It's Monday morning. Your new hire walks in on their first day, ready to go. Their manager is excited. HR has done the paperwork. And then someone asks:
The request was submitted. Somewhere. In an email, maybe. Or a Teams message to someone who was on holiday last week. Nobody is sure. The new hire spends their first day in an induction meeting that could have been an email, waiting for access they should have had before they arrived.
This scene plays out in IT departments every week. Not because the team is incompetent, but because joiner and leaver processes are one of the most coordination-heavy workflows in any organisation, and most IT teams are managing them with tools that were never designed for it.
This article is about what goes wrong, what good looks like, and how IT Asset Management makes the difference.
The joiner problem: coordination across too many people
When a new employee joins, IT is usually the last to know and the first to be blamed.
HR processes the contract. The hiring manager submits a request — sometimes through a form, sometimes via email, sometimes by walking over to the IT desk. The request might include a role, a start date, and a name. What it rarely includes:
- which software licences are needed,
- whether a specific device type is required,
- which network access the person needs on day one,
- or whether there's a spare laptop available or one needs to be ordered.
IT has to figure that out. Manually. Often under time pressure, because the request came in three days before the start date.
The result: a new hire who waits. A manager who chases. An IT team that's reactive instead of prepared.
What this costs in practice
The leaver problem: assets that walk out the door
The joiner problem is frustrating. The leaver problem is expensive.
When an employee leaves, IT needs to recover hardware, revoke software access, wipe devices, and reallocate licences. In theory, it's a checklist. In practice, it's a coordination exercise across HR, IT, and the leaver's manager, often with no single solution connecting them.
HR processes the resignation. IT finds out a week later — sometimes from the leaver themselves, sometimes from a manager's offhand comment. By the time IT gets involved, the laptop has already been handed to a colleague ("they said it was fine"), the software is still active, and the access hasn't been revoked.
Nobody acted in bad faith. The process just didn't connect.
The visibility gap
- 1,200+ assets tracked across two countries
- 90% reduction in asset retrieval time
- 3→1 tools consolidated into one view
"Previously, our asset data was scattered across multiple places — laptops in one system, phones in another, SIM cards elsewhere."
— Martin D., IT Manager, European Brewery Group
After consolidating 1,200+ assets into ALVAO, that process changed completely. Every asset assigned to a leaver surfaces automatically when the offboarding is triggered. Retrieval time dropped by 90%.
What good looks like: the automated employee lifecycle
The difference between a chaotic JML process and a clean one is usually not effort — it's connection. When HR, IT, and asset data are connected in a single workflow, the right things happen automatically.
- Before day one
The HR team submits a new joiner request. Based on the role, ALVAO automatically generates tasks: allocate a device from stock, assign software licences, set up access permissions. Each task goes to the right team with a clear owner and deadline. IT knows about the new hire before HR has finished the paperwork.
- Day one
The new hire arrives. Their laptop is configured. Their software is licensed. Their accounts are active. The IT team confirmed everything in advance — not because they were chasing, but because ALVAO told them what was needed and when.
- When someone leaves
The offboarding trigger — from Hi Bob, Workday, or a manual submission — kicks off the leaver workflow in ALVAO. Every asset appears on the leaver ticket automatically. Return is confirmed digitally. Account deprovisioning is blocked until hardware is back. Nothing closes until everything is accounted for.
- The lifecycle continues
The returned laptop is assessed, wiped, and reallocated to the next joiner. The software licence is recovered and reassigned. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is forgotten.
Why this matters beyond IT
The joiner and leaver process is not just an IT problem. It has a direct impact on three other parts of the business.
Assets walk out untracked. Licences paid for users who left. Hardware purchased when a spare was in a drawer.
Former employees retain access after their last day. Not deliberate — just a gap the process didn't catch.
First days matter. A new hire waiting a week for a laptop is not a neutral event.
ITAM connects all three. It makes the process visible, automated, and accountable — not just for IT, but for every team involved.
Three things to check in your own process this week
You don't need to overhaul everything at once. Start here:
If the answer is "someone tells us" or "we see the account go inactive," there's a gap. IT should be notified automatically, before the last day — not after.
If the answer is anything longer than an hour, the joiner process has a coordination problem. That's fixable.
If not, your asset data isn't structured in a way that supports your offboarding process. That's the root cause of most leaver chaos.
The bottom line
Joiner and leaver chaos isn't inevitable. It's the natural result of managing a coordination-heavy process with disconnected tools — email, spreadsheets, and informal chasing.
IT asset management changes the equation. Not by adding more admin, but by removing it. When HR triggers onboarding, IT is already prepared. When someone leaves, every asset is accounted for before the account closes. The process runs — and IT gets the credit for something working quietly, reliably, in the background.
That's the goal. Not firefighting. Not chasing. Just order.
Want to see what this looks like for your team?
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