How HR can streamline and improve the employee experience

A woman checks her phone as she prepares to leave her office. A Acer desktop computer is in the background on her desk.

With the widespread move to flexible or hybrid work practices, providing a fast and effective staff onboarding process is becoming more of a challenge.  

Streamlining and improving the onboarding process helps provide a great first impression of the organisation for new employees. This is not only positive for the user themselves, the HR department will also benefit with the reduced time and effort needed to complete each onboarding cycle. 

Often, device procurement is a key piece in this onboarding puzzle. It’s also a step that can introduce logistical headaches as well as significant delay. This is where the Windows 365 Cloud PC can fit in. This new service provides users access to a secure and sustainable virtual PC that is running in Microsoft’s datacentres. 

Why HR teams should leverage the cloud

Windows 365 grants users the flexibility to security connect to their work desktop from any device. All while maintaining access to the same organisational services and applications as from a traditional computer. This comes without any delays and the manual work that procurement, configuration and delivery of a physical computer can generate for the HR department. 

Windows 365 Cloud PC provides a modern, secure desktop that doesn’t depend on the performance of the device its accessed from. It can also help meet sustainability goals. Organisations can achieve this by allowing the use of older computers that would otherwise be replaced with new. 

Get new employees up to speed quickly

User securely using multi-factor authentication on a mobile phone and a tablet while working remote from a café.

A key benefit of the Windows 365 Cloud PC for HR is that the creation, configuration, delivery and eventual recovery of PC’s is purely digital. This means the process can be fully automated, while seamlessly integrating into any existing HR onboarding/offboarding workflow. This cuts down the number of required steps and time spent on each onboarding cycle. Additionally, it also improves the end user onboarding experience

For organisations with a regular flow of contractors and temporary workers, this can be a particular pain point for HR Departments. Compounding this problem can be supply chain issues which affect the availability or timely delivery of new physical computers. Users can bet left waiting for a new or replacement device. As a result, they can be potentially stuck without a machine to work on for a significant period of time. 

Windows 365 allows HR to manage the creation and delivery of a fully configured PC end-to-end. In under an hour a user can be up and running on their device. And HR can easily remove the user’s Windows 365 license to recover the PC. This can be automated as part of the standard offboarding process. 

A secure, streamlined and consistent employee experience

From a user’s perspective, the core requirements for any computer are an experience that is familiar, easy to use and always available. It must also allow them to work and create freely as they do today. All while they move across different devices, platforms and locations. 

The experience a Windows 365 computer provides is consistent across PC, Mac, tablet or smart devices. This flexibility allows users to pick up work from exactly where they left off, on whatever device.  

The Windows 365 Cloud PC is also secure by design. Hosted on Microsoft datacentres around the world, it runs either Windows 10 or Windows 11. This worldwide reach means users based in different parts of the world can have a cloud PC running in their local datacentre. As a result, they can have the best possible experience. 

Help HR teams meet sustainability goals

Sustainability is another key benefit of Windows 365. It gives existing computers that are due for retirement to be given a second life. Users can have a new, modern and high-performance experience through their existing hardware. Furthermore, Microsoft’s Azure sustainability commitments ensure that the datacentres hosting the Windows 365 service themselves have minimal impact, with the following published and tracked targets: 

Renewable Energy:   100% of energy used to be renewable by 2025  Water positive:   Replenish more water than we consume by 2030  Zero-waste   certification by 2030  Net-zero deforestation from new construction  

Drive new employee experiences at speed

A HR worker and an employee collaborate in common space of an office

Being able to quickly and automatically provision a Windows 365 Cloud PC with secure access from any device the user already has, wherever they are in the world allows the rapid and efficient onboarding of users, even at short notice.

Learn More

Discover Windows in the cloud with Windows 365

Don’t underestimate the importance of good onboarding

Streamlining employee onboarding

Azure sustainability

Hybrid Work: A practical guide

About the author

Photo of a person with short hair and a beard smiling at the camera

Conor has been working with Microsoft Modern Workplace for the last eight years, helping lead organisations of all sizes through their digital transformation journey. Currently he specialises in Windows 365 and is working to highlight this brand-new category of computing along with all its many associated benefits.