Now that remote work is the new normal, employees are expecting even more remote work opportunities in the future, so if you’re tempted to recruit a new team but are worried about the drawbacks, let us put your anxious, nervy mind at rest.
Hiring a bunch of strangers that you may never meet in person has its challenges, but data security won’t be one of them. That’s because there is something excellent in this world called zero touch onboarding. You want this. You need this. Not just because it’s a leading cause of first-day happiness, but because it gets devices secured, provisioned, and ready to roll in about the time it takes to order a thin’n’crispy pizza. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of virtual onboarding with zero touch.
What’s Zero Touch Onboarding?
Before we get down to it, we need to call out a big fat lie. There is touch involved in zero touch onboarding, but “The IT Person Does Not Touch The Device Onboarding” is a bit of a mouthful.
Mobile device management (MDM) is a necessary condition to have in place in order to deploy zero touch onboarding and its purpose is to enroll all kinds of mobile devices right out of the box. Here’s how it works:
- Your IT lead in New York City—let’s call her Brandi—orders a new device from the manufacturer—let’s call them Apple—which is sent directly to your new hire in San Francisco—let’s call him Rajesh.
- Rajesh unboxes his shiny new device, boots it up, and connects it to his wifi. The device phones home to Apple to ask (probably plaintively) “Who do I belong to?” Apple replies, “You belong to Brandi’s organization,” which allows the device to introduce itself politely to your remote management server.
- Using the magic of Brandi’s remote management server, Rajesh’s device will now ask him to log in using his new company email address, to make sure he’s an authorized user. It will then ask him to create his account, which he does, and this is where Rajesh’s lifetime loyalty to your business really starts to blossom. When Rajesh opens up his desktop, an app catalog will display a webpage with a selection of apps curated just for Rajesh’s role. This means he’s provisioned with all the tools he needs to get to work, without having to bother Brandi.
Rajesh is happy, Brandi is happy, and your IT compliance officer is ecstatic because zero touch onboarding doubles down on data security. Rajesh’s device will encrypt itself through Bitlocker or Filevault, and automatically create and store a recovery key so that if Rajesh disappears on you (he won’t) and you get the device back, you’ll have access to the data. You can set up your zero touch onboarding with further levels of security, such as enforced passcodes, and prevent unauthorized applications from being downloaded (sorry, Rajesh).
Five Benefits of Virtual Onboarding With Zero Touch For Your New Remote Team
You may have gathered that zero touch onboarding punches above its weight not just as a technical solution for recruiting a remote team, but also as a general business asset that supports greater productivity, deeper employee engagement and more streamlined business operations. Here’s why. Zero touch onboarding:
- Reduces your reputational, operational, and monetary risk of data breaches, and supports any compliance framework that you’re adhering to/working towards/running from. That sweet, sweet IT security benefit is the gift that keeps on giving.
- Liberates your IT team’s time and headspace for more strategic tasks than dealing physically with your new hire’s new device. There’s no unboxing, customizing, and/or dropping it. Your IT team won’t even see it. All they need to do is configure the remote management service to install the right apps for the proper job function, and then go back to…
- It gives you the confidence to recruit safely and securely from anywhere in the world, giving you a larger pool of potential talent.
- It gives your new hires a great first day. Your new hires ‘ first impression of your company will be positive, from the first thrill of unboxing their new baby device to the seamless enrollment and immediate access to their work tools, welcome emails, meeting schedulers, and induction pathways.
- It works with any recruitment pattern. Do you need to hire four hundred people in seven countries in one day? Yep, I can do that. Need a seasonal or temporary team? No problem—zero touch onboarding will enroll and un-enroll at your command.
The benefits of virtual onboarding with Zero touch are only part of the joy that is Mobile Device Management (MDM). If you’d like to learn more about how Ignition can help your business do its thing more efficiently, give us a call. We’re MDM experts, and we’re here to help.