A new employee’s first day tells them a lot about the business they just joined. If their computer is ready, their email works and their phone rings, they spend the day learning the job. If they spend it in a borrowed chair waiting for a password, they learn something too.
Managed IT for small and medium-sized businesses is part of what I oversee at DirecTech Connect, and I see the same pattern again and again: the technology side of onboarding goes smoothly when one person owns it and the work starts before the new hire arrives. Here is the checklist I recommend.
A week before: make the request. As soon as the offer is accepted, tell whoever handles your IT the start date, the role and who the new person reports to. Some of what follows, like ordering a computer, can take days. A same-day request is how people end up without a laptop.
1. Create the accounts. Set up their email address and work login using a consistent naming format. Add them to the right groups and shared mailboxes based on the role, not by copying everything another employee happens to have. Copying someone else’s access is how people end up with keys to rooms they never needed.
2. Give access to only what the job needs. List the systems the role actually uses: accounting, scheduling, the customer database, shared folders. Grant those and nothing more. It is easy to add access later and surprisingly hard to notice access that never should have been given.
3. Prepare the computer. Have the laptop or desktop set up, updated and tested before day one, with security software, backups and your standard programs installed. If you are reusing a former employee’s machine, make sure it was wiped and set up fresh.
4. Set up the phone. Assign an extension or direct number, set up voicemail and add them to any ring groups or call routing they belong in. If they will use a phone app on a cell phone or computer, install and test it. Update the company directory so callers can find them.
5. Turn on multi-factor authentication from the start. It is much easier to set up MFA on day one, with someone sitting beside them, than to add it later. Make it part of the first login, not a someday project.
6. Add them to the password manager. If your business uses one, add them and share the team logins they need through it. Never send passwords by email or text, and never on a sticky note on the monitor.
7. Walk through the basics in person. Spend fifteen minutes showing them how to log in, where files are saved, how to reach IT support, how to spot a suspicious email and what to do if they click something they shouldn’t have. New employees are a favorite target for phishing because they don’t yet know what normal looks like.
8. Go over the policies. If you have an acceptable use policy or rules about personal devices, review them on day one and keep a signed copy. Policies nobody has read don’t protect anyone.
9. Write down what you gave them. Record the computer’s serial number, any phone or accessories, every account you created and every system they can access. You will need this list when they leave, and it is far easier to build now than to reconstruct later. My checklist for the day an employee leaves picks up right where this one ends.
At the end of the first week: check in. Ask whether anything is missing or not working. People often won’t speak up in their first few days. A short check-in catches the missing shared folder before working around it becomes a habit.
Put this list in writing and use it for every hire, whether you are adding your third employee or your thirtieth. A written process means onboarding doesn’t depend on one person remembering every step.
The best first day is the one where the technology is invisible and the new person gets to focus on the work.
Danielle Lemons is Vice President of Operations at DirecTech Connect, a Nashville provider of business phone systems, managed IT services, websites and digital marketing. More about Danielle.
Read more of Danielle’s writing, or see her profile at DirecTech Connect.
