The ultimate employee onboarding checklist: Streamlining IT setup for new hires

You found the perfect candidate. Now what?

Too often, companies ace the hiring process and drop the ball during onboarding. But here’s the truth: a clunky employee onboarding process can derail even your most promising new hires before they’ve had a chance to shine.

Up to 70% of employees decide whether to stick around or start job hunting within the first month. And if that wasn’t alarming enough, BambooHR found that 23% of new hires have cried during their first week on the job — overwhelmed and under-supported.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

An effective onboarding process should feel easy, especially when it comes to IT. No one should have to create support tickets just to get access to basic tools, install apps, or request a laptop. That’s why we’ve put together the ultimate employee onboarding checklist — to help IT teams streamline setup, reduce ticket volume, and make day one feel like a win.

IT setup can make or break the onboarding experience

First impressions matter. Nothing kills a new hire’s momentum like locked accounts, missing hardware, or endless back-and-forth with IT.

Instead, let’s flip the script. A smart onboarding checklist ensures your IT processes are locked in before the new hire even walks in (or logs on). Think: pre-provisioned accounts, assigned tools, and a device that’s ready to go.

The result? New employees can hit the ground running, while your IT help desk avoids the scramble.

Pre-onboarding: Get the tech ready before day one

The best onboarding starts before the start date. That means your IT team should already be behind the scenes, setting up the digital and physical workspace.

Here are the essential pre-onboarding steps:

✅ Create email and user accounts

✅ Install essential apps and software

✅ Provision access to job-specific tools

✅ Set up and ship hardware (for remote hires)

✅ Include VPN, MFA, antivirus, and SSO setup

✅ Send a welcome email with login credentials and quick-start instructions

If you have remote employees, configure and ship their devices early — no one likes waiting for their work laptops to arrive. Ensure the device has everything it needs, including VPN, work software, and software licenses.

Send a welcome email with login details and instructions for accessing company systems. The email can include all the apps they need to download before their first day, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and a multifactor authentication (MFA) app. 

Each new hire should feel like your organization wants them to succeed.

Pro tip: assign an “IT buddy” or point of contact for early questions. It adds a human touch and helps new hires feel supported from day one.

First-day IT readiness: No surprises, no delays

Your new hire onboarding process should feel seamless on day one. New employees show up full of energy and you want to make the most of it. A well-executed IT setup gives employees the tools they need to jump in right away, collaborate, learn, and contribute right from the start.

Here’s what first-day IT readiness should include:

• Preloaded access to collaboration tools: Ensure new hires have the access they need to key tools like Slack, MS Teams, project platforms, and other department-specific apps (e.g. Salesforce or Figma). Send them invitations to these tools before their first day on the job and encourage them to test the apps to ensure they’re working.
• Proper permissions and security credentials: The IT team should ensure employees have the correct login credentials, security clearances (if necessary) and approvals to prevent restricted access or locked accounts that could disrupt their workflow.
• Verified SSO and MFA functionality: Implement multifactor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) to ensure optimal security and simplify access. If you’re not using standard images, before you ship a new device make sure to double-check whether you’ve installed antivirus, VPN, and firewall tools for endpoint protection.

No one wants to feel like a burden on day one. When the tech just works, your new hires feel like they belong — and your IT team avoids playing tech support for preventable issues.

Pro tip: create standard laptop images for each department (or role) so that there’s less individual customization to do for each new hire.

Automate IT support (because password resets shouldn’t need a ticket)

Even with perfect planning, new hires will still have questions. But not every question needs to turn into a ticket — especially not for things like password resets, which cost nearly $90 per call.

Here’s how to cut down the noise (and avoid unnecessary help desk tickets for your IT team):

• Automate common requests: The help desk doesn’t need to respond to every employee onboarding query. You can configure automated responses to tickets with “New Hire” in the subject to initiate onboarding workflows.
• Analyze tickets: With artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), you can analyze large volumes of new hire tickets and diagnose common issues. For example, if every new hire in finance is asking for access to a specific app that’s a signal to pre-load it for future new hires.
• Filter tickets out: Automatically categorize or eliminate system-generated alerts that clutter the queue. For example, informational alerts the fire off when laptops are ordered or shipped can drown out real problems that you want your help desk to focus on.

Among all the tickets we see with customers, onboarding-related tickets are always in the top-10 list of use cases. 

Keep onboarding smooth with Fixify’s 4-step automation

The onboarding surge doesn’t have to swamp your IT help desk team. One of the most enlightening things for the companies we work with is simply understanding what use cases their team is working on (spoiler alert: onboarding-related tickets are always in the top-10 list of use cases).

Based on our experience working with dozens of companies we’ve developed a 4-step process to automate key processes – including new hire onboarding – using AI automation. 

Here’s what the four steps look like when you implement Fixify>

• Understand what slows IT down: Fixify integrates with your ticketing system and uses machine learning to categorize all of your tickets across dozens of different use cases. This visibility shows you where the “hotspots” are that are sucking up your team’s time as well as recurring issues and where new hire onboarding sits on your own top-10 list.
• Eliminate preventable requests: Not all requests require human intervention. The visibility Fixify provides will help you identify and categorize such requests as password resets, access tickets, and informational alerts.
• Improve workflows: After analyzing your help desk tickets, Fixify offers data-driven recommendations o how to tweak some of your workflows to reduce or improve ticket volume and ticket resolution times.
• Automate the rest: Fixify helps you pick the processes and ticket categories that are best to automate so IT can focus on high-impact projects. This is done without removing people from the process to ensure human connections. Typically Fixify can handle 75% of tier 1 and tier 2 help desk tickets

You’ll also get real-time insight into onboarding metrics like resolution time and user sentiment. So you’ll know exactly how new hires feel about their IT experience — and how to improve it.

Ditch IT onboarding headaches

When your IT setup works, everyone wins. New hires feel welcomed and ready to roll. IT doesn’t drown in redundant tickets. And your company builds a reputation for being a great place to work from day one.

With a clear employee onboarding checklist, a few smart automations, and Fixify by your side, you can simplify the employee onboarding process and deliver a better experience for everyone.

Ready to ditch IT onboarding chaos for good? Book a demo to see how Fixify helps you welcome new hires with less hassle — and a whole lot more confidence.