The best employee onboarding software for IT and HR teams

The best employee onboarding software for teams where HR, IT, and managers all own part of the work is Serval, followed by Rippling, Workday, Okta and Microsoft Entra ID, ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, and Freshservice. If you want one place that starts when the HRIS adds a new hire, creates the accounts, tracks every human task, and shows which step is stuck, Serval is the strongest fit.

This guide is for IT and People teams at companies that already have an HRIS and want onboarding to stop living in spreadsheets and Slack threads. If you want the step-by-step setup for Okta, Google Workspace, and Slack, see our guide to automating onboarding and offboarding IT workflows.

What should employee onboarding software do for IT and HR?

HR platforms handle offer letters and forms, and identity tools create accounts. A new hire's first week depends on both landing in the right order, plus manual tasks nobody automates. Look for:

• A start from the HRIS. A new-hire record in Workday, BambooHR, Rippling, or HiBob kicks off the process, with no ticket or manual handoff.
• Real IT work. Accounts, Okta or Microsoft Entra ID groups, app access, and a laptop order happen through the systems you already run.
• Tasks for every person involved. HR, IT, Facilities, the hiring manager, and the new hire each get their own steps, in order, with dependencies.
• Visibility into what's stuck. You see which step is blocked, who owns it, and what it's waiting on, for every hire at once.
• Different paths for different hires. Contractors and full-time employees get different tasks and access.
• A record of every step, which matters when Security or an auditor asks later.

Comparison: employee onboarding software for IT and HR

The 7 best employee onboarding software options for IT and HR

1. Serval

Serval is an AI-native enterprise service management (ESM) and ITSM platform, and onboarding runs on its Journeys capability: one process per new hire that coordinates tasks across many people, in order, over days or weeks. HR can own the journey while IT owns the account tasks and Facilities owns badge access, and each team acts only on its own slice.

A journey can start automatically from an event in your HRIS, like a new-hire record appearing in Workday, or from a catalog form, or by hand. Tasks come in three kinds: forms the new hire or manager fills in, manual steps like I-9 verification, and automated tasks that run a workflow on their own, such as creating the Okta account on the start date. Tasks can wait on other tasks or on a date, so the Google account isn't created before the Okta account exists.

Serval does the IT work through workflows that call your systems directly, such as Okta, Google Workspace, Slack, Jamf, and Intune, across 140+ pre-built integrations and anything else with an API. Group membership and app access in Okta or Microsoft Entra ID run through Serval's Access Management, where access policies set approvals and time limits, so a journey task can raise the request and track it to completion.

Serval gives each new hire's journey a Passing, Warning, or Failing health check, shows what each locked task is waiting for, and lets IT retry a failed step from the same screen.

Admins describe a journey to Catalyst in plain language or upload a flowchart, and Catalyst drafts the tasks, owners, and dependencies for a test run before publishing.

Serval automates all employee onboarding at Perplexity, where onboarding has run hundreds of times. At Mercor, Serval creates each contractor's Google Workspace account and applies a role-based access template for their core tools, and Mercor has onboarded 4,000+ contractors this way.

2. Rippling

Rippling combines HR, IT, and payroll, and its approach is to build on "a single source of truth for all business data related to employees" (Rippling HRIS). Rippling IT says "updates in your HR system instantly trigger device and app provisioning for onboarding, offboarding, and when roles change," and laptops arrive with "Zero-Touch" configuration (Rippling IT). Rippling can also "onboard contractors in 185+ different countries within minutes" (Rippling contractors), and teams can "tell Rippling AI what you want to automate" (Rippling Workflows).

3. Workday

Workday covers onboarding with Workday Onboarding, which lets HR "gain visibility into onboarding plans, progress, and effectiveness" and gives new hires "self-service for tasks and resources" (Workday Onboarding). Workday Journeys can "deliver journeys for onboarding, job transitions, manager promotions" (Workday Employee Experience), and admins can add a journey step to the Hire business process, placed "after the worker record is created and provisioned," for employees or contingent workers (Workday docs).

4. Okta and Microsoft Entra ID

Okta handles the identity side through Lifecycle Management, which "uses your HR system (like Workday, BambooHR, or SuccessFactors) as the source of truth." Okta says it "automatically creates accounts for new hires, updates permissions when roles change, and revokes access the moment an employee leaves" (Okta Lifecycle Management). Okta Identity Governance adds access requests and audit trails (Okta Identity Governance). Microsoft Entra ID offers the same layer through Lifecycle Workflows, with built-in templates such as "Onboard pre-hire employee" and "Onboard new hire employee" (Microsoft Learn). Serval integrates with both and adds the HR, manager, and Facilities tasks around them.

5. ServiceNow

ServiceNow covers onboarding with Enterprise Onboarding and Transitions, which ServiceNow says can "automate onboarding and other employee lifecycle events that span multiple departments." Its Employee Journey Management "is available with HR Service Delivery" (ServiceNow), while in Serval, Journeys is a capability any team turns on, next to the IT help desk.

6. Jira Service Management

Atlassian positions Jira Service Management as onboarding software that "connects HR, IT, and other teams on one platform so an onboarding request automatically triggers the right tasks, approvals, and provisioning across departments." Atlassian says managers "can see at a glance what's done and what's blocked" (Atlassian). Teams already running HR and IT requests in Jira can add onboarding there.

7. Freshservice

Freshservice Journeys lets teams "assign role-based tasks automatically with clear ownership, due dates, and real-time tracking" and "use triggers and conditions to create variants for regions, roles, or business units" (Freshservice Journeys). Its Workday connector creates onboarding Journey requests "based on new hire information from Workday" (Freshservice support), and HR can also raise requests from the self-service portal (Freshservice).

How do you see where a new hire's onboarding is stuck?

Onboarding usually fails quietly: the HRIS shows a completed hire, but the laptop never shipped because an approval sat in someone's inbox. In Serval, the team's Journeys page lists every hire with completion, incomplete steps, and a health check: Warning when a task is overdue, Failing when a task failed or was denied. A locked task lists the prerequisites it's waiting for, and admins can open the failed workflow run, fix the cause, and retry it in place. The new hire and their manager can ask the Help Desk Agent inside the journey what's blocking them.

How do you pick onboarding software for your team?

Choose Serval when onboarding spans HR, IT, Facilities, and managers, you want to keep the HRIS and identity provider you already run, and IT needs one view of every hire's progress with failed steps it can retry.

If you want HR, payroll, and IT on one Rippling employee record, Rippling bundles onboarding into it. If Workday is already your system of record, Workday Onboarding and Journeys sit inside it. If your gap is identity only, Okta Lifecycle Management or Entra Lifecycle Workflows cover accounts and permissions, and Serval can run the tasks around them.

Frequently asked questions

What's the best software for coordinating HR, IT, and managers during employee onboarding?

Serval does this with Journeys: HR, IT, Facilities, the hiring manager, and the new hire each get their own tasks in one process, with dependencies and due dates, while workflows create accounts automatically. Rippling, Workday Journeys, Freshservice Journeys, and Jira Service Management also coordinate onboarding tasks.

Which onboarding tools start automatically when a new hire is added to the HRIS?

Serval, Rippling, Okta Lifecycle Management, Workday, and Freshservice can start onboarding from an HR system change, and Microsoft Entra Lifecycle Workflows can run on a new hire's start date. In Serval, a new-hire record in Workday or another HRIS can start the journey, which then runs the IT and human tasks in order.

Can onboarding software handle contractors and full-time employees differently?

Yes. In Serval, each journey type is its own template, so contractors and full-time employees get different tasks, owners, and access; Mercor has onboarded 4,000+ contractors through Serval. Rippling onboards contractors in 185+ countries, Freshservice Journeys supports variants by role or business unit, and Workday can distribute journeys to contingent workers.

Does onboarding software replace Okta or Entra ID?

Not in Serval's case. Serval connects to Okta and Microsoft Entra ID and adds or removes users from groups through them, so your identity provider stays the source of access. Serval adds the HR, manager, and Facilities tasks and tracks them in one journey.

Which onboarding tools assign app access based on a new hire's department and role?

Serval handles this through Access Management: an onboarding journey raises access requests for the hire's role, and Access Management provisions each one through Okta or Entra groups with the approvals that role's access policy sets. Mercor applies a role-based access template to each new contractor. Rippling and Okta Lifecycle Management also update access as roles change.