Onboarding and offboarding / One sequence, not four requests
A new hire’s first day should not be a scavenger hunt.
Arrivals and departures touch identity, devices, applications, and Microsoft 365 at the same time. Treating them as one coordinated sequence—rather than four separate tickets—improves the experience and closes the gaps that create risk.
Lire cette page en françaisWhy this needs one owner
Fragmented onboarding is not a mystery. It is a pattern.
HR confirms a start date. A manager emails IT the day before. A device order goes in late. Accounts get created from memory instead of a checklist. None of this is anyone’s fault in isolation—it is what happens when arrival and departure work has no single, repeatable owner connecting the business decision to the technical steps.
The sequence
- 01
Arrival readiness
Role, start date, manager, and required access are confirmed early enough to prepare accounts, licences, and a device before day one.
- 02
First-week support
The new employee has one place to ask questions while they learn the environment, and early friction gets noticed instead of dismissed as normal ramp-up.
- 03
Change during employment
Role changes, location changes, and leave update access and licensing on the same authorized-request basis as arrival. See the Microsoft 365 side of this lifecycle
- 04
Departure and return
Access removal, device return, data handling, and ownership transfer happen on an agreed timeline tied to the actual last day.
What a clean departure requires
The hardest part of offboarding is not the checklist. It is the timing.
A departure planned weeks in advance and an unplanned same-day exit need the same steps in a very different order. Both need a clear answer to the same questions.
- Who confirms the last working day and communicates it to IT
- When access is removed relative to that day, and who can accelerate it
- How the device is returned, and what happens if it is not
- Who owns the departed employee’s mailbox, files, and licence
Who does what
Requests, approvals, and execution belong to different people.
| Moment | Your team confirms | Managed service executes |
|---|---|---|
| Arrival | Role, start date, manager, required access | Accounts, licences, device build, delivery |
| Role or location change | The new access requirements | Adjustments to access, licensing, and records |
| Departure | Last working day and data-handling decisions | Access removal, device return, mailbox and licence disposition |
Working language and expectations
New hires should not have to guess which language to use.
Onboarding communication—the welcome note, the first-week check-in, the manager’s expectations—should be confirmed in the employee’s working language before day one, not improvised. The same applies to French- and English-language documentation your team keeps for its own records.
Review the full employee support experienceNext step
Turn your IT context into a clear scope.
A scope conversation covers your team, Microsoft 365, devices, vendors, and responsibilities to transfer. You leave with the scope questions that need answers—without sharing secrets.
Discuss your IT scope