The onboarding experience matters.
Studies show that “great employee onboarding can improve retention by 82%.” Travis Gary, Director of IT at Teleport, agrees with that sentiment. “The stakes are pretty high,” warns Gary, noting that organizations need to invest in vendors who can offer essential features in order to provide the best onboarding experience possible.
So how do you go about selecting the right vendor to help you with your automation needs? Here are 4 features that Gary suggests including in your vendor criteria:
Passwordless authentication
There are numerous security concerns with onboarding, including fishing, incorrect authentication and authorization, and hacking. When it comes to security, Gary notes that “if you put the effort into automating the user onboarding and get them into the right systems with the right permissions, you are better protected from fishing.”
Identity providers and SSO platforms use passwordless authentication, like SAML or OIDC, to ensure that you have the right person logging into your systems and applications. Additionally, these tools provide a streamlined experience for employees to quickly access their accounts without ever having to transmit their personal credentials. Another benefit of using passwordless authentication like SAML, is the ability to use Just in Time User Provisioning (JIT). JIT allows employees to effortlessly log into a user account on pre-approved web apps.
Automating portions of your onboarding process strengthens security and offer employees ease in their workload. Password logins can be automated by integrating your identity access and management tools. This automated login experience allows employees to seamlessly log in to systems and accounts using a secure access point. Gary notes that “having those really good integrations will improve your security greatly.”
Automated user lifecycle management (preferably SCIM)
Manually provisioning accounts and equipment is difficult to accomplish at scale and can cause bottlenecks in your onboarding process, taking time away from meaningful work. Using an automated user lifecycle management solution allows your HR team to create, update, and suspend users all from your SSO. This will cut down onboarding time drastically and will improve the employee experience. “You only get one first impression,” reminds Gary. If your employee starts on their first day without the proper tools or has the wrong data in your system, you have already negatively impacted their experience. Using an automated user lifecycle management tool will allow you to provision multiple applications to a single user all at once.
Role-based access controls
Role-based access controls (RBAC) grant employees access to the right systems and accounts for their job based on their role within the organization. Employees’ roles within the company will restrict their permissions. This means that if you are an Account Executive logging into your CRM, you will automatically be given certain privileges specific to your role when you enter into your CRM.
Attribute-based access controls (ABAC), assign accessibility based on individual attributes rather than an employee’s role. An employee will have permissions pertaining to certain characteristics like their department or managerial level.
Gary emphasizes that “granular admin roles are essential.” Restricting user access is particularly important in order to prevent non-BT admins from creating or changing authorization settings. These types of controls help keep your systems secure and your data protected.
Robust API capabilities
Having access to software APIs allows you to automate processes with ease. Gary recommends opting for vendors that offer robust API capabilities. But what makes an API robust?
- Strong authentication
- Preferably OAUTH2.0 or similar
- Scoped permissions
- Configure permissions to only allow the minimum required data set can be accessed
- Webhooks or Events API
- Essential for real-time integrations
- Easy to use with low code tools or platforms
Want to get connected to more HRIT experts and improve your organization’s onboarding experience? Request to join Systematic and start making powerful connections today.
