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Hello Freshworks Community!

How's it going? Hope you all are having a great week so far!

I’m Suvashini, Prinicipal Customer Success Engineer here at Freshworks! I’m also your Community SME and my key product focus areas are Freshservice and Freshservice for Business Teams!

I wanted to share some best practices on corporate on-boarding and thought the best way would be through a story! So grab you cuppa coffee or tea and let’s dive right in ☕🍵🤓!

 

⛈️⛈️ Rain hammered against the sleek glass windows of Technex Corp HQ, mirroring the storm brewing inside Maya.

Her first day as a data analyst, and the only welcome she'd received was a generic automated email with a login and a frowny-faced Slack invite called "Newbie_Hole" 

"Ugh, where's HR?" Maya sighed, scrolling through the endless channels of a cluttered digital workplace. 

The "Newbie_Hole" was a firehose of questions and frantic emojis, none of them answered.

Suddenly, a notification popped up, a video call request from "TechNexBot_Onboarding_Assistant" 🖥️

Maya, desperate for any guidance, accepted.  A cheery, pixelated avatar with oversized glasses blinked on screen🤖.

"Greetings, Maya! Welcome to Technex Corp! Please select your preferred onboarding language from the following options: Binary, Blockchain, or Business Buzzwords Bingo."

Maya stared at the choices, a lump forming in her throat. None of these seemed helpful 😥

The rest of the day was a blur of self-discovery. She hunted down her laptop through a convoluted internal asset tracking system. Team communication existed solely through cryptic memes and passive-aggressive Slack threads. The official training materials were outdated PDFs that hadn't been updated since the invention of dial-up internet.

Exhausted and frustrated, Maya reached out to her manager, a shadowy figure known only as "The Ghost" 👻 in Slack.  The reply came a week later: "Figure it out, Maya. We all did" 🙇🏽

Disheartened, Maya contemplated her options. Technex Corp, the once-cutting-edge tech giant, felt more like a digital graveyard 💀 with a ping pong table. Maybe a company with a structured onboarding process, one that valued its employees, existed somewhere out there in the cloud. 🤔

As she closed her laptop, a single message appeared in the "Newbie_Hole"  – "Anyone know how to access the vacation request form? Asking for a friend…" Maya sighed. Maybe Technex Corp wasn't the worst, just exceptionally disorganized.  With a determined glint in her eye, she typed a response: "Follow the blinking unicorn emoji on the intranet… good luck!" 🦄

 

A clumsy onboarding process can have a ripple effect, turning a promising new hire into a disengaged and potentially disgruntled employee.

Investing in a smooth onboarding process is not just about efficiency; it's about creating a positive first impression and setting new hires up for success. By fostering a sense of welcome, providing clear direction, and offering the necessary tools and support, companies can turn disgruntled Mayas into enthusiastic contributors, and that's a recipe for a happy and productive workforce.

Imagine Maya's first day at Technex Corp being completely different. Instead of a digital storm, it's a gentle breeze guiding her into a productive and positive work experience.

Here's how a dedicated JML tool can streamline the onboarding process and boost Maya's (and future new hires') motivation:

  • Pre-boarding: A user-friendly JML tool allows sending personalized welcome emails with login details, team introductions, and a clear onboarding schedule. Maya would arrive feeling welcomed and prepared.
  • Goodbye Paper Chase: Forget hunting for laptops! The JML tool can integrate with asset management systems, ensuring Maya's laptop is prepped and waiting for her on her first day.
  • Learning Made Fun: We can integrate with learning platforms to create engaging online courses and training modules specific to Maya's role. No more outdated PDFs!
  • Collaborative Onboarding Channel:  We can facilitate creating a dedicated onboarding channel within your existing communication platform (like Slack). This channel offers clear guidelines, FAQs, and a space for Maya to connect with colleagues and ask questions.
  • Managerial Support: We can automate tasks for managers, reminding them to schedule check-in meetings and offer ongoing support. Maya wouldn't feel like "The Ghost's" forgotten intern.


These features, all accessible through a user-friendly JML tool, create a structured and supportive environment. Maya would feel equipped, valued, and ready to contribute. 

Click here to know how Freshservice can help in your Employee onboarding journey! 

 

Disclaimer - Please note that the company name, Technex Corp, is entirely fictitious. Additionally, we want to clarify that this scenario is not intended to reference or represent any real company and is used only as an example. 

 

Cheers,

Suvashini, ITSM Community SME

Wow, I really would not want to be in Maya’s shoes, that sounds so frustrating @suvashini.balashanmugam !😤

But I’m pretty sure we’ve all had some experience like this tagging some of our members to share their experience with corporate onboarding and also let us know what you’d like us to address next! @zachary.king @Daniel Söderlund @Croy @mbutler @Monika Hipp @eeha0120 @raymondcanilao @Kristin Rebuschatis @afautley @msconfig87  @christian.mentor @AndyRussell and please tag any other folks who may chime in!

Best, Ally

For us, once HR starts the Onboarding process, work needs to start. However the current onboarding function in Freshservice does not create any tickets until the complete process is completed.  In a perfect world, everyone would complete the onboarding requirements, and everyone would have time to complete their tasks before the new employee starts.  However this is not reality. 

 

Would be good to have the ability to generate tickets once HR and/or a stakeholder completes their part in onboarding. This would allow for IT and other teams to start work ASAP while the hiring manager or other stakeholders finalize all the needed information.

 

To overcome this in Freshservice today, we have created a “Pre-Hire Notification” service catalog item. HR will complete this service catalog, then a workflow takes the information creates tickets and uses the API to start the onboarding process.

 

Thanks,

David

Hello David, 

In many organisations, the process kicks in only when all the stakeholders involved have completed their tasks. Creating a "Pre-Hire Notification" service catalog item sounds like an efficient way to trigger ticket creation as soon as HR and stakeholders complete their tasks. If stakeholders complete tasks before the Pre-Hire Notification is submitted, there's a risk of duplicate tickets being generated.

But, I'd like to identify the specific tasks IT and other teams can complete independently, before requiring input from stakeholders like the reporting manager.

we would also like to improve our onboarding process, unfortunately we are stuck with a frustrating freshservice “feature” set

Hi Stephan 

That’s sad to hear, To provide effective solutions, it would be helpful to know more about the specific challenges you're facing. For example:

  • What specific features are missing or inadequate?
  • How do these limitations impact your onboarding process?
  • What are your desired outcomes for the onboarding process?

Hi,

 

I have already posted on some open issues:

The Onboarding Module has single handedly killing my enthusiasm for Freshervice. | Freshworks Community

Flexibility when creating Onboarding Kits | Freshworks Community

 

I have now found that ticket creation can be controlled with service items.
But the entire Service Kits experience is bad, no sorting, grouping aso.

I wanted the HR Manager to start onboarding and then route to the reporting manager.

On the first step, the dialog is a two part process, some custom fields and then continue to service catalog items. but for the next stakeholder it is only one step, custom fields and service catalog items on the same page. now you can not use some custom field selections to filter the Kits.

 

The HR Manager does not know what hardware a user needs, only the reporting manager knows, and we have no defined roles and even within a department there can be differences, so no way to filter the Kits and different Kits content is mixed on the page.

 

I have now eliminated the HR Manager and start onboarding with the reporting manager and now i can filter the Kits based on custom fields and all kits content is then mandatory. So im building functions that in my opinion the Kit should have and i’m loosing the HR Manger in the process and have to open onboarding to all requesters instead of one department (HR)

 

And with the Kits im practically rebuilding my service catalog bundles, as onboarding is simply ignoring bundles for whatever reason.

 

Maybe check the other onboarding entries in the community, there is a lot of dissatisfaction, we use freshservice for over a year and I only registered here because of this. Offboarding is next, I’m not sure I should even start…

 

Thanks

 

Looping in our Freshservice Team to help you with some of the key items in the Product @viswanatha.mehta 

We too want to make improvements to our onboarding process, however we are limited by the annoying freshservice "feature" set.

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