Onboarding & Employee Experience Specialist

Gaudenzia, Inc.; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); Hybrid; USD 60,000 - 70,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive Pay

Excellent Benefits

On The Job Training

Upward Mobility

Educational assistance

Job summary

Gaudenzia, Inc. is seeking an Onboarding & Employee Experience Specialist to manage the new hire onboarding journey, ensuring a successful start for each employee. You will partner with HR, Talent Acquisition, and leaders to create an engaging, consistent experience from offer to 60 days.

You will translate onboarding data into actionable improvements, monitor early retention indicators, and help drive improvements across multi‑state onboarding via ADP Workforce Now.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in HR, Communications, Healthcare Administration, or related field.
• 2–3 years of HR, onboarding, recruitment or related customer-facing experience.

Responsibilities

• Oversee and coordinate onboarding for new employees, ensuring a welcoming and engaging experience.
• Serve as primary contact for new hires, communicating throughout onboarding and resolving barriers.
• Track onboarding status across departments (ADP WFN) and schedule start dates.
• Identify disengagement risks and provide actionable recommendations to improve onboarding outcomes.
• Provide proactive communication and cross‑functional collaboration with recruiters, HR, and leaders.

Skills

Empathy & EI

Relationship Building

Communication skills

Initiative

Accountability

Problem Solving

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

ADP Workforce Now

ATS

Job description

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

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 elevate concerns to the appropriate HRBP and leader.
• Maintain ownership of identified issues through appropriate follow-up rather than considering the matter complete by following up 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 elevate 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.