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How to Automate Onboarding and Offboarding with People Workflows

Overview

Employee onboarding and offboarding are critical moments for both IT and HR teams.
Each event typically requires coordinating multiple actions across systems: granting or revoking app access, notifying stakeholders, and ensuring nothing is forgotten.

Without automation, these processes rely heavily on manual steps, follow-ups, and cross-team communication — making them time-consuming, error-prone, and hard to scale.

With People Workflows, Siit allows you to automate onboarding and offboarding flows based on employee lifecycle events, without requiring an employee request.
Combined with app access actions (Okta, JumpCloud, or custom integrations), you can ensure that the right access is granted or revoked automatically — at the right time.

 

Why Use People Workflows for Onboarding & Offboarding?

Unlike request-based workflows, People Workflows are triggered by employee data events, such as:

  • Start date,

  • End date,

This makes them ideal for lifecycle processes where:

  • no employee action is required,

  • timing is critical,

  • actions must happen consistently for every employee.

Typical benefits include:

  • Faster Day-1 readiness for new hires,

  • Reduced security risks during offboarding,

  • Clear ownership and auditability across IT and HR.

 

💡 With People workflows, you can easily decide if you want the action to takes place before or after the trigger depending on if you click on the "+" above or below of the trigger.

 

Step 1 — Create a New People Workflow

Go to Settings → Workflows and click Create workflow.

Choose a People trigger depending on your use case:

  • Start date → for onboarding,

  • End date → for offboarding.

This ensures the workflow starts automatically based on employee lifecycle data, without opening a request.

 

Step 2 — Add Conditions to Target the Right Population

Next, refine when the workflow should apply by adding conditions.

Common examples:

  • Department = Engineering,

  • Location = EMEA,

  • Employment type = Employee (exclude contractors),

  • Legal entity or job level.

You can also combine multiple conditions to tailor onboarding or offboarding flows per team, region, or role.

 

Step 3 — Provision App Access Automatically (Onboarding)

Once the workflow is triggered, you can start provisioning access for the new hire.

Option 1 — Using Okta or JumpCloud

Add an action such as:

  • Add user to a group

  • Add user to an application

You can:

  • Select groups manually (e.g. engineering_employees),

  • Or dynamically map them based on attributes like department or role.

This ensures that, on Day 1, employees automatically receive access to the tools they need.

Option 2 — Using a Custom Provider via Webhook

If you use another identity or access system (e.g. Google Workspace, Azure AD, internal tools):

  • Add a Custom Action (Webhook),

  • Send employee attributes (email, department, start date, role) to your provider’s API.

This allows you to replicate the same automation even outside native integrations.

 

Step 4 — Notify Stakeholders and Coordinate Tasks

Beyond app access, onboarding/offboarding often involves communication and coordination.

You can add actions to:

  • Send a welcome message to the employee via Slack, Teams, or email,

  • Notify the hiring manager that onboarding is complete,

  • Notify IT or HR teams that access has been provisioned,

  • Create tasks or issues in tools like Jira or Linear.

All actions are driven from the same workflow, ensuring consistency and traceability.

 

Step 5 — Automate Access Removal (Offboarding)

For offboarding, the same People Workflow logic applies — but in reverse.

Using the End date trigger, you can:

  • Remove users from app groups,

  • Revoke active sessions,

  • Deactivate or suspend accounts,

  • Trigger equipment collection workflows,

  • Notify managers and HR once access is fully revoked.

This significantly reduces security risks and ensures no access remains active after departure.

 

Few Examples

 

Final Result

With a properly configured People Workflow, you achieve a fully automated onboarding or offboarding flow:

  • The workflow triggers automatically from employee lifecycle data,

  • App access is provisioned or revoked without manual intervention,

  • Stakeholders are informed at the right moments,

  • All actions are traceable and consistent across the organization.