Why should startups outsource their technology on/offboarding?

During the pandemic we all learned that being in an office wasn't required to run your business. More than 16% of companies today are fully remote and 40% offer hybrid. Some larger orgs like WP engine have nearly half of their 1000 employees fully remote. For companies like WP engine, managing the logistics and operations of these programs requires a fully dedicated team. When it comes to startups, it's more likely the CTO or office manager stocks up these devices in a closet or garage. This not only creates a headache with the workload from logistics, but can create a large liability for the employee(s) storing the devices. Here are some reasons your business might want to consider outsourcing their onboarding.

Time back to the engineering team and HR Teams

If you're a fast growing start up, adding the responsibility of technology onboarding on your CTO or HR team can cost the company tens of thousands of dollars. During a growth stage both the HR Lead and CTO have key responsibilities as they focus on hiring. The process of finding the right candidates, scheduling and running interviews, building offers, and following up is a full-time job. At most organizations 50 employees or less, there isn't a dedicated head of IT or head of HR. This means the responsibility of hiring and onboarding can be on one or two people! What if that person quits? This creates a very costly gap in the business. By outsourcing your company can fully dedicate its time to hiring the right people, developing their product and preventing a possible one person choke point from stalling growth.

Remove liability of storing devices during turnover or growth

Since most start ups opt into being remote in order to access top talent all over the world, how do you begin to equip those team members? Say your startup is hiring ten people next month in different cities. Without an onboarding partner, let's say you send your head of HR to go to an Apple store to buy the devices. After purchasing, you will need to make sure those MacBooks are enrolled in Apple Business Manager and have any important software downloaded manually. What if it takes three months to finally fill those roles. Those devices will be sitting either at the head of HR's home or storage facility. This is close to $20,000 in important company capital sitting around. What if your team has churn of ten people? It's the same story. With an onboarding partner, all logistics and storage can be handles. Whether your devices are leased or purchased, you can ensure your devices are kept safe and can be overnighted as soon as you have a new hire.

Make reusing devices easier

Every company faces turnover even during periods of growth, where do those expensive devices from former employees go? As a remote start up, it can be a headache collecting devices from a departing employee. Let's say the device gets returned on time. Someone will also be responsible for cleaning and redeploying that device. Again, this tends to land on whoever owns onboarding such as the CTO and head of HR. Depending on the state of the device, this can be a time consuming process, especially if any costly repairs come up. With an offboarding partner, you can fully outsource this work to the partner and ensure any of your used devices meet your quality standards.

Make upgrading devices easier

The average lifespan of a new MacBook used everyday is about 3-4 years. If you're a 50 person organization, how do you go about updating all of that technology? As a start up, you have a few choices. Have your employee send that device in and you try to sell it, buy a new device and have the employee try to sell it, or simply throw the laptop away. These options create tons of waste and wasted time. With an onboarding partner like Equipped, you can give your devices new life as we have dedicated buyers of used technology to improve participation in the circular economy. This way your team can stay up to date with the best technology without worrying about the guilt of creating waste.

As you can see, for fast growing remote/hybrid start ups, that the time and energy required to maintain these programs can be costly and create one person choke points in the business. By having a partner that can be flexible with your hiring, turnover and upgrades, you can ensure your team always has the best equipment without over utilizing key roles like the CTO. Overall, it's time back for the business and comes with a team of professionals to help you.

Thanks for reading!