Smooth Onboarding for Employees Who Work Remotely with Jamf

Now that many of your employees are no longer working in theoffice, how are you onboarding them? The days of a 9 to 5 workday exclusivelyfrom the office are coming to an end as work is no longer confined by placeand time. According to a recent survey, more thantwo-thirds of workers in Canada (67.91 percent) have been asked by theiremployers to work from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

What's making this possible is the evolving role of digitaltechnology to improve business processes and enhance employee experiences. Butwhat makes this successful is the evolving responsibility of IT.

In today's climate, more organizations than ever before are examining their remote employee and work-from-home policies be it for health, employee retention or employee productivity reasons. In this blog, our partners at Jamf explain how you can best serve employees and the organization as a whole by successfully onboarding remote and on-site staff.

Betteronboarding experience for all who work remotely

The speed at which organizations must empower employees to beproductive is directly correlated to the retention rate and level ofproductivity of new hires. When organizations deliver a strong onboardingexperience, they can improve employeeretention rates by 82 percent and employee productivity by over 70percent.

So, it is paramount that organizations are offering the righttechnology and leveraging the right tools to facilitate a streamlinedonboarding process for remote and on-site employees. But when it comes tochoosing how to best support those goals, not all technology and tools arecreated equal.

Apple hardware is becoming much more commonplace in enterpriseorganizations around the world. The ease of use and growing employee demand areopening the eyes of many organizations to support and offer Mac, iPad andiPhone. And, this trend has tremendous benefits for employees, IT and theentire organization.

Efficientonboarding for IT

IT only gets one chance to make a good first impression. Theycan nail theirs by leveraging Apple Business Manager to institute acompany-wide zero-touch device deployment strategy. When a new device isunboxed and powered on, Apple Business Manager tells the Mac, iPad or iPhone toautomatically enroll into the organization's mobile device management (MDM)solution.

Jamf Pro is built from the groundup to deeply support Apple Business Manager and take it to the nextlevel. With powerful technology like Smart Groups, which help intelligentlymanage environments without any interaction, Jamf Pro can help you support agrowing remote workforce. For small businesses, Jamf offers Jamf Now mobile device managementbuilt for anyone.

How to onboard devices with AppleBusiness Manager

Apple Business Manager, a free service from Apple, also helpsstreamline the process of Apple IDs, when paired with a management solutionlike Jamf Pro or Jamf Now. Leverage Managed Apple IDs and be fully in charge ofthe setup and management of the Apple ID. Employees benefit from an Apple IDstrategy that is clearly designated for work, eliminating any confusion aboutwhether they should use their personal Apple ID in the workplace. Admins willenjoy fewer support tickets as end users are empowered to manage and resettheir own passwords without needing IT support.

This workflow completely eliminates the process of unboxing eachdevice and physically touching it to get it personalized and configured foreach employee. Gone are the days of IT needing to be buried under a mountain ofnew hardware. With Jamf and Apple Business Manager, deploying a new device isas easy as ordering it via the Apple Business Manager portal and shipping itdirectly to an end user's desk or home. No further IT interaction is needed, soyou can get back to supporting your distributed workforce in other ways.

To institute the zero-touch deployment process,all organizations need to do is prepare, purchase and deploy.

Prepare:

1. Sign up forApple Business Manager
2. Link AppleBusiness Manager account to the MDM server
3. Configuresettings and enrollment customization

Purchase:

1. Order Applehardware through Apple or an authorized Apple reseller
2. Assign devicesfor enrollment

Deploy:

1. Send shrink-wrapped Apple devices directly to employees
2. Employee unboxes and turns on
3. Apple device enrolls into management automatically

Easy onboardingfor employees

First days are inherently stressful for employees. Alleviatetheir concerns by getting the tools they need (and want) in their hands on dayone through a zero-touch deployment.

For a remote employee, productivity is literally a few taps orclicks away. They simply look for their new Apple hardware in the mail, unboxit and power it on. That's it! Employees become instantly connected to theirwork resources, including mail, VPN and productivity apps in the same exactmanner as their on-site counterparts.

Your device management solution should also allow for flexibleconfiguration of the Enrollment Customization workflow, making it easy for youto provide video, documentation or other information as a new employee clicksthrough the enrollment screens on their device.

Once online, remote employees are able to quickly find and takeadvantage of their favorite apps or other critical resources thanks to Self Service, a free curated app portalavailable to every end user in the organization.IT doesn't have to touch anydevices and employees don't have to set foot in an office to get theirhardware.

To learn how Jamf and CDW can help take your Apple deployments to the next level, visit CDW.ca/Jamf