Each new hire takes hours to set up, and every Mac is configured slightly differently?
Manual Onboarding: Hours Per New Hire
Beyond wasted time, inconsistent configurations mean security gaps from day one. Shadow IT starts during onboarding when users install their own tools while waiting for IT.
Onboarding Is an IT Bottleneck
IT spends 2-4 hours configuring each new Mac
New hires wait days for their device to be ready
Each setup is slightly different depending on who configures it
Remote hires get a box and a 47-step setup guide
No two Macs have identical configurations
Monday morning: Five new employees start. IT has five Macs to configure. Install the standard apps. Configure email and VPN. Set up security policies. Apply network settings. Create local admin account. Walk user through first login. Repeat five times. Each takes 3 hours. That's two full IT days for one Monday's new hires. Now imagine you're scaling: 10 new hires next week, 15 the week after. A software company we worked with was hiring aggressively. New employees sat idle for their entire first day waiting for IT to configure their Mac. The employee experience: Show up excited for new job, spend day one waiting for IT to make the computer work. They started looking for their next job within weeks. The real cost wasn't IT time. It was first-day disillusionment.
What Manual Onboarding Really Costs
IT Becomes Hiring Bottleneck
As you scale, manual onboarding doesn't. Each new hire requires the same IT investment. At 50 employees, it's annoying. At 200 employees with 5-10 new hires monthly, IT becomes the constraint on company growth. Onboarding delays cascade into delayed productivity.
Configuration Inconsistency Creates Security Gaps
When setup is manual, it's inconsistent. One IT person forgets to enable FileVault. Another skips the firewall configuration. A third installs different security software. Every inconsistency is a potential security gap. Auditors see this as lack of standardized security baselines.
Remote Onboarding Is Chaos
Remote employee? Ship them the Mac and a setup guide. They follow it imperfectly. They get stuck. They call IT. IT tries to troubleshoot over Zoom. Four hours later, maybe it works. Or IT ships the device, spends two hours configuring it remotely, and hopes nothing breaks in transit. Either way, remote onboarding is a disaster.
Shadow IT From Day One
New hire needs Slack. IT hasn't installed it yet. User downloads it themselves, from their personal account rather than your company management system. Repeat for every app they need. By end of day one, the device is half company-managed, half user-installed chaos. That's shadow IT baked into onboarding.
Zero-Touch: Ship the Box, It Configures Itself
We implement zero-touch deployment with Apple Business Manager and automated MDM enrollment. Device knows who it's for before it's unboxed. User opens the box, powers on, sees company branding, logs in with work credentials, and the Mac configures itself in 5-10 minutes. Apps install automatically. Settings apply automatically. Security policies enforce automatically. IT's involvement: minimal IT involvement per device. Works whether the user is in the office, remote, or international.
New hire logs in, everything is ready in minutes
Consistent configuration with no manual setup and no guesswork
Works anywhere: office, remote, international
IT's time per device: zero hours
First-day employee experience: device just works
Scale onboarding without scaling IT headcount
Make Onboarding a Competitive Advantage
Book a 20-minute call to discuss zero-touch deployment.
