As companies continue to rely more and more on information technology (IT) infrastructure, automation of most processes become increasingly viable as a way of improving efficiency and cutting costs. One such application area is staff and user management. This becomes more and more important as a company grows and hires more and more people, as manually doing these management tasks becomes increasingly time-consuming and repetitive. Moreover, these management tasks become very costly for the company in terms of cumulative man-hours and decrease the workplace enjoyment of the staff that handles this processing. Many companies rely on Active Directory (AD) as a way of managing their staff and users. With the help of PowerShell, onboarding and offboarding of users can be entirely automated - as will be described in this thesis. This thesis describes the design and analysis of the entire onboarding process for a company. This description covers the connection between the human resources (HR) and information technology (IT) systems, as well as the script that takes data from the HR system and uses it to create users in AD and assign basic access rights to the user. In addition, the scripts also handle offboarding, which involves disabling users, removing their access rights, and eventually deleting them from the AD. As the host company already had strict requirements for the onboarding process, there was little room for researching alternative models and designs for the system; therefore, this thesis focuses on the design and execution of the script rather than the design and analysis of the onboarding process. The results are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively in terms of accuracy and time saved in comparison with the manual execution of the same tasks. The conclusion is that using automation saves on average 585.155 seconds per new user. If a single person were to do 10 onboardings per day, this amounts to 40 hours per month, saving one entire work week each month. This automation can save money and resources by freeing this employee to focus on other projects and tasks. / Automatisering i de flesta verksamheter blir alltmer genomförbart som en strategi för att öka effektiviteten och minska kostnaderna eftersom företag fortsätter att förlita sig mer och mer på informationsteknologi (IT) infrastruktur. Administration av användare och anställda är ett sådant applikationsområde. Detta är viktigt när ett företag expanderar och anställer fler anställda eftersom att utföra dessa förvaltningsuppgifter manuellt kräver oerhört mycket tid och upprepning. Därtill ökar det ledningsansvaret, företagets totala arbetskostnader samt sänker personalenstillfredsställelse med sina jobb. Active Directory (AD) är ett populärt verktyg som används av många företag för att hantera sina anställda och användare. PowerShell kan användas för att helt automatisera användares onboarding och offboarding, vilket denna avhandling kommer att förklara. Den fullständiga introduktionsproceduren för ett företag beskrivs i denna avhandling, tillsammans med dess design och analys. Förhållandet mellan mänskliga resurser (HR) och informationsteknologi (IT) täcks i den här beskrivningen, liksom skriptet som exploaterar information från HR-systemet för att skapa användare i AD och ge användaren minimala åtkomstbehörigheter. Skripten hanterar också offboarding, vilket innebär att blockera användare, ta bort deras åtkomstprivilegier och slutligen ta bort dem från AD:t. I denna avhandling fokuserar vi på designen och utförandet av skriptet snarare än designen och analysen av onboardingprocessen av den orsaken att värdorganisationen redan hade specifika kriterier för onboardingprocessen, vilket lämnar begränsad flexibilitet för andra modeller och konstruktioner. Jämfört med manuellt slutförande av identiska aktiviteter utvärderas resultaten både statistiskt och kvalitativt i termer av noggrannhet och tidsbesparing. Studiens resultat visar att varje ny användare som använder automation sparar i genomsnitt 585.155 sekunder. En arbetsvecka skulle sparas varje månad om en enskild person genomförde 10 onboarding per dag, eller 40 timmar per månad. Genom att låta medarbetaren koncentrera sig på andra uppgifter och projekt kan denna automatisering hjälpa till att spara pengar och resurser.

I Sverige är det lagstadgat att arbetsgivaren skall upprätta en plan tillsammans med en sjukskriven arbetstagare om hur denne skall återgå till arbetsplatsen på bästa sätt. Trots att tillstånden mellan en föräldraledig och sjukskriven inte kan sättas i paritet med varandra gårdet att dra en parallell då de båda tillstånden innebär längre frånvaro från arbetsplatsen. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka mödrars upplevelse av återgång till yrkesarbetet efter en tid av föräldraledighet samt vilket stöd de får under denna process. Studien riktar sig mot mödrar av den anledning att kvinnor är föräldralediga i långt större utsträckning än män. Även om vi går mot en jämnare fördelning av föräldraledigheten mellan könen är det fortsatt mödrarna som är föräldralediga under en längre period. Denna studie har genomförts med kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer där sju mödrar deltagit. Samtliga kvinnor som deltog i studien har varit föräldralediga de senaste fem åren och har sedan återgått till samma arbetsplats. Studiens resultat visar att det finns en splittrad upplevelse av återgången till arbetsplatsen efter föräldraledighet. Vidare visar resultatet att aktiviteter i en re-onboarding bestående av handledning, utbildning samt samtal mellan arbetstagare och arbetsgivare är betydelsefulla vid återgången tillbaka till arbetsplatsen. Stödet från kollegor och chefer är också av betydande vikt för kvinnors upplevelse av återgången tillbaka till yrkesarbetet efter föräldraledighet. / In Sweden, it is stated by law that the employer has to establish a plan with an employee currently on sick leave on how to integrate the employee as optimally as possible back into the workplace. Even though a sick leave and paternal leave cannot be put into parity, there are parallels since both results in a prolonged workplace absence. The purpose of this study is to look into the reintegration of mothers into the workplace, their experience regarding this, and what support they receive from their employers during this process. The study is aimed at mothers because they are on maternal leave a far longer period of time than fathers onparental leave. However, the gap between maternal and paternal leave is shrinking, but mothers are still absent from work for a longer period. This study has been made with qualitative semi-structured interviews with participation from seven mothers. All seven women who participated had been on maternal leave sometime during the last five years and then returned to the same workplace. The study shows that there are mixed experiences related to workplace reintegration. Furthermore, the result also shows that re-onboarding activities such as tutorials, training and an employer-employee dialogue are significant during reintegration. The support of colleagues and superiors was also of noticeable importance during this process.

Bakgrund: En bra arbetsmiljö ger förutsättningar för att individer upplever välbefinnande på sin arbetsplats. Onboarding (arbetsplatsintroduktion) innebär den process en medarbetare genomgår från att inte kunna arbetet till att bli en fullärd medarbetare med rätt förmågor och beteenden som överensstämmer med det som arbetsplatsen behöver. Syfte: Att exemplifiera arbetsgivares upplägg och insatser beträffande arbetsplatsintroduktion. Ytterligare syften är att undersöka chefers erfarenheter och upplevelser om innehåll och utförande av erhållen introduktion, samt undersöka om introduktion anses ha betydelse för personals arbetsrelaterade välbefinnande. Metod: Studiens design är en deskriptiv intervjustudie. Tolv intervjuer genomfördes och materialet analyserades enligt kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultat: Intervjuerna resulterade i två innehållsanalyser, en där HR-personal var informanter och en där chefer var informanter. Analysen med HR-informanter resulterade i en kategori; ”Upplägg av företagens introduktionsprogram” med fyra underkategorier och analysen med chefsinformanterna resulterade i tre kategorier, ”Erfarenheter att lära sig chefsrollen”, ”Chefer har olika utgångslägen och behov”, där nio underkategorier identifierades. Slutsats: Liksom tidigare forskning förstärker uppsatsens resultat att sociala relationer är den främsta faktorn för att lära sig en verksamhet och tillägna sig en yrkesroll (chefsrollen) och även den mest betydande faktorn för att uppleva välbefinnande på en arbetsplats. Informanternas erfarenheter och upplevelser urskiljer vissa komponenter som är viktiga att beakta när organisationer ska utforma introduktionsstrategier vilka är; om chefer är externt/internt rekryterade, deras chefsnivå och tidigare chefserfarenhet samt möjligheten att få framföra egna önskemål och behov av introduktion. / Background: A good working environment creates opportunities for individuals to experience well-being at the workplace. Onboarding is the processes through which a new employee goes from being an organizational outsider to become an organizational insider with the right skills and behaviours that are consistent with what the organization needs. Aim: To give examples of set up and efforts of introduction programmes for new employees and to investigate managers´ experiences of onboarding and if onboarding programme is considered to have an effect on well-being at the workplace. Method: A descriptive study was conducted based on twelve interviews and the interview material was analysed according to qualitative content analysis. Result: Two qualitative content analyses were completed, the first one with Human Resources (HR) staff and the second one based on manager interviews. The analysis with HR staff resulted in one category; ”The setup of the companies onboarding programmes”, with four subcategories and the second analysis resulted in three categories; ”Experiences to learn the managerial role”, ”Managers have different needs and starting-points” and ”Factors for successful onboarding”. A total of nine subcategories were identified. Conclusion: Previous researchs show that social relations are the primary factor for new employees to learn their work and managerial role. It is also the foremost factor to experience well-being at the workplace. The knowledge and experiences of the interviewed show similarities for certain components to consider when to establish onboarding processes in an organization. They are; if managers were in-house recruited or externally recruited, their manager level, their previous experience of being a manager and opportunities to express individual wishes and needs in an onboarding programme.

It has previously been shown that the quality of the onboarding process affects the chances of a new hire staying at a company, yet it is common that companies have problems in succeeding to maintain a well-organized onboarding. To aid new hires in their onboarding, and to lower the amount of work for the HR personnel, chatbots can be used. In this project, a chatbot was developed for the onboarding process of a large company. Interviews were held with new hires and HR personnel which were used to create requirements for the chatbot. These were divided into two categories; information and functional requirements. A third category, non-functional requirements, was created based on Microsoft’s guidelines for development of conversational AI. Based on the requirements, a chatbot prototype was built using Microsoft Bot Framework with the use of two cognitive services, LUIS and QnA Maker. Both the requirements and the prototype were created iteratively. The information that the interview participants requested from the chatbot was eitherpractical or personal information, or information about the employer, the internal systems, or other employees. It was revealed that the chatbot mainly needed to answer simple questions and didn’t demand any procedural conversation flow which made the use of QnA Maker appropriate. However, for questions and tasks that would benefit or require a procedural flow QnA Maker’s follow-up prompts could be used in future work to create multi-turn conversations.

Mergers and acquisitions has become a common thing in recent years. Assets change owners in hope of creating synergies and desirable outcomes. Human capital, i.e. the employees behind the numbers, is one asset that is often forgotten. It is therefore important to keep these key employees in the organisation post-acquisition in order to gain or retain competitive advantages and avoid unwelcome surprises. The aim of the study is to identify how Swedish medtech companies identifies key employees during a due diligence and how they retain them afterwards. We chose a qualitative approach for the study and have therefore conducted our interviews in a semi-structured manner. The study uses competence- and resource based theory to identify key employees and how to use them as a resource to gain a competitive advantage. Our result is that human capital is not a factor that can sustain a competitive advantage since it can be transferred via mergers and acquisitions. On the other hand, the competence based view can be used to maximize the resources in form of human capital. When a company is acquired, employees start integrating in the new organisation. The study uses onboarding theory to identify key aspects in how to acclimatise key employees. A conceptual model is eventually presented with our findings where key employees are identified by way of references, the former board of directors, statistics, meetings and industrial knowledge. The HR-department does generally gets involved late in the due diligence process, something that our respondents consider a potential problem. In post-acquisition, during the onboarding process, key factors are; obtaining information about the new culture, role clarification and new challenges to keep key employees in the new organisation. Keywords: Human Capital, mergers & acquisitions, medtech, onboarding, key employee retention.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka om en framgångsrik onboarding-process hade ett signifikant linjärt samband med arbetsmotivation. ”Onboarding” beskrivs som processen där en nyanställd introduceras till en ny tjänst och organisation (Caldwell & Peters, 2018). Studien mätte huruvida respondenterna upplevde en framgångsrik onboarding-process eller ej, samtidigt mättes respondenternas upplevda arbetsmotivation genom att se tillbaka på de tre första månaderna av den senaste eller nuvarande anställningen. Studien var kvantitativ med en deduktiv ansats, där mätinstrument som användes var en webbaserad enkät som utgick ifrån The Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale (WEIMS) av Tremblay, Blanchard, Taylor och Pelletier (2009) samt Gupta, Bhattacharya, Sheorey och Coelhos (2018) ´s studie som mätte onboarding-processens framgång. För dessa skalor beräknades Cronbach alpha vara mellan ,56 och ,87.Ett bekvämlighetsurval utfördes och totalt N=143 respondenter medverkade. Data analyserades genom Pearson korrelationsanalys samt separata enklalinjära regressionsanalyser mellan samtliga variabler. Resultatet visade både positiva och negativa signifikanta samband. Studien fann att forskningsområdet är i behov av forskning som är anpassad efter svensk kultur för allmän generalisering av studiens syfte.

Research questions: In particular, how does employee turnover relate to the level of engagement and investment during the EVP touchpoints: preboarding, onboarding, offboarding? Purpose & Aim: The purpose is to explore the relationship between the level of employee turnover and the level of engagement in the EVP: preboarding, onboarding, and offboarding.  Method: A qualitative approach was chosen for the thesis, which was conducted through seven semi-structured interviews. The informants were different managers with personal responsibility for both white and blue-collar workers from a multinational company, operating mostly B2B in a matrix-like organization. Conclusion: The engagement & investment in the three different EVP touchpoints was shown to be affected by the turnover in different ways, thus affecting the organizational socialization. With a generally low turnover for many years, a sudden drop due to retirements and resignations, from very loyal employees in most departments,  a sudden lack of employees developed. This was followed by a strain on the resources that already were not considered superfluous, creating a negative spiral. A considerable difference was found in the engagement between the preboarding, onboarding, and offboarding. The entry points were increasingly more of a priority than the exit points, with a growing imminent need for employees. However, this also halted the efficiency of a “proper” onboarding in the most afflicted departments, as the knowledge transfer and socialization was not able to properly be induced into every employee. With a not fully integrated approach across the organization, the core values were not integrated nor consistent either. Conclusively, there needs to be a consistent proactive effort to manage these EVP touchpoints in order to create prerequisites for a sustainable EB, especially in today’s labour market.

Background: The global pandemic caused by the virus Covid-19 provided an exogenic chock to the world’s businesses. Governments all over the globe issued various restrictions or requests for all inhabitants that can, to work from home. Due to this, many companies ordered their employees to work from home. Working from home and working virtually became the new normal for many, including their newly hired staff. Objectives: The study examines how the adaptations Swedish engineering companies made to cope with Covid-19 have affected their onboarding processes and the time to productivity. Methodology: Through a survey sent to 327 Swedish engineering businesses asking questions about how their onboarding process and the results thereof has changed due to the adaptations to the pandemic. On top of this, ten interviews with company representatives from the invitation list was performed to try and deepen the understanding of the survey results and to find out if there are any specific onboarding processes or activities that are of extra significance during and after the pandemic to ensure an effective onboarding process. Results: In total, 74 responses for the survey were collected. The study finds that working from home and the use of digital tools and ways of working for onboarding have increased significantly during the pandemic and is expected to remain at an increased level after the pandemic as well. Working from home is expected to be lower than during the pandemic, but higher than before. The change to virtual onboarding appears to have had little or no prolonging effect on time to productivity. Due to the fact that the evidence points towards time to productivity not being very affected by the changes made by the companies during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is hard to know if the themes and actions identified in the interviews as being the most important for an effective onboarding actually have an effect on time to productivity. The most common activities that the interviewees identified as important was mentoring time, structure, information transfer methods and follow ups. Conclusions: The Covid-19 provided an exogen chock to the Swedish engineering businesses that caused them to change their way of working and way of onboarding. Days working from home increased, and so did the use of digital tools and ways of working for onboarding. The results regarding which onboarding activities that affected time to productivity, our results are inconclusive. Recommendations for future research: Several of the interviewed mentions that a part of their staff seems to suffer significantly more than the general staff from working from home and being isolated socially. Further studies into this area could focus on why this group suffers so much more, and how to mitigate this issue. Further studies could also look further into which mechanisms or activities that has the most effect on time to productivity. Our findings were not conclusive on this point.

Since start of pandemic of Covid-19 in March 2020 (in Europe) employees are facing challenges seeing their workplaces and home being merged, resulting in limitation of social contacts and face-to-face interaction with colleagues. Newcomers most probably don’t get introduced to and work with their colleagues face-to-face at start of their work. This may affect their performance, which in turn may result in leaving the organization. A quantitative descriptive study of the effects of working from home (WFH) on the process and effectiveness of onboarding of new employees by organizations is presented in this research.The purpose of this study is to explore the relation between the newcomers’ onboarding success and their intention in leaving or staying at the organization through factors such as job satisfaction and the relation between the newcomers and their colleagues considering the WFH effect. In this study a quantitative approach for collecting data and data analysis is conducted using a SEM model. The model consists of questions from cross sectional survey. The survey’s questions are based on five-point Likert scale structure and it is conducted online. The survey’s populations are consisting of 152 samples from different job positions and with different field of technologies. The survey’s results have been analyzed in quantitative method using IMB SPSS software for statistical analysis, considering only online onboarding samples.All the eight defined hypotheses of the model are supported. Onboarding activities (orientation, training, and support) shows relatively the same level of correlation with the onboarding success while workplace relationship quality and job satisfaction are having the strongest relation with the onboarding success. The findings conclude that the newcomers’ workplace relationship quality and job satisfaction mediate the relation between onboarding success and turnover intention. The result shows the importance of workplace relationship quality and job satisfaction in the process of onboarding and its effect on leaving or staying in the organization. Although these two long-term factors have got the highest score, authors believe that it is also necessary that the organizations give an extra care on the onboarding activities as they have the short-term effect on whether the new hire stay or leave the firm.As a result of this study, some implications for organizations and suggestions for further work have been discussed. Keywords: Online On boarding, Working from Home, Onboarding activities, Organizational fit, Survey.

博士（社会学） / 甲第594号 / 222 p. / Hitotsubashi University(一橋大学)