It was the perfect storm of onboarding: joining a telehealth company as a senior executive during COVID and getting acclimated to leading a 130-person team all working remotely, when 5 months into the new job, you get the news: you’re being acquired. Suddenly the entire organization is being onboarded by another company. As major players in telemedicine, with tremendous promise and expectations of the merger, both companies need to get the onboarding in place quickly and without disruption to the lifeblood of the companies -members and clients.

Learn how Charles River Laboratories onboards over 3500 new talent each year, how they collaboratively designed an innovative global and consistent onboarding experience that successfully immerses new talent into their culture and their roles. Hear how they leverage leaders globally to deliver virtual and onsite cultural and foundational orientation experiences; how managers, buddies and onboarding champions support and provide new talent a strong sense of belonging to the CRL community; use a listening strategy to continuously enhance the experience, and share their challenges as well as positive impact it is making even during these unprecedented times.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is a complex organization, hiring over 4500 employees annually into over 80 specialized departments. This past year, the enterprise onboarding team has made a concerted effort to prioritize new hires across systems and will share a case study of successful partnership creating a specialized orientation with Research Institute at CHOP, one of the largest departments (2500 employees)

In this session the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia onboarding team members will share their experience of how they were able to take their traditional instructor led day 1 orientation to the next level, transforming the day into a “gaming” experience. During the experience new hires receive all of the important and required information they need while completing fun, interactive activities that can be accessed both on a virtual platform or live in person facilitation.

For over 14 years, Katie has led the development and execution of talent acquisition strategies across multiple industries. She started her career in recruitment and leadership consulting before transitioning to the manufacturing industry where she spent 9 years developing international talent strategies. In 2015, she transitioned to healthcare where she has successfully developed and operationalized the inaugural sourcing, recruiting and onboarding model, which contributed to a 25% decrease in time-to-fill, the attraction and selection of over 70% of the regional new graduate nursing candidate pool and a 15% decrease in vacancy rate for critical roles. Katie received her Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications with a concentration in Public Relations and Advertising from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In addition, Katie serves on the board of directors for multiple organizations including Nebraska SkillsUSA and HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America) and the Industrial Distribution program at the University of Nebraska-Kearney.