The IT Nerd

25% of new IT hires who have an underwhelming or terrible onboarding experience quit their role, putting pressure on organizations to eliminate onboarding friction in the race for tech talent

Nexthink, the leader in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management, is warning that failing to align IT and HR to improve the onboarding experience will hamper businesses in the race for the best talent, and cause US organizations to waste $2.2bn on rehiring IT and tech talent every year. 

“The role of IT in securing and retaining top tech talent cannot be overlooked,” commented Tim Flower, DEX Strategist, Nexthink. “It’s not just having the right device, but getting all the necessary permissions and installing applications, often with precious little guidance from hiring managers as to what is actually needed.”

Too often, IT is given just days to equip new starters, leading to rushed setups, tech issues, and bad first impressions. Organizations cannot afford to let talent slip through their fingers this easily, which is why HR and IT must become an employee experience ‘Super Team’, collaborating to understand all the tools a new starter needs. These discussions should happen in advance, with HR and IT working together to project hiring plans that detail the roles, locations, seniority, and digital needs of new hires. Not doing this can be costly not just for rehiring, but for other issues like negotiating software licenses – organizations risk overpaying instead of securing better bulk rates upfront.”

Based on Nexthink analysis of the US labor market, IT salaries, rehiring costs and research around onboarding issues, 117,711 IT or tech hires each year will have an underwhelming or terrible onboarding experience, with 29,428 leaving their role. This equates to 8% of the projected IT roles that will be created each year in the US from 2023-2033. With the average cost of replacing a technical role estimated to be $76,703, US organizations are wasting $2.2bn annually replacing IT or technology hires lost to poor onboarding processes.

This is why organizations must rethink how HR and IT work together and break down silos to create collaborative “Super Teams” that will ensure a smooth, efficient onboarding process. To do this, organizations should: 

Develop a Shared Understanding – IT and HR must collaborate from the outset to ensure that IT recognizes that every tech initiative impacts the employee journey, while HR should deepen its understanding of IT tools and decisions. 

Integrate Feedback & Data – IT and HR must adopt a united front by combining technical performance data with real user feedback to understand pain points, align on metrics, and make improvements to the onboarding experience.

Automate Where Possible – Reduce manual effort in onboarding by leveraging automation that integrates with IT and HR workflows to automate routine tasks, such as notifying IT about new joiners.

 “In my experience in the trenches, a cumbersome on-boarding process can have all sorts of consequences,” said Flower. “From slow new-hire ramp up to productivity, to staff churn and negative online reviews, and internal reputational damage as business areas get frustrated with the process. So HR and IT, along with the business partner, need to be in lockstep for every single on-boarding process step to ensure a great first impression, faster employee ramp-up, and long-lasting careers within the organization.”

 Nexthink has announced research showing that Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) procurement and management processes are riddled with contradictions. The survey of 1000 frontline IT workers found that:

• 92% say the employee experience is an important consideration when choosing a VDI solution
• However, 91% admit that cost considerations trump performance when choosing a provider
• 95% believe that VDI offers an equal or better experience than desktops
• Yet 92% confess that it has primarily been designed to make life easier for IT, rather than the end-user

The cost of these contradictions is significant, with a third of organizations (31%) reporting daily VDI issues that require L3 VDI specialist support, and a further 40% having them on a weekly basis, as L1 and L2 support are often unable to manage the complexity of VDI. This means that, despite a key driver of VDI deployment being the ability to better control costs, enterprises are having to spend huge sums on operationalization and maintenance.

The confusion over VDI is further compounded by the fact that a substantial proportion of these escalated issues were not necessarily specific to VDI. Application functionality failures (54%) and slow performance (47%) accounted for two of the top three most reported issues to IT teams, neither of which are necessarily related to VDI.

In order to address these issues, businesses need a unified view over all VDI sessions with end-to-end visibility and automated workflows to enable remediation with minimal interruption to the user experience. Moreover, having instant insight into where problems are occurring can remove the blame game between functions and enable better collaboration both within IT departments and with the wider organization. 

To find out more about the challenges of VDI management, click here for the full report.