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Case Study

Hiring Without the Headache: Mount Laurel’s HR Upgrade

How the HR team at Mount Laurel Township School District reimagined their hiring and onboarding processes.

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District Background


A District Ready for Change

Mount Laurel Township School District serves a thriving student population in New Jersey with a strong reputation that naturally attracts candidates. But when Aja Thomas started as Director of HR in 2022, she saw a department burdened by stacks of paper, inefficient processes, and a hiring system that lacked structure.

Aja wasn’t alone in this challenge. Deborah Derengowski, Administrative Assistant to the Director, had been with the district for over a decade but had only stepped into HR three years prior. She describes the hiring process as tedious. “We didn’t have an efficient process for hiring staff. There was no group that weeded out or looked at all the applications. I felt like we were grasping at straws trying to figure it out. We were hiring people but didn’t even know anything about them….It was not very efficient at all.”

Mount Laurel’s biggest HR hurdle was building a structured, efficient system to process and onboard new hires. That’s where Frontline Recruiting & Hiring and Frontline Central came in.

Before Frontline

Outdated Records and Processes: Paper-based hiring led to lost documents, delays, and inefficiencies.

Lack of Visibility: HR and principals struggled to track candidate progress, leading to miscommunication and delays.

Time-consuming Administrative Work: Manual data entry and redundant paperwork slowed down onboarding and payroll setup.

After Frontline

Streamlined Digital Hiring: Digital applications and automated workflows reduced errors and eliminated misplaced documents.

Improved Tracking & Transparency: Principals and HR can now review candidates in real time, ensuring a structured and efficient hiring process.

Faster Onboarding: Automated alerts and centralized data entry eliminated redundancies, so new hires can get to work faster.

The Challenges Before Frontline

A Paper-Heavy, Manual System

Before Aja’s arrival, many things were still done on paper or were housed in multiple systems. Reviewing candidates meant flipping through folders, which slowed down decision-making and led to misplaced or redundant information. “That was our challenge when we all first joined the department. Everything was paper, not electronic,” she explains.

Lack of Visibility and Delayed Onboarding

HR and school principals had no easy way to track candidate progress. Without a structured workflow, details slipped into the ether. Having to enter the same data in multiple places caused delays and introduced errors, and the onboarding process dragged on. Slow paperwork processing also meant delays in getting new hires set up in payroll, leaving them waiting longer to begin work.

Rolling Out Frontline Recruiting & Hiring and Frontline Central

Mount Laurel was already using Frontline Recruiting & Hiring when Aja and her team arrived, but they had no defined process for using it effectively. Recognizing the need for a comprehensive digital workflow, the team made the decision to rethink how they used Recruiting & Hiring while also adding Frontline Central.

They focused on making hiring and onboarding seamless. The team wanted to:

  • Streamline job postings, applications, and approvals
  • Move to an electronic system for onboarding and contracts
  • Automate workflows and eliminate repetitive administrative work

 

Frontline’s reputation and the district’s existing use of other Frontline solutions, such as Absence Management and Professional Growth, gave them confidence in expanding their use of the platform.

From Paper to Digital

Frontline Recruiting & Hiring

With Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, Aja and her team developed a structured application and screening process. Candidates filled out digital applications, which HR and principals could review in real time. Aja says it was a massive improvement.

Aja Thomas Photo

“The hundreds of candidates that we get, we bring them through Recruiting & Hiring. We can review them, principals can review them… The tool to initiate hiring and get them onboarded has just been a godsend.”

Aja Thomas
– HR Director

Frontline Central

The team then transitioned from paper-based forms to digital workflows in Frontline Central. They worked closely with Frontline’s implementation team to import data, automate forms, and ensure staff records were complete.

Initially, the team wanted Frontline Central primarily to handle contracts and contract renewals. Nicole Quinn, Personnel Data Manager, highlights a key win: “It is so easy to use with the templates for contracts. We are really excited about that because they just added the new function that allows us to preview the contracts. That is a big plus that we are really going to love this year.”

Yet as Aja, Nicole, and Debbie dug into Central, they found many more ways to use it.

Nicole Quinn Photo

“I import data for new hires and put in all of their information: their location, salary, transfers, terminations, resignations, retirements. The big thing I am working with right now is the data importer. I love that function. It saves me so much time.”

Nicole Quinn
– Personnel Data Manager

The Results: A More Efficient HR Department

A Streamlined Hiring and Onboarding Process

HR staff no longer shuffle paperwork back and forth. The system sends automated alerts for missing documents, ensuring nothing gets lost. “An assignment detail letter will go out. ‘First, thank you for applying, and here are your assignment details. Do you accept it?’ Then it comes back to me.” Debbie explains. She then sends out their onboarding packet. “I get an alert when the applicant uploads their paperwork, making it easier to track their missing documents.”

She also no longer has to manually upload paperwork. “It goes straight into the electronic file. The process is more efficient than when I started 3 years ago.” When employees submit information to set up their payroll, it is automatically sent to the payroll department upon completion. “I don’t have to distribute the paper copies to the payroll department, they are alerted with an email and they can pull out all of the employee’s forms directly from their file in Frontline.”

More Time for Meaningful Work

The Mount Laurel HR team now has time to focus on strategy, and they’re no longer overloaded. Debbie says, “It gives me a lot more time to do other things. I don’t feel as rushed. I’m not taking work home to try to find out who needs what. It streamlines my process to the point where I can do it quicker, easier, and with a lot fewer problems.”

Increased Data Accuracy and Collaboration

Now, employee records are stored in one place, creating a single source of truth. Nicole explains, “When Debbie initiates that hire, it brings all of the forms from Recruiting & Hiring into Frontline Central too, which saves us a ton of time. Before, we would have had to scan and upload documents into their files.”

Staff also have more visibility into processes. “We see that you’ve read it, and we can move forward. We know everybody has read it, which is great,” says Debbie. “People do not always look at their emails, but this way, we can track that they have clicked it, and we know that they have seen it.”

Looking Ahead

The HR team continues refining their use of Frontline Central, further standardizing forms and letters. They plan to encourage employees to review and download their own files, reducing administrative burden even more.

One of the most valuable aspects of their partnership with Frontline has been the responsiveness of the product team. “I like how they take some of our problems or questions and say, ‘We’ll look into that further,’” Debbie says. “Frontline is listening to us.”

Debbie Derengowski Photo

“It’s comforting that we know that we’re being heard and that things are moving forward.”

Debbie Derengowski
– Administrative Assistant to the HR Director

Conclusion: A Smarter, More Efficient HR Team

What had been a paper-heavy, disorganized system is now a streamlined digital operation. With Frontline Recruiting & Hiring and Frontline Central, Mount Laurel’s HR team saved time, improved accuracy, and freed up resources to focus on bigger priorities.

Nicole sums it up: “I could not be more thankful for Frontline Central and how it has made us more efficient in our department.”

Debbie agrees. “We just wanted contracts, and we’ve gotten so much more out of this than I could have even imagined. It’s just so much better. Thank you for that. It has been a great process so far.”

“Frontline and the tools that you have offered have really helped us develop a more efficient process.”

Aja Thomas
– HR Director


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About Frontline Education

Frontline Education is a leading provider of school administration software, connecting solutions for student and special programs, business operations and human capital management with powerful analytics to empower educators. Frontline partners with school systems to deliver tools, data and insights that support greater efficiency and productivity, enabling school leaders to spend more time and resources executing strategies that drive educator effectiveness, student success and district excellence.

Frontline’s broad portfolio includes solutions for proactive recruiting and hiring, absence and time management, professional growth, student information systems, special education, special programs, Medicaid reimbursement, school health management, inventory control and asset management, payroll, benefits and financial management, and analytics solutions that help district leaders tap into their data to make more informed decisions for the benefit of their students and communities. Over 10,000 clients representing millions of educators, administrators and support personnel have partnered with Frontline Education in their efforts to develop the next generation of learners.