How Long Does It Take to Fully Onboard a New Hire? Probably longer than it should.
It’s not because people don’t care. It’s because no one really owns the hiring process.
HR thinks IT has it covered. IT is waiting on requests.
Managers are assuming it’s all handled. Meanwhile, the new hire is sitting at a desk without access to email, Teams, or any of the systems they need to actually get started.
In a city like Nashville, where businesses are growing fast and headcount changes weekly, these delays aren’t just an inconvenience. They’re a drag on productivity.
You’re paying someone a full salary to sit and wait. And the frustrating part? It’s completely avoidable.
When we work with growing businesses, we consistently see the same pattern: onboarding is treated like a one-off project instead of a repeatable process.
That means every hire is a scramble. Equipment gets ordered too late. Accounts are set up manually.
Passwords are emailed around. And managers spend the first week patching together access instead of actually onboarding their new team member.
The real cost of this isn’t just a slow first week. It’s a slow first month—or more.
A new hire who starts without the right tools and access doesn’t just get a bad first impression. They’re playing catch-up for weeks.
That affects their output, slows down the team they joined, and erodes trust in your internal systems.
We’ve seen companies where onboarding took 19 business days.
That’s nearly a full month before someone was fully operational.
Compare that to a company with a streamlined process—where equipment arrives before Day One, accounts are provisioned automatically, and managers can focus on coaching, not troubleshooting. Their new hires are productive by the end of the first week.
You don’t need an expensive HR platform to fix this.
You need a process. One that’s documented, repeatable, and shared across HR, IT, and operations. One that assigns ownership. One that doesn’t rely on memory or last-minute tickets.
That’s what a managed IT partner like Stringfellow brings to the table: the playbook, the automation, and the accountability to make onboarding seamless.
If onboarding still feels like a fire drill in your organization, it’s time to step back and fix it. Because the problem isn’t your people—it’s your process. And the longer you wait, the more time and money you’re burning.
