New Moms is a Chicago-based nonprofit organisation that provides housing, job training, and family support services to young mothers experiencing poverty and homelessness. Its staff includes case managers, programme coordinators, housing specialists, and administrative professionals who work directly with families at their most vulnerable. As an organisation that exists to support others, New Moms was committed to ensuring that its own staff received the professional HR experience they deserved.
In practice, however, New Moms' HR processes were significantly behind where the organisation wanted them to be. New hire onboarding was paper-intensive, typically taking two weeks to complete because physical forms had to be printed, completed by hand, signed, and returned before the HR team could process them. Errors and missing information caused delays, and new staff members often began their first day without all the access and documentation they needed.
Turnover was a persistent challenge. Like many nonprofits, New Moms faced competition for talent from better-resourced employers, and retaining committed staff members was a constant priority. The organisation's HR leadership believed that an improved employee experience, starting with a more professional onboarding process, could meaningfully contribute to retention.
BambooHR was selected as the platform to modernise New Moms' HR operations. The implementation was carefully scoped to address the highest-priority pain points first: digital onboarding, centralised employee records, and electronic document signing. Within weeks of going live, new hires were completing their I-9 forms, employment agreements, and policy acknowledgements through BambooHR's digital workflows rather than on paper.
The transformation in onboarding speed was significant. The average time from offer acceptance to first-day readiness fell from two weeks to two days. New staff arrived on their first day with their accounts provisioned, their documents complete, and a structured welcome experience waiting for them. Managers who had previously spent hours each week chasing paperwork from new hires reported that the administrative burden had virtually disappeared.
Turnover fell by 25% in the year following the BambooHR implementation. New Moms' HR leadership attributed part of this improvement to the enhanced sense of professionalism that a modern HR system conveyed to new staff and to the broader signal it sent that the organisation cared about the employee experience. The time freed from HR administration was redirected to the staff wellbeing, engagement, and development work that mattered most for retention.
