Employee onboarding and offboarding under time pressure: technology can simplify some processes

29 września 2026

Staff changes are a regular part of life for small businesses and large organisations alike. Every new hire, and later every departure, involves a series of practical steps: sharing information and permissions, arranging office access, and eventually collecting equipment and revoking access. Digital tools can support a growing number of these tasks.

The first weeks of employment have a significant impact on a new employee’s experience. Drawing on research by its institute, O.C. Tanner identifies the first 45 days as a particularly important period in the onboarding process. The company publishes an annual Global Culture Report covering topics including engagement, organisational culture and employee experience. Enboarder, a company specialising in HR process automation, also points to the costs associated with an employee leaving in the first few months of employment.

These findings show that onboarding does not end with signing documents and providing basic information. How quickly a new employee can feel comfortable and find their way around the organisation matters, too.

“One of the challenges HR teams face today is providing a good employee experience while managing numerous administrative processes efficiently. Technology cannot replace human contact, but it can take care of some repetitive tasks, leaving more time for work that requires direct involvement from the team,”

says Maciej Grabowski of Blue Bolt.

One such task is managing access to the office, parking facilities and designated company spaces. Traditionally, permissions are often assigned to a physical card. Mobile solutions offer an alternative: access can be granted digitally and managed remotely.

Blue Bolt is one example of such a solution. The app enables organisations to manage access to offices and parking facilities and share information with employees about how to use a particular space.

Flexibility becomes part of the employee experience

Changes in working patterns mean that flexible use of the office and its facilities is becoming increasingly important.

“In a hybrid work model, convenience is paramount. Employees should know where they need to go, which spaces they can use and what resources are available to them. The fewer additional administrative steps this requires of employees and the teams running the office, the smoother the overall experience,”

says Michał Kozłowski, co-founder of Digital Real Estate and Workday expert.

During onboarding, technology can also help share essential information on navigating the building, using different spaces and making use of available amenities.

This does not mean automating the entire onboarding process. Direct contact with a manager, the team or the person responsible for onboarding remains essential. Digitisation can, however, reduce the number of simple administrative tasks handled manually.

Offboarding involves more than collecting equipment

Similar challenges arise when employment ends. Alongside collecting equipment, the company must ensure that the employee’s permissions are revoked.

In organisations with hybrid working arrangements, returning company equipment may take longer than it does in fully office-based workplaces. Synetic Technologies, a company specialising in IT device lifecycle management, notes that, depending on how the return is organised, the process can take from several days to several weeks.

At the same time, access to offices, parking facilities and other company spaces must be addressed. With physical cards, this means recovering the card or deactivating it in the system. With digital solutions, permissions can have a set expiry date or be switched off remotely.

“We can link access to a specific user and define how long it should remain active. It can also be integrated with an HR system. This makes granting and revoking permissions part of a single process, rather than a separate task carried out independently,”

explains Maciej Grabowski of Blue Bolt.

With Blue Bolt, access can be provided through a QR code or a mobile solution, among other methods. The system also allows access schedules to be set in line with the rules applicable to each user.

From access management to data on office use

Digital tools in offices increasingly do more than open doors. They can support the booking of meeting rooms, lockers and parking spaces, the running of surveys and the organisation of internal employee initiatives.

This allows data from different aspects of office operations to be gathered in one environment.

“Data analysis helps us understand better how space is used. An organisation can see, for example, demand for particular resources and how office use varies over time. This information can inform decisions about the layout and cost of the space,”

says Maciej Grabowski.

A similar approach can be used for parking. Digital access permissions allow a space to be made available not only to an employee, but also to a visitor or an external collaborator, without handing over a physical card.

Data is also becoming more important for ESG

One benefit of digitising processes related to office operations is that they become easier to measure.

Data collected in the Blue Bolt app can be organised and analysed, giving an organisation a clearer picture of how its office, parking facilities and other resources are used.

This matters not only for property management and employee experience. Where the data corresponds to indicators monitored by the company, it can also support analyses and summaries prepared for ESG reporting.

In practice, this means moving from a process that has to be reconstructed from multiple sources to one in which some data is available in a single place and can be compared regularly. The ability to measure outcomes, rather than digitisation for its own sake, is becoming one of the key reasons for introducing technology into day-to-day office operations.