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.
Read this page in FrenchWhy 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
Prepare the responsibilities before contacting a provider.
The service map turns your context into a short, copyable list: people, devices, Microsoft 365, vendors, and decisions to clarify.
Build the service map