One of the most common requests the logic-IT team receives goes something like this: “We just hired someone, can you set them up with email?” It comes in most weeks, often the day the new hire is supposed to start. The ask sounds simple, but it points to a much larger gap that quietly causes problems for small businesses.
One Request, Many Moving Parts
Setting up email is rarely just setting up email. A new employee typically needs access to several systems before they can do their job effectively. Depending on your business, that list might include:
- A company email account and any shared inboxes they need to see
- Cloud storage and shared drives with the right folder permissions
- Business software licenses, whether that is accounting, project management, or industry-specific tools
- A company device that is configured, secured, and ready to use
- Multi-factor authentication setup across every platform
When there is no checklist, each of these items gets remembered at different times, by different people. The new hire spends their first days waiting on access instead of getting productive. That is a frustrating experience for them and a waste of time for whoever is fielding the requests one by one.
Offboarding Is the Bigger Risk
If slow onboarding is an inconvenience, poor offboarding is a genuine security risk. When an employee resigns or is let go, access needs to be revoked quickly and completely. Without a defined process, things get missed. Former employees have retained access to company email, shared drives, and cloud tools for weeks after their last day, sometimes without anyone realizing it.
That kind of exposure can lead to real consequences. A former employee with lingering access to client data, financial records, or internal communications is a liability, regardless of how the departure went. Most of the time it is not malicious, but the risk is the same either way.
The question worth asking is this: if someone on your team resigned today, what would your first hour look like? Is there a clear list of accounts to disable, devices to collect, and permissions to remove? If the answer is uncertain, that gap is worth closing before you need it.
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