Firming up the unfamiliar
IT professionals at enterprise companies have their work cut out for them in 2022. We have undergone massive changes in the way that we work and with those changes, organizations need to firm up the technologies and business processes that they need to work.
We know that more employees are working remotely than ever before. Today, roughly 30% of US employees have a hybrid work setup.
When employees are onboarded, there is a slew of activity happening on the business side to get everything prepared so that the new employee can hit the ground running. However, with the rise of remote work, onboarding has become much more complicated than it used to be. A company’s IT department is responsible for setting up employees with appropriate access to the tools they need to be part of the company, no matter where they engage with the company. Today, it can feel like every new hire requires the effort akin to opening a new office.
As IT professionals, we know that this is as much a business problem as it is a technology problem.
There’s a better way
Onboarding used to be simpler. On the first day of an employee’s new job, there was a checklist of requirements that IT had to move through. But with the rise of the remote worker, these checklists become a cacophony of if this, then that statements: if the employee is working from home, set up this device, but if they are going to be at the office, then give them instructions on this VPN. And even more: if they are hybrid workers, then they need a little bit of both.
Using technology to solve a business challenge
With no-code automation tools, onboarding checklists can come alive. The if this, then that confusion that hybrid workspaces have seen can be engineered and implemented into a flexible and fluid process that responds to each case according to its unique attributes.
Creating a responsive and flexible workflow can also help IT professionals stay on top of information that otherwise falls through the cracks. creating a checklist with easy web-forms, auto reminders, and built-in conditional logic, IT professionals can build escalation and movement into their to-do lists. For instance, one person in the department is assigned to build a computer, and after the task is completed, the next person is assigned to ship it out to the employee. Automation can even prepare for less predictable occurrences like a start date change that updates subsequent due dates, or an escalation path for new hires that pull out last minute. Behind all of these processes are a singular repository of location and employment status, logistical details, and hardware IDs assigned to each person.
Building a vision of success
Building effective processes and enlivening checklists with automation is a group effort. The first step is in recognizing what may cause delays or frustration. Next, those who are affected by the pain point get together to figure out if there is a better way to work. Sometimes, this is a process problem, and sometimes it is a technology problem.
Automation is useful because it can act as a technology solution to a technology problem–think integrating different systems to avoid duplication or redundancy–but automation also needs to turn on a dime and stand in as a business solution to a business problem. If a checklist is causing hold-ups or dropping information, automation software can help you map out where the cracks are and help you fill them by reorganizing the process to fit your needs.
