Do you experience any of the following challenges:
Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
Ask the right questions and pressure test the workflow so the documentation is as helpful as possible to all who consult it.
Use this workflow as an example of the output of an onboarding workflow-improvement activity.
Emily Sugerman Info-Tech Research Group |
You can’t mature processes without also documenting them. Process documentation is most effective when workflows are both written out and also visualized in the form of flow charts. Your workflows may appear in standard operating procedures, in business continuity and disaster recovery plans, or anywhere else a process’ steps need to be made explicit. Often, just getting something down on paper is a win. However, the best workflows usually do not emerge fully-formed out of a first draft. Your workflow documentation must achieve two things:
This research will use the example of improving an onboarding workflow. Ask the right questions and pressure test the workflow so the documentation is as helpful as possible to all who consult it. |
Your Challenge |
Common Obstacles |
Info-Tech’s Approach |
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Use this material to help
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Info-Tech Insight
Don’t just document – target your future state as you document your workflows. Find opportunities for automation, pinpoint key handoff points, and turn cold handoffs into warm handoffs.
Keep future state in mind.
Don’t just document – target your future state as you document your workflows. Find opportunities for automation, pinpoint key handoff points, and turn cold handoffs into warm handoffs.
Promote the benefits of documenting workflows as flowcharts.
Foreground to the IT team how this will improve customer experience. End-users will benefit from more efficient workflows.
Remember the principle of constructive criticism.
Don’t be afraid to critique the workflow but remember this can be a team-building experience. Focus on how these changes will be mutually beneficial, not assigning blame for workflow friction.
Don’t waste time building shelfware.
Establish a review cadence to ensure the flowchart is a living document that people actually use.
Risks of inadequate workflows |
Benefits of documented workflows |
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Use these talking points to build commitment toward documenting/updating processes.
Risk reduction
“Our outdated documentation is a risk, as people will assume the documented process is accurate.”
Transparency
“The activity of mapping our processes will bring transparency to everyone involved.”
Accountability
“Flow charts will help us clarify task ownership at a glance.”
Accessibility
“Some team members prefer diagrams over written steps, so we should provide both.”
Knowledge centralization
“Our flow charts will include links to other supporting documentation (checklists, vendor documentation, other flowcharts).”
Role clarification
“Separating steps into swim lanes can clarify different tiers, process stages, and ownership, while breaking down silos.”
Communication
To leadership/upper management: “This process flow chart quickly depicts the big picture.”
Knowledge transfer
“Flow charts will help bring new staff up to speed more quickly.”
Consistency
“Documenting a process standardizes it and enables everyone to do it in the same way.”
A pictorial representation of a process that is used to achieve transparency.
This research will use one specific example of an onboarding process workflow. Before drilling down into onboarding workflows specifically, review Info-Tech’s Process Mapping Guide for general guidance on what to do before you begin:
Download the Process Mapping Guide
Good candidates include:
Application Development Process
Application Maintenance Process
Business Continuity Plan Business Process
Business Continuity Plan Recovery Process
Commitment Purchasing Workflow
Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Process
Data Protection Recovery Workflow
Disaster Recovery Plan/Business Continuity Plan Review Workflow
End-User Device Management Workflow Library
Incident Management and Service Desk Workflows
Security Policy Exception Process
Self-Service Resolution Process
Service Desk Ticket Intake by Channel
Onboarding is a perennial challenge due to the large number of separate teams and departments who are implicated in the process.
There can be resistance to alignment. As a result, everyone needs to be pulled in to see the big picture and the impact of an overly manual and disconnected process.
Additionally, the quality of the overall onboarding process (of which IT is but one part) has a significant impact on the employee experience of new hires, and the long-term experience of those employees. This workflow is therefore often a good one to target for improvement.
“Organizations with a standardized onboarding process experience 62% greater new hire productivity, along with 50% greater new hire retention.”1
“Companies that focus on onboarding retain 50% more new employees than companies that don’t.”2
In the tabletop exercise, your team will walk through your onboarding process step by step and document what happens at each stage. Prep for this meeting with the following steps:
Facilitator
Tasks:
Notetaker
Tasks:
Lack of communication/expectation setting with users: |
Messy process, poor coordination among task owners: |
User experience affected: |
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Start, End, and Connector. Traditional flowcharting standards reserve this shape for connectors to other flowcharts or other points in the existing flowchart. Unified modeling language (UML) also uses the circle for start and end points. Start, End. Traditional flowcharting standards use this for start and end. However, Info-Tech recommends using the circle shape to reduce the number of shapes and avoid confusion with other similar shapes. Process Step. Individual process steps or activities (e.g. create ticket or escalate ticket). If it’s a series of steps, then use the sub-process symbol and flowchart the sub-process separately. Sub-Process. A series of steps. For example, a critical incident standard operating procedure (SOP) might reference a recovery process as one of the possible actions. Marking it as a sub-process, rather than listing each step within the critical incident SOP, streamlines the flowchart and avoids overlap with other flowcharts (e.g. the recovery process). Decision. Represents decision points, typically with yes/no branches, but you could have other branches depending on the question (e.g. a “Priority” question could branch into separate streams for Priority 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 issues). Document/Report Output. For example, the output from a backup process might include an error log. |
Time to review and revise the workflow. What gaps exist? How can you improve the process? What documentation gaps have been overlooked?
Consider the following refinements for the onboarding workflow:
Facilitator
Tasks:
Notetaker
Tasks:
Solicit feedback from the group.
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Be complete.
The workflow should surface tacit knowledge, so make it explicit (Haddadpoor et al.):
Identify task ownership.
The flow chart will be more useful if it clearly identifies who does what in the process.
“Each task has an owner, and the task list is visible to the employee and other stakeholders, so there's visibility about whether each person has done their actions.”
For onboarding, this means setting SLOs/SLAs and internal timepoints.
Add internal timepoints for the major steps/tasks in the workflow. Begin to track these service level objectives and adjust as necessary.
When you have validated the service level objectives are accurate and you can meet them an acceptable amount of time, communicate the overall SLA to your users. This will ensure they submit future onboarding requests to your team with enough lead time to fulfill the request. Try to place the SLA directly in the service catalog.
“Tracking the time within the workflow can be a powerful way to show the working group why there is user dissatisfaction.”
Sandi Conrad, Principal Advisory Director, Info-Tech Research Group
For onboarding, this means implementing a transactional survey.
The onboarding workflow will be subject to periodic reviews and continual improvement. Suggestions for improvement should come not only from the internal IT team, but also the users themselves.
Use Info-Tech’s Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback for more guidance on creating these surveys.
For onboarding, approvals can be the main roadblock to fulfilling requests
A positive onboarding experience is an important part of a new employee’s success.
Though IT is only one part of an employee’s onboarding experience, it’s an important part. Delays for hardware procurement and a lack of communication can lead to employee disengagement. Ask the team:
Place communication bullet points in the flow chart to indicate where the team will reach out to users to update or notify them of delays.
Where can we automate for onboarding?
Identify when the process is dragged out due to waiting times (e.g. times when the technician can’t address the ticket right away).
Avoid reinforcing manual processes, which make it even harder for departmental silos to work together.
Create role-based templates.
Does HR know which applications our users need? Are they deferring to the manager, who then asks IT to simply duplicate an existing user?
Personas are asset profiles that apply to multiple users (e.g. in a department) and that can be easily duplicated for new hires. You might create three persona groups in a department, with variations within each subgroup or title. To do this, you need accurate information upfront.
Then, if you’re doing zero touch deployment, you can automate software to automatically load.
Many HRIS systems have the ability to create a persona, and also to add users to the AD, email, and distribution groups without IT getting involved. This can alleviate work from the sysadmin. Does our HRIS do this?
How does the group feel about the revised workflow?
Download the Workflow Activity: Onboarding Example
Remember the principle of constructive criticism.
Don’t be afraid to critique the workflow but remember this can also be a team-building experience. Focus on how these changes will be mutually beneficial, not assigning blame for workflow friction.
Decide how often this workflow will be revised.
Share the flowchart and set up a review meeting.
Don’t waste time building shelfware.
Establish a review cadence to ensure the flowchart is a living document that people actually use.
“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”
“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”
“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”
“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”
Bushkill, Claire. “The top 5 ways to automate your onboarding checklist.” Rippling Blog. 18 Mar 2022. Accessed 29 Nov 2022. Ha https://www.rippling.com/blog/the-top-5-ways-to-automate-your-onboarding-checklist
Carucci, Ron. “To Retain New Hires, Spend More Time Onboarding Them.” Harvard Business Review, 3 Dec 2018
Haddadpoor, Asefeh, et al. “Process Documentation: A Model for Knowledge Management in Organizations.” Materia Socio-Medica, vol. 27, no. 5, Oct. 2015, pp. 347–50. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.5455/msm.2015.27.347-350.
King, Melissa. “New hire checklist: An employee onboarding checklist template for 2022.” Zapier. 14 Jul 2022. Accessed 29 Nov 2022. https://zapier.com/blog/onboarding-checklist/
Uzialko, Adam. “What Does Poor Onboarding Really Do to Your Team?” Business News Daily. 23 Jan 2023.
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Sandi Conrad, Principal Advisory Director, Infrastructure and Operations, Info-Tech Research Group
Christine Coz, Executive Counselor, Info-Tech Research Group
Allison Kinnaird, Practice Lead, Infrastructure and Operations, Info-Tech Research Group
Natalie Sansone, Research Director, Infrastructure and Operations, Info-Tech Research Group