Standardization and automation of onboarding with ServiceNow HRSD

Initial situation

What was the situation up to now?

Our client had a highly complex, highly variable, and predominantly manual onboarding process in an international environment. Various types of employees, such as permanent employees, external employees, and external employees who would later transition to permanent employment, required specific access rights, documentation obligations, and regulatory requirements (e.g., visas and residence permits). This diversity led to a non-linear process with little transparency regarding process progress, unclear access authorizations, and a lack of control over critical upstream processes. In addition, there was an increased risk in terms of compliance and security. There was a complete lack of a central access point for new employees. The company was looking for a solution that would standardize this process, automate it to a large extent, map it transparently, and at the same time remain flexible enough to cover special cases and future requirements. Legal and security requirements also had to be met, and clear, role-based control had to be enabled. The entire onboarding process needed to become more efficient for HR teams and offer new employees a secure, modern user experience from their first contact with the company. At the same time, the solution had to be scalable and expandable without additional development effort.

Customer benefits

What has improved as a result of the solution?

Our customer now has a standardized and transparent onboarding process for all employee types on a centralized, automated, and secure solution. Critical lead times are met, compliance and security requirements are supported, and new employees can log in securely via SSO even before their first day of work. Thanks to its high configurability, the process can be flexibly adapted to new requirements without any development effort. HR teams are significantly relieved, and new employees benefit from a better employee experience. Overall, a scalable and future-proof onboarding process has been created.

Services

What services have we provided?

For the new onboarding process, we implemented the ServiceNow HRSD onboarding module, including a dedicated onboarding portal for new employees. This portal provides relevant information based on status and ensures that no sensitive company data is accessible before the start of the contract. From the first day of work, there is a seamless transition to the regular Employee Center. Since new employees do not yet exist in Active Directory before they are hired, we have created a multi-provider SSO that enables the automated switch to the regular AD-based SSO after day 1. This means that users always end up in the right portal and process context and retain access to their onboarding tasks and relevant documents. Standardized but individually configurable process paths have been defined for the different employee types. The HRSD process now controls and automates all important steps such as regulatory preparations, security checks, IT orders, and access approvals.

For long-term scaling, we have introduced a configurable model based on onboarding profiles, which departments can use to independently define documents, tasks, and dependencies. HR tasks are generated dynamically, assigned to clear roles, and made available centrally in the HR Agent Workspace. In addition, a security concept has been implemented that only displays sensitive HR cases with potential conflicts of interest to defined HR teams, thus separating general HR processes from those requiring special protection. A mechanism ensures that the onboarding user is automatically merged with the final AD user without data loss or duplicate records.

Platforms & technology

Which platforms and technologies did we use?

• ServiceNow

Topics/Modules

Which topics/modules does the solution include?

• HR Service Delivery

Industries

For which industry was the solution developed?

• Finance