In the very competitive startup landscape, hiring and retaining top talent is key. One differentiating factor that keeps successful companies on top is the onboarding experience. According to the Global Culture Report Survey, 69 percent of workers say that having a positive onboarding experience was a factor in staying at a company for more than three years.

We recently hosted a webinar with our Apple device management partner Jamf to discuss the challenges of the onboarding process along with how the Jamf/Electric partnership offers some solutions. Below we detail the discussion between Jamf’s Sam Weiss and Electric’s Julian Hutchinson.

The Art of Employee Onboarding

Sam began the discussion by describing the landscape of today’s hiring environment. There is an extreme talent shortage, with many Baby Boomers entering retirement everyday. Replacing them are Millennials — currently 56 million in the labor force — who judge companies by a different set of standards than older workers, prioritizing including flexibility and access to preferred technologies.

In fact, a PwC survey found that 78% of Millennials say that “access to the technology they like to use makes them more effective at work.” To follow that up, Sam cited a Jamf survey that found when given a choice, 3 out of 4 employees would choose a Mac for use at work. In other words, employees want choice and value organizations that allow them to make their own.

When employees are given access to tools that they are familiar with this can make the onboarding process go more smoothly.

Electric’s Role in Employee Onboarding

Next, Julian outlined how the Electric Platform can fill the onboarding gap from the IT perspective.

First, he noted the power of first impressions, calling back some of the statistics that Sam had mentioned earlier. Empowering employees with the right tools on day one can increase operational efficiency, employee satisfaction, and employee retention.

Next, the Electric Platform improves HR and IT alignment by doing the following:

• Establishing and managing process standardization and documentation
• Automating time-consuming tasks
• Meeting security and compliance needs
• Providing personalization at the departmental or individual level
• Providing end-to-end visibility of on/offboarding progress
• Opening new IT and HR communication channels

Combining the Best of Jamf and Electric

Julian then described how Jamf and Electric are partners in the onboarding process. Once a new employee is issued a Mac, Electric will automatically enroll their device into Jamf, making it viewable under the device management tab in Electric’s tool, Turbine.

Additional capabilities include:

• Reporting and insights pulled from Jamf into a single dashboard
• Detailed real-time support ticket analytics
• Visibility into large-scale projects

The Electric Platform and Proprietary Slack Integration

While not specific to the onboarding process, Julian discussed Electric’s Slack integration, which can help IT teams minimize the amount of tedious tasks that they have to perform. The proprietary Slack routing system will match an Employee to one of Electric’s in-house help desk technicians with a guaranteed response within 10 minutes.

In the realm of onboarding, the Slack integration can also be used for automating approval requests. Employees can quickly obtain the equipment they need with no downtime, and the system keeps a paper trail for the company.

Sam and Julian ended the webinar by noting the multiple ways that Electric can work with small business as a partner. Electric can act as IT outsourcing partner, including managing a Jamf instance. If your company already has an IT department, Electric can streamline burdensome IT tasks and keep you focused on strategic projects.