Coffee? Check. Cozy socks? Check. Gluten-free blueberry scone? Check, check, check. Let’s go. Self-onboarding is a new hires dream and stacks up a whole pancake pile of benefits for your company, including making a newbie’s first day the best ever.
Wait Up, What’s Self-Onboarding?
Self-onboarding is a methodology for setting up your new hires so they can access all the tools, data, platforms, and communication channels they need to be fully functioning and happy staff members from day one. Self-onboarding is suitable for pretty much any new hire with an internet connection, but it’s especially useful for remote workforces.
Self-onboarding makes the new hire an active participant in their own set-up, but this doesn’t mean you leave them to go feral. Good self-onboarding carefully guides the new person securely and quickly to full productivity. Sounds dreamy, right?
How Does Self-Onboarding Work? Is It, Like, Magic?
Okay, don’t be daft. Self-onboarding is just IT. Essentially, you’ve got two flavors of self-onboarding and their names are zero-touch onboarding and conditional onboarding.
Zero-Touch Onboarding
First, let’s clear something up. In zero-touch onboarding, there is actually touching involved, but it’s all consensual and done by your new hire–not your IT admin. Here’s the drill, by way of a thrilling story:
- Kim, the People Ops manager of Funisus Company Inc. over in New York orders a shiny new MacBook Pro for shiny new hire Hoseok. It’s delivered directly to him from the Apple store to his home in drizzly Seattle. Nice!
- Hoseok unboxes and boots up his Mac and connects it to his WiFi. He’s probably a bit anxious because he doesn’t want to goof up on his first day, bless him. Here’s the fun part. His Mac then phones home to Apple and says, “Who’s my pappy?” Apple replies, “You belong to Funisus Company, my little one.”
- Hoseok’s Mac introduces itself to Kim’s MDM server and asks Hoseok to log in using his Funisus Company email address to make sure he’s an authorized person. Then, it’ll lead him through the easy steps to create his account. Then – holy of holies – his dashboard will magically reveal a selection of apps, accounts, and pathways especially provisioned for Hoseok.
This can take under fifteen minutes. It took longer to write the damn bullets.
Conditional Access
Think sort of the same as zero-touch onboarding, but for BYOD. Conditional access onboards a new hire by installing MDM to manage the device. It makes sure the device complies with company policies on data security before your newbie can use the device for work purposes. But when they’re validated, they’ll gain access to everything they need through the corporate gateway or the front door of cloud single sign-on. In the meantime, mobile app management keeps corporate and private stuff totally separate from each other. Clear-ish? Cool beans.
The Benefits of Self-Onboarding
If we listed off the whole banana of self-onboarding benefits we’d be here all day and no one wants that. No. One. But we need to get through it, so let’s make a start. Here are today’s favorite benefits:
Reduces the Risk of Data Breaches
Data breaches cost you big time: lost productivity, lost sales, reduced operationality, trashed reputation, and the rest. Self-onboarding is secure onboarding because:
- New hires are authorized before they can access data.
- Role provisioning is the principle of least privilege in action.
- Personal devices need to jump through all the security hoops before they get to play.
- Your new hires are cocooned in all the MDM-flavored security protocols from day one.
Liberates Your IT Team
Self-onboarding frees up the time, expertise, and headspace of your IT team. No more sitting cross-legged in dusty basements, unboxing, provisioning, reboxing devices, and licking stamps. They’ll have fun configuring their MDM server to install the right apps for the right role, and then have time left over for more strategic stuff.
Liberates Everybody Else
Marvel at the juicy automation and integrative content management tools jammed into self-onboarding, because it puts an end to manual or repetitive onboarding elements usually suffered by the HR team. Line managers, too, need less time for the donkeywork and more time for actually managing their new hires.
Widens Your Talent Pool
Self-onboarding gives you the confidence to recruit safely and securely from anywhere in the world. Your potential talent pool just got a whole ton bigger. This means your business can benefit from different and/or rare skill sets. This is so cool we can’t even think of anything funny to say about it. Who doesn’t want more diversity? Hey, let’s all get passports!
Improves Productivity
Self-onboarding is kinda speedy, so your new hire’s learning curve will be super impressive. They’ll have everything they need to start learning their role from day one. And, because it can be tailored to their role, they won’t be overwhelmed with a ton of apps that are irrelevant to them.
Improves Employee Engagement
Engaged employees are good for business. Employees feel engaged when they feel valued and nothing says, “I value you, most honored newbie” more than giving them a great first day. Salted caramel cookies are nice, but what’s even better is a smooth, easy, and hassle-free onboarding experience. Great first impression? Sorted. Dissing you on Glassdoor? Not so much.
The Benefits of Self-Onboarding Are Many and Time Is Finite, So Let’s Get Started
If you’re self-onboarding-curious, there’s no shame in giving us a call. Every business is different, especially yours, but we’d bet our office’s beloved dog that we can show you at least seven benefits of self-onboarding for your company. It really can revolutionize (no exaggeration) how you hire people. Revolutionize in a good way, not in a let’s-storm-something-and-terrorize-people-because-we-are-big-babies way.
Ignition is Silicon Valley’s best (and friendliest) IT security, compliance, and support team. Call us now–chatting about IT support and cybersecurity is our favorite thing to do!