Onboarding & Offboarding with the People Team
Challenge — A benefit of being in IT is that you get to work with all the other departments in the company, particularly core services. When I started at Group Nine Media, the company was still in startup mode and had an ad hoc method of onboarding new employees. In IT, we often found out at the last minute when a new person was starting and that didn’t give us time to have the proper equipment or tools in place for their first day. This made for a poor onboarding experience for a new person — they didn’t have the basics they needed to get started — and this also overwhelmed the IT service desk with requests, bogging us down and forcing us to scramble. Similarly, there was no standardized process for offboarding employees, so when someone left, their application licenses and computer were often left in their possession, posing a security risk and costing the business money.
Approach — I partnered with the People team to create an onboarding and offboarding process:
Held meetings with the People team to understand their approach to onboarding and how that could fit in with IT’s needs
Established regular onboarding days, i.e., every other Monday, so both the People and IT teams did not have to haphazardly onboard users
Set expectations with hiring managers for equipment and tools their new hires would receive and when
Wrote an onboarding communication plan with the People team’s onboarding coordinator
Created a “Welcome” template for the People team and a follow-up message from IT, including instructions and details for the person’s first day
Produced and held onboarding presentations for all new hires on Monday mornings; assigned a member of IT to be present at those sessions to answer any questions
Automated alerts from the HRIS so when the HR business partner created a new user in their system, IT would be notified and would receive the information they needed
Agreed on onboarding requirements and expectations for contingent workers
Replicated much of the process with offboarding — received a notification from HR and established a process on the IT side that deactivated accounts at the right time (including automations and checklists)
Established a policy for laptops and other devices at offboarding that dictated whether the user kept their laptop, it was returned to IT to re-use, or it was sustainably recycled
Results —
Created an efficient, clear, and sustainable process for both the People and IT teams
Provided new employees with the right tools at the right time, decreasing confusion and IT service desk requests
Increased satisfaction for new employees — many provided positive feedback about the process
Saved money and time by ordering laptops for new hires in bulk (quarterly or monthly) because we planned for the headcount in the budget
Saved money and maintained company IP by retrieving and re-using offboarded users’ laptops
Adhered to security standards during offboarding, allowing the business to pass a SOC2 audit
Saved money on application licensing by deactivating accounts at the time of offboarding
Business Impact — The establishment of clear and agreed upon onboarding and offboarding processes allowed the business to appear more organized and presentable to new hires and created a positive experience for them. It gave hiring managers the visibility and opportunity to ask for what they needed for their new hires. My approach improved operational efficiency, saved time and money, and put the company in a better position to secure its data. It also enhanced collaboration and trust with the People team, making space for future projects. Finally, this approach helped the business plan for onboarding in the annual budget rather than having to “find the money” whenever a new person was starting.
