One Onboarding Form That Sets Up a New Hire in Five Companies at Once

The challenge

HR ran five distinct companies across half a dozen unconnected systems — directory, payroll, safety documentation, accounting and a low-code app among them. Onboarding one person meant entering the same details into each, in the right order, without missing one. Offboarding had the same problem with higher stakes, because a missed system is an account nobody closed.

Where we came in

The obvious answer is to buy an HR platform. But the systems that mattered were already chosen, already integrated into how the group works, and were not going to be replaced. What was missing was not a system of record — it was the connective tissue between the ones already there. We built an integration hub rather than another destination.

What we did

• Built a central hub that HR enters a new hire into once, which then drives the downstream systems
• Automated directory account creation across all five company tenants from a single entry
• Triggered payroll and safety-documentation setup, and initiated role-specific employment agreements for e-signature
• Delivered a minimum viable onboarding workflow first, prioritising working integration over interface polish
• Handled multi-tenant authentication and credential management as their own foundation work before feature build
• Extended into offboarding, employment changes, performance reviews and subcontractor handling

Where it landed

• A new hire is entered once and provisioned across the directory, payroll and safety systems of the right company
• Offboarding runs through the same hub, so account closure follows a defined path rather than a memory
• Delivered iteratively, with the onboarding workflow live before later phases began