Worst Onboarding Experience Ever Case study adapted from: [T. A. Limoncelli, C. J. Hogan, S. R. Chalup, Practice of System and Network Administration, The: Volume 1: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT. 3rd ed., AddisonWesley, 2017.]

Gina was an experienced software engineer who joined a major insurance company, one you have surely heard of. After the first week she still didnt have a computer, but her manager insisted this was normal and she should attend all of the teams meetings and spend her time reading the system architecture documents that would bring her up-to-date with the teams projects.

She received her computer during her second week, but it had no software. It was locked down to prevent her from installing software herself. Therefore, she didnt have the tools she needed. She was informed that all software had to be installed by the IT team. Her requests for the software were delayed because the developer tools werent on the standard list and had to be special ordered. This, of course, is odd because everyone else on her team used these tools. To make matters worse, her desk was in a different building than her team. She was in the new building to which the rest of her team would be moving soon. Facilities didnt want to do an extra move.

In summary, Gina suffered the indignity of not having the tools to do her job and interacting with her team by roaming from desk to desk like a nomad. Unable to do any work, Gina spent most of her day bored, reading books she brought from home. Her boss was surprisingly okay with this. Eventually Gina had caught up on all the novels she had in her backlog, plus had reread all of her favourite novels. After three months, she still did not have a working development system and she quit.

The IT-related responsibilities include setting up the persons accounts, workstation, network connections, desk and mobile phones, security badges, and any other technology-related issues. In a small company all of these tasks may be done by the IT team. In a larger company they are divided among appropriate departments: the IT team, network group, physical security, and so on. So much of onboarding involves technology that if the process goes badly, the IT department often receives the blame. For example, if HR arranged for the wrong kind of workstation to be delivered, people will assume the error was with the IT department.

You have only one chance to make a good first impression on your customers. A good first impression creates goodwill between you and your users. Goodwill is like a bank account. If you start out with a positive balance, you can make a few mistakes and stay in the black. If you start out in debt, it may be impossible to crawl out of that bad situation.

Because of the importance of a good first impression, some IT departments drive the onboarding process. Their reputation is too important to leave to someone else. If your companys onboarding process is messy, disorganized, and error-prone, and leaves new employees wondering if the company theyve just joined is one pair of oversized shoes short of a clown car, then it is your professional responsibility to spearhead an initiative to work with HR and fix the onboarding process

. Answer the following questions:

1. Why is it important that ITs involvement in onboarding a new employee start before that persons first day? Give examples. [6 marks]

2. Explain how the IT Department is responsible in setting-up onboarding process with HR? [7 marks]

3. Discuss how would you judge if an onboarding process is done well? [6 marks]

4. In your opinion, if someone involved in onboarding had a suggestion for how to improve the process, how would he or she make this change? [6 marks]