Organizations often work in silos, with little to no overlap between various departments unless needed for specific projects or reporting periods. While this can make sense sometimes, it is essential that all departments in your organization are aligned on your mission and goals so they can work together for success. This is even true of your IT and HR departments. It might seem like IT and HR are entirely unrelated, but there are two keys times they interact: onboarding and offboarding.
During the onboarding process, it may seem like HR oversees everything. There is a lot of paperwork to complete when a new hire comes on and documents they need to review about the company and its policies. There is also a lot that the IT department needs to do to ensure a new employee is successfully brought onboard. For instance, IT needs to set up their email and account, confirm required access credentials for necessary software and tools, order equipment like computers and phones, and go over basic security training. HR and the IT team should work together to create an onboarding plan, outlining what is needed for each employee, when special permission might be needed, and even the schedule for various training.
As with the onboarding process, your HR and IT teams must meet to develop a plan for offboarding employees. Whether they quit their roles or are terminated, there are major security risks that you can face unless you properly remove former employees from your systems. Before the last date of employment, there should be communication from HR so that accounts can be closed, incoming emails can be forwarded to the appropriate contact, any shared accounts can have updated passwords, and company-owned equipment (like laptops) can be recovered.
Your IT department interacts with the rest of your staff on a daily basis, but they are also essential at the start and end of each employee's time with you. If your organization doesn’t have a formal onboarding and offboarding plan, you should sit down and think about what needs to be done and their level of importance.