For a good first working day, IT, facilities and the manager each have to start at their own moment: IT weeks in advance with the laptop, facilities with the pass and workspace, and systems such as Shuttel, Simplicate and Slack only once they really need the employee. If the hire in the HR system is the starting signal, every department gets that signal automatically and on time.
In practice it often goes differently. HR emails IT, facilities and the manager, everyone keeps their own list, and if the email arrives too late, the new colleague is in the office without a laptop or pass. Below, per department, what has to be ready and when.
IT and facilities: weeks in advance
Ordering the laptop and making a pass takes time. That is why the service desk hears first. A common lead time is four weeks before the start date, or as soon as HR has completed the hire if that is later. You set that lead time per organisation.
What IT wants to see in the ticket:
- start date, job and department;
- manager and location;
- what is needed, for example laptop or phone yes or no.
That last line is often already a free field in the HR system. If it goes into the ticket, IT does not need to ask what has to be prepared. In TOPdesk, the ticket can be a standard change with fixed tasks for IT and facilities. The operator group follows the location, so the pass is ready at the site where the new colleague starts. That is how it works, for example, with an integration of HR2day with TOPdesk or AFAS with TOPdesk.
Mobility: as soon as the employee is in HR
The employee has to apply for a mobility card themselves, and that is only possible once the employer has registered them. With an integration of Nmbrs with Shuttel, that registration happens as soon as the employee is in Nmbrs, even if the start date is still in the future. That way they can apply for the card before their first working day.
Hours, team and collaboration: at the right moment
Not every system needs to know weeks in advance that someone is coming.
- In Simplicate, the employee is ready with preferred name, manager, team and schedule as soon as HR has completed the hiring workflow in AFAS. A half-completed hire does not get in that way.
- From Workday, the Slack account can be created on the start date, in the time zone of the location, with the start date in the profile. If you want a welcome channel a week in advance, that is possible too. The account is then active straight away, so that is a choice you make deliberately.
Where it goes wrong
The first working day rarely gets stuck on the normal case. It is the exceptions that create extra work.
Interns and contractors. An intern often only gets an account and no laptop. The service desk can use its own template or category per type of contract. In Personio, contractors are a separate type of employee. If you include that in the request to Freshservice, the service desk picks only accounts and no laptop or phone.
The email address arrives late. The work address is often only in HR after IT has created the account. Systems that need an email address have to wait for it. If that happens too close to the start date, you want an alert about it, otherwise you notice on the first day.
Access too early. A new person in TOPdesk can access the self-service portal straight away by default. You only want that from the start date. In Zendesk, for the same reason, you do not want a verification email before the first working day.
Anyone who wants to know more about how HR dates and withdrawn hires are read will find it under HR dates and contracts.
Start small
You do not have to connect everything at once. The service desk is the logical start: that is where laptop, pass and workspace come together. Mobility, time registration and Slack can be added later as an extension. What belongs to a first working day in your organisation, you record once in the design.
How KoppelHet builds this
KoppelHet builds the integration per organisation on its own platform. One change in the HR system goes to every system that has to do something at hiring, each at its own moment: the service desk weeks in advance, Shuttel as soon as the employee is in HR, Slack on the start date. We build that from, among others, HR2day, AFAS, Nmbrs, Personio and Workday, to, among others, TOPdesk and Freshservice. Allow two to four weeks to go-live, as an indication.
Read more about preparing the first working day, about the broader approach to joiners, movers and leavers, or about onboarding tickets in the service desk.