Streamlining employee onboarding: Microsoft's response to the Great Reshuffle

Streamlining worker onboarding: Microsoft’s response to the Nice Reshuffle

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In 2021, staff in all places reevaluated their skilled and private selections, resulting in what turned generally known as the Nice Resignation. In 2022, a brand new pattern that many are calling the Nice Reshuffle has emerged, with 43 p.c of the workforce saying they’re very prone to think about altering jobs or exiting their trade altogether within the coming 12 months.1

As our 2022 Work Development Index, Nice Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work, revealed, workers have a brand new “price it” equation and are voting with their ft.2 Consequently, workers are onboarding and offboarding extra regularly. The fixed movement of duties, beginning with making use of for a job and navigating the primary few days of employment, leaves a lot room for error, thus rising stress for HR, IT, and every new worker.

Provided that 73 p.c of workers wish to maintain their work choices versatile, greater than three-quarters of Chief Human Useful resource Officers (CHROs) plan to protect the newer hybrid work choices obtainable right now and accommodate the pliability that current and potential workers need.3 Sadly, the complexity and price of each onboarding and offboarding workers have elevated in our new hybrid actuality.

The 2022 Work Development Index surveyed greater than 31,000 individuals in 31 nations and located that 53 p.c of persons are prone to think about transitioning to hybrid work within the 12 months forward.

Workforce suggestions and statistical research reveal two challenges particular to credentialing:

  1. The rising value and frustration of worker onboarding.
  2. Elevated safety dangers of worker offboarding.

The rising prices and frustration of worker onboarding

The standard multistep strategy of the brand new rent onboarding journey turned much more convoluted through the pandemic with the rise of each hybrid and totally distant work. Consequently, managing the small print of recruiting, interviewing, and hiring has develop into more and more difficult, resulting in a pointy rise in prices.

Organizations wrestle with navigating the beginning of the worker journey for each in-person and distant staff in probably the most environment friendly and safe method attainable. For instance, the chart in Determine 1 summarizes the findings of a non-public examine Microsoft performed in 2021 to know who’s concerned in duties related to id verification for brand spanking new workers. Responses from 3,000 organizations present that HR and IT cut up these duties nearly evenly and that throughout the 14 industries surveyed, onboarding accounts for an astounding 14 to 31 p.c of all ID verification spending.

In reality, 69 p.c of workers are extra doubtless to stick with an organization in the event that they expertise nice onboarding.4

Historically, HR groups have relied on bodily paperwork—corresponding to a driver’s license, delivery certificates, or passport—and in-person communications to confirm a brand new worker’s id and credentials, a semi-manual course of that may trigger irritating onboarding delays, flagging a possible concern given extra distant, in-person, and hybrid choices obtainable in a aggressive labor market. The fashionable workforce expects a extra automated expertise that’s additionally safer. In reality, 82 p.c of examine members want there was a greater option to carry out verification.

Happily, latest advances in expertise are making it attainable to digitize id data in a method that’s transportable and privacy-respecting for the person, whereas serving to companies streamline their verification processes. This new expertise, known as verifiable credentials, is predicated on a decentralized id method and permits organizations to confirm a person’s credentials, corresponding to employment or schooling. For the background test course of, employers can affirm a brand new rent’s id data digitally and inside seconds from an authoritative supply. The enterprise can then challenge an worker ID as a verifiable credential, which the worker can retailer of their digital pockets and use to entry different sources that require employment affirmation, corresponding to advantages enrollment or tools purchases.

Though these modernization efforts should nonetheless align with authorities laws that require bodily inspection of unique paperwork, they’ve the potential to considerably rework the worker’s onboarding expertise and their first days on the job, making it simpler for them to entry the sources they should be instantly productive of their new position.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID will assist streamline the method of credential attestation, lowering frustration and delays that HR, IT, and new workers at present expertise. The chart in Determine 2 illustrates a remodeled onboarding journey, and the way HR and IT handle each pre-onboarding (blue) and onboarding (inexperienced) to make sure the method runs easily for the worker.

Verifiable credentials help streamline the onboarding process. This chart shows how easy it can be to securely onboard a new employee using Microsoft Verified ID.

As everyone knows, first impressions matter. By simplifying and expediting the onboarding expertise, utilizing verifiable credentials can assist create a optimistic first impression that helps make workers be ok with becoming a member of a corporation, fairly than second-guessing their determination.

Elevated dangers of worker offboarding

When an worker leaves a corporation, their entry credentials—together with their entry permissions—needs to be cleaned to stop useful firm data from strolling out the door with them. Utilizing trendy id governance instruments corresponding to verifiable credentials, IT can choose one field to decommission a departing worker’s entry to the group’s digital property. If HR instruments are built-in with id methods, then any adjustments HR makes of their methods robotically perpetuate to different IT methods, and vice versa.

The offboarding governance course of might embrace revoking any employer-issued verifiable credentials used to grant entry to organizational packages, corresponding to worker reductions, or employee-only sources. Verifiable credentials additionally give workers a brand new degree of management over their private data. They will revoke permissions they’ve given their former employer to entry verifiable credentials that share academic historical past, government-issued id numbers, and different delicate knowledge. And with the introduction of Microsoft Entra Verified ID, it’s now attainable to permit people, organizations, and gadgets to determine what data they share with whom, and to take it again if essential.

The advantages of utilizing verifiable credentials

In accordance with the 2021 Worker Expertise Survey Highlights, organizations that present digitally remodeled experiences are practically thrice extra prone to report greater productiveness than their trade friends, and 90 p.c extra prone to report decrease annual turnover.5

Utilizing verifiable credentials creates tangible advantages for HR and IT departments and the workers they help:

  • Quicker, simpler, and cheaper processes. HR can begin changing some paper-based or in-person id or credential verification processes to cut back onboarding time and get new hires productive sooner. IT can simply combine verifiable credentials into current methods with out writing any customized code. 
  • Compliance with ever-changing world privateness laws. IT can implement decentralized id options based mostly on open requirements that enable HR to confirm an worker’s abilities, certifications, schooling, and profession historical past in a privacy-respecting method.
  • A greater worker expertise that strengthens recruiting and retention. Immediately’s workers anticipate straightforward, handy, and contactless digital experiences that shield their privateness. Verifiable credentials present a safe method for people to share their private data with their employers and revoke entry once they go away.

Avanade, a number one skilled companies and expertise supplier, is utilizing Microsoft Azure Energetic Listing (Azure AD) verified ID to streamline credentialing processes and facilitate collaboration amongst workers, distributors, and purchasers.

Navigating the trail forward

The Nice Reshuffle is the residing, evolving proof that organizations have to pay nearer consideration to the worker expertise. HR and IT enterprise leaders should due to this fact reply to worker expectations for flexibility, security, safety, and help for his or her total wellbeing. This response should begin with a smoother onboarding course of, wherein verifiable credentials can considerably simplify and streamline.

Be taught extra about how Microsoft and verified ID can assist your group navigate the Nice Reshuffle.

Learn extra data on the answer and open requirements initiative with decentralized identities.

To study extra about Microsoft Safety options, go to our web site. Bookmark the Safety weblog to maintain up with our professional protection on safety issues. Additionally, observe us at @MSFTSecurity for the newest information and updates on cybersecurity.


12022 Work Development Index: Annual Report, Microsoft. March 16, 2022.

2Nice Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work, Work Development Index 2022, Microsoft.

3The Subsequent Nice Disruption Is Hybrid Work – Are We Prepared?, Work Development Index 2021, Microsoft. March 22, 2021.

4Don’t Underestimate the significance of fine onboarding, SHRM. 2017.

52021 Worker Expertise Survey, WTW. July 20, 2021.





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