Skip to Main Content

Help Wanted: Faster New Hire Onboarding

Starting a new job is often a slow-moving experience. One that far too many of us can relate to. Where’s the nearest coffee shop? How am I going to remember all of these strange conference room names? And how many times have you started a new job and had to sit around for days, maybe even weeks, before you had access to all the systems and tools you needed to actually start doing your job?

As consumers, technology has become more ingrained in our everyday lives, and our expectations around immediate access and a simplified setup experience have also become the norm. These expectations have followed us into the workplace, and when workplace tools are hard to get access to, it leads to frustration. In some cases, it can also lead to users finding backdoor ways to get the access they need, so they don’t have to wait for “the process”.

The problem is that many organizations rely on manual processes. Sending emails to ask for access or physically asking an application owner for an account are the most common approaches. However, when that doesn’t work, some users may simply go around the process completely and create accounts in applications downloaded from the internet or some other means they can get their hands on.

Now imagine that process repeated across multiple applications and dozens of users, and not just on “day one”, but countless times throughout an employee’s tenure with an organization.

So why do so many companies limp along like this?  Two reasons: 1) It’s perceived to not be worth the investment to adopt identity tools that have a reputation for complexity. 2) They haven’t yet had a breach or other event that forces them to audit their access.

However, those manual processes have real costs for productivity, security and compliance.

Luckily, modern provisioning tools have come a long way in just the past few years. This has made it easier to implement Day 1 access and to request additional access across the entire organization. Processes that used to take days or weeks can be accomplished in a fraction of the time with automated processes and workflows.

For example, one of IdentityNow’s fundamental tenants is to keep the access request process as simple as possible (through a user-centric design), yet secure enough for any regulated industry by leveraging streamlined workflows, two-way feedback and a clear, referenceable audit trail. Those workflows and audit trails provide crucial traceability and help ensure users only receive the access they need to do their job, while preventing unnecessary access that might expose an organization to fraud, breaches, or other malicious actions. And making the tool easy to use, encourages users to engage in the identity governance process, which in turn helps keep organizations more secure.

Within IdentityNow:

  • New hires can be automatically provisioned access to all of the applications they will need on their first day, based on their job function.
  • Requesters can easily drill into a catalog of available options to find the application, access or business role they need.
  • Administrators are empowered to have control over what a requester can see and submit a request for, as well as define approval requirements with simple point-and-click configuration options.
  • Approvers are notified in real-time when an action is waiting on them, and the necessary request context is displayed, to help them make the right decision quickly, which keeps the request moving along.

IdentityNow can even integrate with popular IT service management tools, like ServiceNow, to ensure a seamless experience for users who are already familiar with other avenues of making IT requests.

By simplifying the end-to-end access request process and allowing users to manage their requests in a self-service fashion, organizations can scale without increasing the burden on their IT departments. They can maintain tight administrative controls, with a secure approval process, without impeding their user’s ability to be productive.

If the goal of every organization is to make their employees as productive as possible, as quickly as possible, a modernized and automated access request system is one of the best ways to reach that goal. Who knows, maybe the next time you make a career move you’ll find you have access to all the corporate systems you need on your very first day…unfortunately, it may still take you a few weeks to find the best coffee spot.


Discussion