Employee Materials Requisitioning -
In this, the third of our "Easy Mondays" article series on new employee onboarding, we discuss how to ensure 'Easy Mondays', a great first-day experience for new employees.

One of the most common reasons new hires experience a delay in becoming productive is poor planning. It's hard for new employees to have an "Easy Monday" when they don't have the necessary tools to do their jobs. This includes tangible and intangible items that must be supplied by various departments.

As noted in part 1 of this series, IT may be responsible for providing intangibles such as network access, phone line activation, and email accounts. They may also need to set up hardware at the employee's workspace. Human Resources is often tasked with creating ID badges and setting up facility access permissions and time card codes/parameters. HR may also be involved in requisitioning background screening and drug testing.

The employee's manager has additional responsibilities for coordinating with the Inventory Department. It may be necessary to plan well in advance of the new hire's first day of work to ensure furnishings, uniforms, personal protective equipment, tools, and miscellaneous office supplies are in stock. Then, they have to be scheduled for delivery or installation at the correct time.

An Employee Materials Requisitioning System Offers Solution

Coordinating so many different responsibilities is easiest if the process is centralized in one software module. An employee materials requisitioning, or staff service request (SSR), program is designed for just this purpose. It allows managers to request an unlimited variety of tangible and intangible items for new hires. This application is especially useful during the onboarding process. It also provides long term value by permitting managers to requisition items throughout the entire employee life cycle, not just during onboarding.

Sensible Provisioning Timeline Fully Supported

An ideal employee materials requisitioning system should be able to accommodate a great deal of flexibility. For example, managers may be granted permission to begin provisioning as soon as a new position is created. If furnishings for an entire workspace are required, this gives the facilities department time to source all necessary items without paying expedited shipping costs. Waiting until an offer is extended to make such purchases is problematic since it shortens the timeline to just a few days or a couple of weeks.

Other items can be requisitioned after the position is filled but before the first day of work. This might include a new email account and other items that require IT involvement to set up. Tangible physical items such as incidental office supplies that are in stock or can be readily obtained may also be provisioned during this period.

The request for the ID badge can be created in advance and then fulfilled during onboarding when the new hire's photo is taken. Uniforms are another item that can be requested prior to start of work but require the employee's actual presence to make final delivery.

With an SSR system's ongoing requisitioning capabilities, managers can request new equipment (such as an upgraded computer or a company issued Blackberry) at any time in the future as needed. A good SSR system should also permit recall of items, also known as "deprovisioning". This is most obviously associated with a terminating (offboarding) employee, but the recall process is also useful for tracking e-Waste and enhancing security. For example, when a new hard drive is issued, the old one must be collected and returned to IT for proper disposal or refurbishment. Upon termination, the SSR software may also be triggered to request recall of ID cards and other company owned property such as laptops. Cancellation may also be prompted for intangibles such as network access to protect critical server data.

Permissions Keep Requisitioning Tightly Controlled

Using an employee materials requisitioning, or SSR, system is not the equivalent of giving managers the key to the inventory department. Permissions are fully configurable. The review and approval processes can be delegated based on business rules. The system should also be able to restrict requisitioning of specific items to various stages in the recruiting and onboarding process. A different set of rules can be instituted for each location or position if required.

In addition, SSR software allows for intelligent planning by permitting the designation of item precedence. If item A must be in place before item B can be installed, this condition is incorporated into the requisition workflow. Similar items can also be grouped together to streamline the provisioning process. If an item was requested but later found not to be required, it can be recalled or cancelled.

Accountability must be built into an SSR system. It permits easy identification of systemic break downs and delays in the provisioning process so these can be corrected. When all departments collaborate in fulfilling their respective obligations, new hires start work knowing that their employer takes their needs seriously. This reduces "first day" anxiety and speeds new employees to productivity.