November 22, 2022

It is a slow Friday afternoon as you look out the window of your office you see the sun start to set over the city. “My office. It is going to take a while to get over that,” you say to yourself. You spent years working your way up to one day be able to say that. You look at the nametag on your desk, which says Director of Product Management, and soak it all in a little more. You earned this, after all.

That does not mean it has been smooth sailing this week. Your position opened after a round of layoffs and there has been more turnover than usual recently. Initially it seemed innocent enough, but over your first week you are starting to understand why. This moment of peace is broken up by an Outlook notification.

“Hello Jason,” the email reads. It is from Jen, a new hire at the associate level. “It is my first day of work here and I just got my laptop and account set up. However, I am still not sure who I should report to for assignments, and nobody has reached out so far. Can you point me in the right direction?”

That request seems simple enough, you think. You go pull up the company’s Global Address List (GAL) and look up Jen. Her name pops up, but there is no job title and the manager she reports to is not listed there. She has just been sitting at her desk waiting for the instructions, and nobody knows she is even there.

Fortunately, Jimmy, the IT director, walks by your office. You call him in and show him the problem.

“Which Jen is this?” he asks. You have not noticed another Jen since you got here, but sure enough the GAL shows two. “Oh, that is a new Jen. I was confused since the other one was laid off weeks ago,” Jimmy says.

Why is the Jen who was laid off a few weeks ago still in the GAL as a current employee, you think to yourself. Either way, you ask Jimmy if he can update the new Jen’s profile.

“Sure,” he says. I will just need to let one of the sysadmins know to update it in the organization chart. They have been so swamped with changes recently that it might take a while.”

This is a real problem, you think. Sure enough, as you go through the GAL there are lots of ghost employees still listed as active, many employees have little or no links to others, and the organizational structure is broken. No wonder communication is such an issue here. But this is not your first rodeo. You give your boss an impromptu call. “Have you seen the state of the GAL here?” you ask. “It is nearly impossible for me to keep up with the employees in my team, much less the rest of the company.” Your boss agrees with you and reiterates that this has been a problem for a while. “Well, I have just the right solution for this,” you say.

“It is called Hire2Retire from RoboMQ. It automatically links your HRIS system to AD in near-real time. Jimmy told me the sysadmins are falling behind on updating employee profiles. If we could use Hire2Retire product it will automatically reflect the changes in our HRIS system and update the GAL accordingly based on the reporting structure setup in HR. At my old company we used Hire2Retire, and our GAL was always updated, with an organization chart that was clean and easy to follow. It helped managers keep track of everything, including timely access removal of the terminated employees, and ensured new employees were not stuck waiting for instructions on their first day.”

Your boss is impressed at this and schedules a meeting first thing Monday morning to discuss implementing Hire2Retire here. There is a lot of work to be done here, but with RoboMQ and Hire2Retire, the first step towards a clear and current organization structure is out of the way.

RoboMQ is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with any of HR systems that it provides integration with and are mentioned in this post. All product and company names are the registered trademarks of their original owners.

Cameron Macaulay

Cameron Macaulay is a Marketing Associate with RoboMQ. Cameron graduated from Syracuse University with a major in Broadcast & Digital Journalism, and a minor in Professional & Technical Writing. Cameron combines his skills in technical writing with a passion for storytelling.