If business is looking up and you’re hiring fourteen new teams in eight new countries, why are you hiding in the stationery cupboard? Is it because it’s your job to onboard all these new people?
Relax, because we’re here to show you how to streamline your onboarding process. A streamlined onboarding process will save you time, money, and sanity, as well as giving your new hires the best first day at work.
Why You Need a Streamlined Onboarding Process
One thing we’ve learned is that global pandemics change working practices. We’re not in Kansas anymore, metaphorically. Remote and hybrid working is becoming an accepted part of even the most jackbooted corporate culture. Whether your team works in their pajamas at home, or the office, work-from-where-you-are (WFWYA) is here to stay. And this means you’ll need an onboarding process that’s responsive to demands as well as easy to implement.
Streamlining your onboarding process is the way forward, which includes:
Automating What Can Be Automated
You didn’t spend decades learning UNIX just to unbox for a living, unless you’re a YouTube influencer. In the bad old days, onboarding new hires meant time alone in a dusty basement unboxing, setting up, configuring, provisioning, re-packaging, and sending out your new hires’ new devices. If you streamline onboarding so devices pretty much configure themselves, you’ll save time, headspace, and your fingernails. Heck, you might never even have to clap eyes on those pesky devices (we’re looking at you, zero touch onboarding).
Having What You Need, When You Need It
Remember that amazing first day at work when you had everything you needed when booting up your computer? Yeah, neither do we. Things have changed. Streamlining means making sure that new people have all the tools, apps, and services to get inducted, welcomed, and working effectively before lunchtime, wherever they are.
No more long hours waiting for the IT helpdesk to answer, no poor reviews on Glassdoor—just happy new employees overflowing with employee engagement, discretionary effort, and self-actualization. Hallelujah!
Enjoying All The Data Security
Streamlining onboarding processes reduces data security risk. This is because automation reduces human error and activates a whole heap of different security methodologies, such as device encryption, recovery key storage, single cloud sign-on, passcode and OS update enforcement, and containerization of corporate data. What a dream team of compliance, if you have that kind of dream.
How to Streamline Your Onboarding Process
The quickest and easiest way to streamline your onboarding process is to give us a call.
Failing that, here are the steps:
1. Analyze Your Fleet
First, take a look at your fleet of devices used for work. Are they all corporate-owned, or does your company have a BYOD policy? Are they single OS or multi-platform? The results of your analysis will dictate how you streamline onboarding. You’ll still be able to streamline, and it will happen in different ways, depending on the mix.
2. Get Mobile Device Management
You can’t get around it. If you want to streamline onboarding, you’ll need Mobile Device Management (MDM). MDM gives you centralized control of your fleet, and if that isn’t streamlining, we don’t know what is. The flavor of MDM you choose will depend on the mix of your fleet, but there’s always an MDM to fit.
MDM is a super-effective bundle of software that allows you to enforce security, control, and configure devices from the comfort of your condo/treehouse. One of its most glorious aspects is a powerful onboarding functionality that allows you to give new hires access to all the tools and apps they need to get working from hour one day one.
MDM onboarding comes in two chunky flavors: Zero touch and conditional access.
Zero Touch Onboarding
This works with corporate-owned, brand-new devices shipped straight from the supplier directly to your new hire. Here’s how it works:
- Your new hire (let’s call her Deneice) answers the door. It’s DHL with a package fresh from the Apple farm. Yay, it’s that new work computer.
- Deneice plugs it in, boots it up, connects it to her wifi, and lo! She’s asked to create her corporate account. She does so, and she’s delighted by the catalog of apps, tools, and services suddenly available to her.
Deneice is having her best first day ever because MDM feat. zero touch onboarding has made it happen.
What Deneice doesn’t know is that, while she was making her first latte of the day, her new device asked Apple who it belonged to, and Apple replied: “You belong to Deneice’s new employer.” Yes, you’ve preconfigured your remote management server, but for all new hires, not just Deneice. Set it and forget it.
Conditional Access
Conditional access—also known as context-aware access—is the second method of streamlined onboarding. Utilize this when your new hires are use personal devices to access corporate accounts. It might be a little slower for your new person than zero touch onboarding, but we’re talking fiften minutes or so slower, rather than days.
With conditional access, your new person (let’s call her Deneice again) tries to log into your company’s Microsoft or Google account, but fails dismally. That’s because your MDM won’t allow a strange device access to all the company glories unless Deneice:
- Installs your company MDM, allowing you to control her device—the corporate bit, anyway. Mobile Application Management (MAM), a subset of MDM, takes care of any employee concern that your company might accidentally access or wipe personal data.
- Complies with updates, passcodes, encryption, and policies to ensure her device is secure to corporate standards.
Once your remote management system is happy that Deneice’s device is compliant, it enables her to access the whole catalog of apps and tools that help her get up and running on her first day.
Let’s Get Streamlined
Streamlining your onboarding process is one of those annoying things that make you say, “Why didn’t I do this earlier?”. If you like the sound of:
- More time to do more fun things than manual onboarding
- Giving your new hires the perfect first day
Then get in touch now. Right, this second. We’re here to help you streamline your onboarding process and more.