BRS improvements for onboarding new Berkeley hires

April 21, 2020

(Editors note: the following information was shared with campus departments by their respective BRS Regions the week of 4/21/20) 

Berkeley Regional Services (BRS) is announcing some exciting improvements that have been adopted in order for new Berkeley hires to be more productive when they begin working. These improvements are some of the components of BRS’ larger Re-Envision Onboarding initiative.

With Berkeley’s integration to UCPath, the campus saw increased timeframes between when the new employee accepts their job offer; then attends and completes onboarding/new hire paperwork, and when they receive their Employee ID Number (EID). Generating the EID earlier in the process is critical for two reasons. First, it is needed to setup CalNet, email, calendar, and other system access; many times new employees  were without the important tools they needed to do their job their first day/week at Berkeley. Second, it improves the likelihood the new employee will receive their first paycheck on time. 

As these delays have caused ongoing frustrations within campus departments, BRS regions have continued to work on developing methods to “speed up the process”. BRS’ BEARS Region and Central Onboarding Team recently piloted some improvements to enable a new employee’s UCPath employee record and EID to be created earlier in the process. Here’s how it works: 

  • The new employee continues to complete their new employee paperwork electronically in DocuSign.

  • BRS expanded the security components of DocuSign so the new hire now has a secure method of providing their SSN, home address, etc., in DocuSign. This expansion also includes administering the Oath & Patent electronically; all are now part of the DocuSign packet.

  • Once the new hire completes their expanded DocuSign packet, BRS then begins establishing their UCPath employee record -- that then creates their EID. This is where the hiring manager/supervisor can help: by encouraging the new hire to complete their DocuSign packet as quickly as possible.

  • BRS will still need to personally verify section 2 of their Form I-9 at an onboarding session. Please note: while in the COVID-19 environment, this is being done virtually by the BRS Central Onboarding Team.

Through the successful efforts of this Pilot, BRS is expanding these processes across all other BRS regions effective 4/8/20 so new hires in all other campus departments can benefit and be more productive when they begin their new job(s). 

There have been some questions about how new employee onboarding is currently working with the COVID-19 environment, here are the details:

  • Simply speaking, during COVID-19, while in-person onboarding sessions have been suspended, by default, all new hire/rehire paperwork is completed remotely through an online process that includes the improved DocuSign packet and individual video appointments for the I-9 verification.  

  • When normal campus operations resume, there will be a return to in-person onboarding/I-9 verifications and updates will be featured on the Onboarding New Employees page(s) of the BRS website about those changes.

  • There is the understanding that there are instances when new employees may be working remotely as a normal course of business and/or coming to campus for in-person onboarding is a challenge geographically. The BRS teams are now working on a standard Remote Onboarding process for when campus resumes normal operations and more information will be shared at that time. 

Please continue to reach out to the applicable BRS HR Partner for any additional questions.