How do you get other departments to give IT enough notice for new hires?

Make onboarding a shared workflow rather than an email scavenger hunt. A form or tracked request can ask for the start date, department, role, manager, equipment, and any known application or access requirements. Send people back to that request when they message IT directly.

Get the HR and IT managers to agree on who supplies each detail and what lead time IT needs. The form alone won't fix much if nobody has agreed to use it.

Separate the timestamps. Track when the first request arrived, when required information and approvals were complete, and when IT finished. That shows the whole wait without treating every delay as IT work time.

If the SLA clock is meant to start after a complete request, agree on that definition with the other departments and management. Also record what is missing while a request is waiting. A dashboard can make the bottleneck visible, but changing the measurement needs buy-in.

Check whether the HR system can trigger an onboarding ticket when a hire is entered. That can get the request moving without relying on someone to remember another email. Depending on the systems and approvals, some account setup might be automated too.

Be careful about the trigger point and what data gets passed along. An early candidate record is not necessarily a confirmed start, and sensitive employee information needs an appropriate place to live.

Set realistic lead times and stop promising a fully equipped employee on day one when the notice comes in that morning. Tell the requester what can be done now, what needs approval, and when equipment is expected.

That said, this needs management backing. If leadership expects same-day setups, have the conversation about keeping spare equipment and who pays for it, rather than leaving IT to absorb every surprise.

You may not need every application detail before starting. Set up the basic account and laptop with the information you have, then handle additional apps and permissions through separate requests. That keeps one missing access decision from blocking everything, provided the basic setup itself is approved.