Employee onboarding made simple
SafetyCulture offers visibility and insights into raising workplace safety and quality standards. As a global and fast-growing company, they needed a secure, user-friendly way to onboard new employees remotely.
Sydney, Australia
When Mick Viney was brought in as SafetyCulture’s first IT manager to oversee their global workforce, he had his work cut out for him. Luckily, he knew exactly the tool for the job. “One of the first things I did,” says Viney, “was implement Jamf Pro and then deploy it. Jamf gave us the oversight that we needed to manage our mobile device inventory of 380 devices across the world.”
Using Jamf Pro, the IT team manages nearly 400 devices at locations in Kansas City, USA; Manchester, UK; Manila, Philippines— as well as Sydney and Townsville, Australia.
“That’s quite a powerful tool,” says Viney. “It also enabled us to just really improve the level of service and the experience that we could provide to our team members, particularly those working remotely, and it brought us all a sense of connectedness.”
One of the first things I did was implement Jamf Pro and then deploy it. Jamf gave us the oversight that we needed to manage our mobile device inventory of 380 devices across the world.
SafetyCulture goes remote with Jamf Pro
Jamf Pro also empowered employees to control their own devices. "Being able to drive that through the Self-Service functionality was critical," says Viney. "All of a sudden, the team had access to quick IT fixes, they could install the printers that they wanted; if they were travelling to different offices, they could quickly install the Wi-Fi. We just simplified that experience for them."
In the next 18 months, IT will expand their enterprise App Store in Jamf Pro. "Our team will use that to configure their devices, they'll pull down their development environments, they’ll pull down tools that they need."
This flexibility and access to tools has enabled mobility between offices and became essential once Covid-19 became a global pandemic.
In early March, SafetyCulture moved quickly into a company-wide remote work model, and management gave Viney a week to do it.
"I was so anxious about how we were going to do this and what we could do to make this a high-level professional experience for people," says Viney. "I was really apprehensive about it when our SL team told me to start preparing, as in the next seven days we were going to close down all our offices."
But they were continuing to grow, which meant they had to figure out how to bring in new hires remotely as well, and they needed to do it fast.
How SafetyCulture used Jamf Pro for remote onboarding
One of Viney’s Jamf Pro specialists, Patrick Dunand, came up with a novel approach: he combined Jamf Pro and DEPNotify to customize the enrollment workflow for new employees.
“As soon as we came up with this idea for Jamf and this way to use it, it’s given us confidence and taken away such an anxious piece of work,” says Viney. Most importantly, remote onboarding with Jamf Pro has made sure that new employees feel like part of the team right from the start. “And Jamf has powered that,” he says.
When a new employee receives their Mac in the mail, they sign in with Okta credentials and, while Jamf Pro sets up the user’s account in the background, they view a five-minute video walking them through who is on their IT team, who to contact if needed, and then takes them through SafetyCulture’s entire environment and then finally finishes with them logging onto their Mac from their home screen.
Part of the 5-minute video is introducing people to Self-Service: a feature of Jamf Pro that allows individuals to select which apps they would like to load on their own. “We’re very light touch when we deploy our machines, so we won’t preconfigure them or image them or install any software,” says Viney. “They can see all the apps that they need, they can select what they want, and they can experience that power of loading the app with a single click.”
“This has helped us from an operational perspective as well,” says Viney. “We don’t have to bring laptops in to one of the IT teams to set up and then re-ship out. We’re able to just put in the new hire’s address into the Apple e-store that we use, and have the device shipped straight to them.”
We don’t have to bring laptops in to one of the IT teams to set up and then re-ship out. We’re able to just put in the new hire’s address into the Apple e-store that we use, and have the device shipped straight to them.
Security with Jamf Pro
In addition to a smoother setup, Jamf is helping SafetyCulture ensure that security is maintained across their environment with device encryption. Users must log on with their Okta credentials, which keeps the data on lost and stolen devices secure.
In the case of loss or theft, SafetyCulture knows that Jamf Pro empowers them to remotely disable and lock the device. “We’ve got that security and peace of mind,” says Viney.
Money and time savings with Jamf remote onboarding
Jamf Pro has not only saved IT and new employees a lot of stress, it has also saved SafetyCulture time and money. Due to their ability to ship devices directly from the Apple store to new hires, the organization saves $80 per new hire, and due to Jamf’s remote setup, they save six hours of IT time per employee.
Employees appreciate remote onboarding with Jamf Pro
Beyond the tangible savings, SafetyCulture has also earned the goodwill of their staff.
“It would be quite daunting, I imagine, joining a new organization in the current time,” says Viney. “Being so separated from your team and never having had that face-to-face interaction through your interview process or onboarding.” So, in addition to the Mac, new hires receive a care package from SafetyCulture with the swag items they might have received on the first day had they started in the office. “People have felt so welcomed and so connected right off the bat,” says Viney. “So, they immediately get that this is who Safety Culture is, this is what we’re about and it’s quite a powerful experience. They love it,” he says. “I’ve had several staff members tell me that this is just an incredible experience for them.”
Even before Covid-19-related shutdowns, this global company was finding onboarding challenging: SafetyCulture ran monthly onboarding sessions, but they didn’t match up exactly with when each employee started. “Now,” says Viney, “we can get them at their very first interaction with their technology. As soon as they open up the laptop lid there’s the video with all their questions answered. They know who to speak to for help, they know our faces, they know the Slack channels that they should be part of, they know how the tooling works. All of that from the very first moment, so we’re in there at exactly the right time. This is something that we’ll continue to use and continue to save our time and add value to the business as we move back to normal life.”
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