Onboarding & Employee Experience Specialist
- Gaudenzia
- Philadelphia, United States
- $50,000 – $65,000
We need hope-bringers and changemakers - because the work we all do matters. Join a team that shows up for each other as much as we show up for our clients. At Gaudenzia, your purpose fuels progress - for yourself and others.
Gaudenzia's Mission: Gaudenzia's Mission is to promote long-term recovery by providing comprehensive treatment and support to people with substance use disorder, co-occurring mental health disorders, and related conditions, regardless of individual circumstances.
Position Type: Hybrid (Remote and In-Office)
Qualifications:
Education/Training: Minimum of a bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Communications, Healthcare Administration, or related field.
Experience: At least 2 -3 years of experience in HR, onboarding, recruitment, employee experience, behavioral health or another high-touch, customer-facing environment. Preferred HR/HRIS, ATS, employee engagement, and employee retention initiatives experience
The Onboarding & Employee Experience Specialist serves as a key organizational resource for executing the new hire onboarding experience in a manner that establishes new hire success and strengthens early employee engagement and retention. This position combines operational excellence with high-touch employee engagement, creating a welcoming, engaging, consistent, and effective onboarding experience for new employees from offer acceptance through the first 60 days of employment. The specialist serves as a primary point of contact for new hires throughout the onboarding process, serving as a trusted point of contact for new hires, proactively establishing positive relationships, identifies and surfaces barriers, conducts structured new-hire check-ins, identifying early indicators of disengagement or turnover risk, root causes and opportunities for improvement.
This individual is expected to go beyond completing onboarding transactions and collecting employee feedback and is responsible for translating onboarding data, insights and findings into actionable recommendations, partnering with HR team members and leaders to implement meaningful and measurable improvements and outcomes.
The Onboarding & Employee Experience Specialist will engage in interdepartmental communications with our leaders, recruiters, and HR department, closely coordinating and tracking onboarding status for all pre-hires (ADP WFN), scheduling of start dates for new hires and thus is responsible for promptly answering questions and resolving challenges new hires may encounter during the onboarding process.
Your responsibilities in this role may include:
Onboarding experience management
- Proactively oversee, facilitate, coordinate, organize the onboarding experience and activities for new employees, hiring managers and internal partners.
- As primary contact for all new hires, engage within 24 hours of offer acceptance; maintain communication and contact throughout the onboarding process, and complete all communication and details required for the onboarding process (including HR technology, systems and vendor management).
- Identify and resolve barriers to successful onboarding and integration, escalating concerns as necessary.
- Provide operational excellence with all duties, tasks and responsibilities
- Provide necessary technical assistance required to complete orientation and onboarding
- Provide proactive communication with all partners (hiring managers, new hires, and HR team members ) on onboarding status and when requirements are incomplete or delayed.
- Establish and maintain positive relationships with new employees through consistent, professional, timely, and personalized communications.
- Create a welcoming experience that reflects Gaudenzia’s mission, values, culture, and commitment to employees.
- Manage and update multi-state onboarding experiences via ADP Workforce Now ensuring company policies, welcome messages, and documents are current.
Systems and process improvement
- Recognize potential indicators of disengagement, dissatisfaction, confusion, or turnover risk and determine appropriate next steps.
- Conduct structured new hire check-in with employees, to assess overall onboarding and early engagement experience.
- Use an established framework to explore areas including, but not limited to: overall onboarding experience, job responsibilities and expectations, relationship with manager and team, training and resources, workload and scheduling, organizational culture, barriers to success, employee engagement, intent to remain with the organization, and areas of concern.
- Document & analyze outcomes accurately and timely, identifying and quickly resolving any/all concerns the new hire may experience during the first 30 days of employment.
- Identify employees requiring intervention or additional support and escalate concerns to the appropriate HRBP and leader.
- Maintain ownership of identified issues through appropriate follow-up rather than considering the matter complete by following gup with employees when appropriate to determine whether identified concerns have been addressed, ensuring resolution.
Insights & Continuous Improvement
- Analyze feedback, identify recurring trends, determine root causes, recommend systemic solutions, and measure results.
- Provide regular reporting regarding onboarding effectiveness, new-hire sentiment, emerging concerns, and early-tenure retention risk.
SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, AND ABILITIES
Empathy & Emotional Intelligence
Demonstrates genuine empathy and active listening skills.
Recognizes verbal and non-verbal indicators of concerns, disengagement, or uncertainty.
Responds to employee concerns with poise, professionalism, compassion and sound judgement.
Relationship Building
Exceptional interpersonal, relationship-building skills.
Builds trust and credibility with employees, leaders, and HR & Talent Acquisition partners.
Creates a welcoming experience for employees.
Excellent customer services and telephone
Communication
Communicates clearly, professionally, pleasantly, and appropriately across written, verbal and virtual channels.
Ability to have difficult or sensitive conversations.
Adjust communication style based on audience.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Initiative
Anticipates problems rather than waiting for them to occur, with consistent follow-up.
Independently identify opportunities to improve onboarding.
Takes action without requiring constant direction.
Accountability
Owns assigned work from beginning to resolution.
Follows through on commitments.
Does not allow issues to fall through the cracks.
Goes above and beyond to ensure new hires get the support needed, to complete all onboarding tasks timely.
Exceptional organization and time management skills.
Problem Solving
Goes beyond identifying a problem to understanding the underlying cause.
Develops practice solutions, taking ownership of issues through resolution.
Strong analytical
Ability to escalate matters, tactfully and professionally.
Good working knowledge of HR practices and ATS systems.
Influence
Can appropriately challenge processes and raise concerns with leaders and HR partners.
Can advocate for the employee experience while maintaining organizational standards.
Influence new hires to prioritize pre-hire onboarding tasks promptly, thus reducing delayed starts.
What We Offer: Competitive Pay - Excellent Benefits - On The Job Training - Upward mobility - Educational assistance to help you grow with us in this life saving field!
For additional details regarding our benefits, please visit: https://www.gaudenzia.org/careers/
Gaudenzia is proud to be an employer of choice - and a treatment provider of choice - in the substance use and co-occurring disorders treatment field. We work hard to foster an inclusive, supportive environment where our employees and clients always feel safe and welcome.
Come work with us!
Our Agency is committed to the principles of equal employment. We believe in fostering a positive work environment in which every employee is treated with respect. Our staff hiring and recruitment practices are grounded in fairness, transparency, and merit. All employment decisions are based on job-related qualifications, relevant skills, experience, and alignment with our mission and values. We actively recruit from a broad range of educational and professional backgrounds to attract the most qualified candidates, ensuring equal opportunity for all applicants without preference or discrimination. Our process uses consistent and clear evaluation criteria to support objective decision-making. By emphasizing accountability, efficiency, and integrity throughout every stage--from job posting to onboarding--we build a workforce defined by excellence, professionalism, and commitment to our shared purpose. Gaudenzia is dedicated to the fulfillment of this policy regarding all aspects of employment, including but not limited to recruiting, hiring, placement, transfer, training, promotion, rates of pay, and other compensation, termination, and all other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.
Compensation
$23.51-$24.98 Based upon experience
Skills
- Onboarding
- HRIS
- ATS
- Employee Engagement
- Employee Retention
- Communication
- Customer Service




