An HR manager or IT admin — sometimes the same person — at a company large enough
that onboarding a new employee involves both an HR workflow and an IT workflow,
and small enough that the same person owns both. They chose Rippling because it
promised to unify those two workflows into one. When it works — when a new hire's
laptop ships, their apps provision, and their payroll is set up in a single flow —
it delivers on that promise in a way nothing else does. When it doesn't work,
it's complicated in proportion to how much it was supposed to simplify.
Intention
What are they trying to do? —
Outcome
What do they produce? —
Goals
→Onboard new employees from offer to Day 1 without a 12-step checklist spread across systems
→Deprovision departed employees from every app and device simultaneously and verifiably
→Give employees self-service access to their HR documents, benefits, and IT needs
Frustrations
—App integrations that provision access but don't configure permissions correctly —
—the employee is in the tool but can't do anything useful
—Workflow automation that breaks when the edge case (a manager who is also in two departments,
—a contractor who needs some but not all employee apps) doesn't match the template
—The learning curve for building Rippling workflows — powerful when mastered,
—opaque until then
—Pricing conversations that reveal that the feature they needed was in the next tier
Worldview
Onboarding is the first operational impression — if it's disorganized, the employee
notices and concludes something true about the company
Deprovisioning is a security event, not an HR event — it should happen in minutes, not days
People ops and IT are the same function that got split into two departments by accident
Scenario
An employee is leaving in two weeks. The HR admin is in Rippling starting the
offboarding flow. In 20 minutes: the departure date is set, the payroll final check
is configured, the laptop shipping label is generated, and a scheduled workflow
will revoke app access at 5pm on their last day — across Google Workspace, Slack,
GitHub, Figma, and 14 other apps. The IT admin won't need to do anything manually.
The employee won't need to hand anything off to anyone. The departure is clean.
This is what they bought Rippling for.
Context
Uses Rippling Unity — HR, IT, and payroll in a single platform. Manages onboarding
and offboarding for 50–300 employees. Has built 8–20 Rippling workflows for
employee lifecycle automation. Provisions devices via Rippling's MDM. Manages
app provisioning for 20–60 SaaS tools. Reviews compliance tasks in the Rippling
dashboard weekly. Has connected Rippling to their ATS (Greenhouse) for new hire
data transfer. Has a Rippling implementation story that involves a difficult first month.
Impact
→App permission configuration in provisioning workflows that goes beyond "add user"
→to "add user to this group with this role" removes the second step that currently
→follows automated provisioning
→Workflow testing tools that simulate an edge case employee profile before deploying
→remove the "this workflow broke for the contractor because it assumed full-time"
→discovery during an actual onboarding
→Offboarding completion verification that confirms every app revocation succeeded
→removes the security gap where a revocation fails silently
→Cross-platform reporting that shows which apps are provisioned per person and
→what they cost per month gives IT the SaaS rationalization data alongside the access data
Composability Notes
Pairs with `greenhouse-primary-user` for the offer-accepted to Day 1 onboarding workflow.
Contrast with `gusto-primary-user` for the payroll-only vs. full HR/IT platform philosophy.
Use with `deel-primary-user` for companies managing both US Rippling employees and international Deel workers.