2026 has been my year of career transitions. I started a new job at the beginning of the year, full of excitement, hope, and curiosity; “new year, new job” was my motto. A few months in, I was disappointed to find the role wasn’t a good fit. On paper, it had everything I was looking for: meaningful work, a learning environment, career growth opportunities, and great benefits. I kept asking myself, “Where did I go wrong?” So then when I interviewed with H3, I made a point to ask questions about process improvement, how leaders support collaboration and growth across teams, and what the first few months actually look like. A month later, I was through the H3 interview process with an offer and I left my former organization to join H3. I was immediately impressed.
Three things with H3 stood out: the culture of collaboration, the access to leadership, and how much the team treats people like people. Companies emphasize these things on their websites, but you never really know until you’re inside. I’ve been lucky to have three genuinely great onboarding experiences in my career: at Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center, at Happy Gym, and now at H3.
For context, H3 is a remote organization with employees across the U.S. We’re a small but mighty team of credentialing professionals and enrollment experts with decades of healthcare industry expertise. Our mission is to help independently owned clinician practices focus on what they do best: delivering care.
So, what makes H3 successful in employee onboarding? What makes H3 different? A few practices stand out.
Practice #1: The Buddy System
Every new employee is paired with a buddy who supports them through their first 30, 60, and 90 days. A buddy isn’t a manager; they’re a teammate who answers questions, helps with tasks, and shares context. New hires meet with their buddy daily, which creates space to ask questions honestly and surface challenges without the weight of a performance review hanging over it. In a remote company, that relationship matters even more. It’s often the first real connection a new employee builds outside their manager.
Practice #2: Small Group Work Sessions
A few times a week, small functional groups meet to do work together. These sessions are where people can ask for others’ experience in navigating grey spaces and share lessons learned. Work sessions are a balance between camaraderie building and actually getting complex tasks done together.
Candidates often ask about H3’s training during interviews. In addition to training on our platform, CAQH attestations, making phone calls, and more, the buddy system and work sessions are core to our onboarding process. This is all mapped out in a clear 30/60/90-day plan. Compared to organizations where you’re thrown into the work and left to learn by doing, H3 scaffolds client meetings and enrollment applications clearly from day one. In my experience, it’s been genuinely refreshing to join a team with that much intentional structure behind it.
Practice #3: Access to Leadership
Every new hire meets with Scott (Chief Strategy Officer) and Clayton (Chief Technology Officer) as part of onboarding. It’s real face time with a chance to build a relationship with the founders and get to know them beyond the interview. That access doesn’t stop after 90 days.
New hires contribute meaningfully from the start, writing a blog post on industry trends and suggesting improvements for our Elevate platform. That input doesn’t stop after onboarding, either. The team keeps proposing changes that help our process flow better with fewer clicks, more automation, and better reminders on deadlines like licenses and CAQH attestations. Those ongoing suggestions are what turned Elevate v1 into the powerhouse platform it is today, and it keeps getting better with every release thanks to Clayton and the team.
Practice #4: Metrics That Reflect the Value Delivered to Clients
We’re upfront about metrics from the first interview. H3 measures performance through a team metric called on-contract growth (OCG). Essentially, we grow when our clients grow. Unlike companies or call centers that evaluate purely on task count or call volume, we don’t treat our people like numbers or robots. We recognize that tasks vary in length and complexity, so what matters most is that our team maintains open communication and works together to support our client’s business.
Additionally: We’ve built the industry’s first Certified Credentialing and Enrollment Professional (CCEP) program, an industry accreditation that teaches the fundamentals of practice enrollment and privileging. This is one more way we’re investing in the people behind this intricate work.
Collaboration, access to leadership, and treating people like people, not metrics, are the same threads running through everything above, and they’re cornerstones of our foundation, our culture.
This structure made H3 the place I want to stay after onboarding. And now I’m tasked in my role to make the onboarding experience even better! I’ve been lucky to go through onboarding in a few great places, and I’m bringing the best of what I learned back to H3. Here’s a peek at what’s coming:
- A learning and teaching tracker that follows new teammates from observation to independent work, using an “I do, we do, you do” approach. It lives between the 30-, 60-, and 90-day reviews, so we can check that we’ve shown everything and gone over it more than once.
- A clearly defined sandbox, so everyone knows what a safe space to learn and test looks like for someone new. It grows as independence and training grow, along with the responsibility and consequences of the tasks we hand over.
- A stronger resource library, so new teammates have what they need at their fingertips.
For us, intentional and impactful onboarding isn’t a phase we get through, it’s our retention strategy.
If any of this sounds like the kind of team and culture you’d want to be part of, we’d love to hear from you through H3’s CAREERS Page!
