

• Reduces risk of approving inappropriate or ineligible staff and volunteers through automated, standardized process
• Significantly reduces HR staff time and improves consistency by ranking screening results according to the YMCA’s unique hiring criteria
• Delivers better background screening information through a simple, automated process
• Provides timely screening results and enables invoicing by location YMCA of Greater St. Paul and YMCA of Metropolitan Minneapolis

“Our Tandem Select background screening integration with Workforce Talent Acquisition has absolutely increased our confidence in hiring the right people.”  Angie Burke, Director of HRIS and Payroll, YMCA of Greater St. Paul and YMCA of Metropolitan Minneapolis

Tandem Select

Tandem Select helps companies make informed hiring decisions faster by combining their comprehensive, accurate, and cost-effective background screening and drug testing solutions with innovative technology such as the Kronos Workforce Talent Acquisition automated hiring management system.