Employee Onboarding Automation
New starters arrive to a fully set-up environment on day one. Accounts, licences, access, devices, training paths, day-one schedule, all triggered from the moment they accept the offer. HR stops chasing IT and IT stops asking HR.
Why onboarding goes wrong at most mid-market firms.
The average new hire loses two to three days waiting for accounts, licences, and access in their first week. HR spends four-plus hours per hire chasing IT for things that should be automatic. The new starter forms an impression of the firm in the first 48 hours; an environment that is not ready creates an impression that is hard to recover from. Senior managers spend their first one-to-ones with new staff apologising for things they did not break.
The automation replaces all of that. The offer is accepted; the workflow fires. By day one, the new starter has their accounts, their licences, their device, their access to the right systems, their team channels, their training plan, their welcome email, their first-week calendar invitations, and their introduction to their buddy. HR sees a dashboard of every new starter and the status of their onboarding.
What the build covers.
Five workstreams, designed together so day-one readiness is the default, not the exception.
1
Trigger & capture
HR system or SharePoint trigger
Power App / Form for HR
Per-hire data capture
One form, many downstream actions
2
Account & access
Entra ID account provisioning
Licence assignment
Group membership
Permissions matrix
3
Onboarding hub
Personalised SharePoint page
Day-one schedule + contacts
Policies + procedures
Training plan
4
Day-one schedule
Calendar invites for week 1
HR induction + IT setup
Manager + buddy intro
Welcome email
5
Optional offboarding
Account deactivation
Licence reclaim
Access revocation
Exit interview scheduling
Deliverables you can hold us to.
✓
Live automated onboarding system running in your tenant
✓
Power App for HR to fill in new-starter information once per hire
✓
SharePoint onboarding hub template that personalises automatically for each new starter
✓
All Power Automate flows wired together, with error handling and notifications
✓
HR dashboard showing real-time status of every new starter
✓
Documentation of the flows, the data model, the access matrix
✓
Training for the HR team running the system
✓
Training for IT on the configuration, in case adjustments are needed
✓
30 days of post-go-live support
Mid-market firms hiring 15 or more new starters a year (the rough threshold above which automation pays back), where HR and IT both spend meaningful time on the manual onboarding process, and where the new-starter experience is recognised as a brand and retention issue.
How it runs.
1
Discovery + design
Week 1. Meet HR, IT, and recent line managers. Map the current process step by step. Identify what is automatable. Design the new workflow.
2
Build
Week 2. Build the Power App, the SharePoint onboarding hub, the Power Automate flows, and the HR dashboard. Pilot with one or two fake new starters.
3
Pilot
Week 3 (first half). Run the system with one real new starter or a fully simulated pilot. Refine based on what surfaces.
4
Training + handover
Week 3 (second half). HR training session, IT configuration handover, 30-day support window opens.
The price band, and how it lands.
M365-only, simple roles
£3,800
Standard access patterns, single location
M365 + HR system integration
£6,200
BambooHR / HiBob / Personio / Workday
Multi-role, multi-location
£8,400
Complex access matrix, multiple sites
+ offboarding workflow
£10,500
Both directions, full lifecycle
Related work
Often paired with this accelerator.
Common questions.
We do not have an HR system with an API. Can we still automate onboarding?
Yes. The simplest pattern uses a SharePoint list that HR fills in for each new hire; the workflow fires from the list. Less elegant than a direct HR system integration but works fine. If you upgrade to an API-capable HR system later, we swap the trigger out without rebuilding the rest.
How does device provisioning fit in?
If you have an Intune-managed device fleet, we trigger the device build from the same workflow, so the device arrives with the new starter's profile loaded. If your devices are provisioned manually by IT, we trigger a notification to IT with the new starter's role and the device requirements.
What about line manager involvement?
The workflow does not replace the line manager; it gives them more time to be the manager rather than the administrator. The manager is automatically scheduled into the right first-week sessions, sent a checklist of things only they can do, and prompted to check in at day 30, 60, 90.
Can we customise the onboarding experience for different roles?
Yes. The data captured in the new-starter form determines what the workflow does. A graduate hire gets different content than a senior leader hire; a London-based hire gets different content than an Edinburgh-based one.
What happens if the workflow breaks?
Error handling and retries on every step. Notifications to the named owner if a step fails. The 30-day post-go-live support covers any issues that surface during bedding-in. Most failures are upstream (an HR list filled in incorrectly, a licence pool empty, a permission missing); we make those failures visible rather than silent.