The process of onboarding new employees can be one of the most critical factors in ensuring that recently hired talent will be productive, contented workers.
Before implementing a formal onboarding program, try to answer some key questions to attain team and upper management buy-in, including:
When will the onboarding start?
How long will it last?
What impression do you want new hires to walk away with at the end of the first day?
What do new employees need to know about the culture and work environment?
What role will HR play in the process? What about direct managers? Co-workers?
What kind of goals do you want to set for new employees?
How will you gather feedback on the program and measure its success?
Once these questions have been answered, you can now devise a plan of action to help new employees quickly assimilate company policies and workflow while getting fully acquainted with the organization's culture.
Employee Onboarding Checklist
We created the ultimate checklist to help you keep your onboarding process organized and on schedule. Use it to stay focused and ensure that you don’t overlook important tasks. We also included thoughtful details to delight your new employees!
Pre-boarding Checklist
Step 1: Send an email to your new employee
- Start with a warm welcome
- Highlight the start date, time, and location
- Present first-day schedule
- Remind about the documents to bring
- Briefly address the dress code
- Point out the contact person
- Link to your company’s handbook
- Attach your company’s brief info sheet
Step 2: Send an email to your existing employees
- State the new employee’s job title and department/team
- Announce the new employee’s start date, time, and office location
- Share a bit of the employee’s background (work experience, education, skills, and interests)
- Highlight the time and date of the welcome coffee for the new employee and kindly ask them to attend
Step 3: Prepare the new employee’s office and equipment
- Order new employee’s IT equipment
- Create a new employee’s email account
- Add a new employee to the calendar and mailing lists
- Order new employee’s business cards
- Prepare relevant HR documents and forms
- Ensure the office key or ID card
- Prepare a welcome package
- Organize a welcome party
Onboarding Checklist: First Day
Step 1: Welcome coffee and office tour
Welcome Coffee
- Meet and greet your new employee
- Organize a morning coffee office gathering
- Introduce the new employee to your existing employees
- Give your new employee a welcome package
Office Tour
- Link to your company’s employee handbook
- Attach your company’s brief info sheet
Step 2: HR documents (paperwork)
- Discuss compensation and benefits
- Present your work policies and procedures
- Explain safety and security policies
- Go over the code of conduct
- Fill in necessary forms, contracts, etc.
Step 3: Meeting the new employee’s manager
- Explain your company’s organizational chart
- Go over new employee’s first few months
- Explain your expectations from new employee
- Ask about new employee’s expectations
- Discuss new employee’s career development plan
Onboarding Checklist: First Week
- Check in with your new employee every day
- Schedule regular meetings
- Schedule introduction meetings with different teams
- Organize and schedule software and necessary training
- Recommend useful reading
- Organize social activities and team gatherings
First, third, and sixth months:
- Conduct employee onboarding survey
- Conduct employee progress review
- Organize and schedule relevant training
- Organize social activities and gatherings
Employee Onboarding Software
Onboarding software allows you to automate and track where new employees are with their onboarding process since there are many steps to the onboarding process. It keeps track of everything, allowing you to assign tasks to the new hire or management, and ensuring they are receiving everything they need to know is an essential part of creating a good first impression upon starting a new role.
When you get employees aligned with your mission, engaged with their work, and invested in your company for the long haul, they’ll be happier and you’ll find it easier to achieve the success you’re looking for. That’s why we listed our top employee onboarding software:
Bamboo HR
One of the most popular all-around HR solutions on the market which packs powerful onboarding capabilities behind a no-nonsense user interface.
Bamboo HR allows you to leverage powerful features such as e-signatures and application tracking to create slick onboarding processes that your new employees (and your hiring managers) will love.
BambooHR has two plans: ‘Essentials’ and ‘Advantage’. ‘Advantage’ package offers full onboarding functionality.
You need to contact their sales team for a price quote depending on your specific needs.
Eddy
The onboarding process with Eddy is completely paperless. All of your HR documents can be created, sent, signed, and stored 100% digitally helping to streamline the hiring and employee onboarding process.
What’s more, is that Eddy makes it so intuitive, new employees can onboard themselves. Everything from creating their own profile to digitally signing documents can be done by the new hire on their own. Eddy also makes your new-hire onboarding tasks trackable. No fuss, no awkward emails, just a silky smooth onboarding process.
Your new hire probably has little experience with your company other than interviews. There’s a lot about working with you that they don’t know. You can send them all of this info through Eddy before they come.
Clickboarding
Clickboarding is a purpose-built onboarding tool that creates memorable onboarding experiences that engage employees and provide them with the information they need to get off to a flying start.
The software comes loaded with pre-designed templates and content that let you set up your onboarding flow with ease. You can also go rogue and use the drag-and-drop builder to create your own flow, just the way you like it.
One of the best features is the ability to track employee progress through the onboarding flow, while seamless integration with most of the major HR software platforms is a breeze too.
monday.com
monday.com is marketing mainly as a workflow tool for scaling an organization, but they’ve also built in a number of HR features, and specifically, some features for onboarding. It’s not a pure HR tool but it’s a useful tool with a lot of the basics.
It is great for creating collaborative onboarding workflows that map out the processing of interviewing and hiring, keep multiple parties abreast of developments and next steps, and allow for commenting and task assignment throughout the process. They have a new employee onboarding template to get you started.
monday.com costs $8/user/month and offers a free trial. They have a freemium plan for up to 2 users.
Rippling
Rippling is an employee management platform with onboarding tools for administrative data entry, payroll, benefits enrollment, and learning management modules to streamline the welcome process for new team members. Instead of needing to rely on traditional paperwork and signatures, Rippling sends e-documentation to employees that can be signed electronically on the spot.
Rippling has a full feature suite for managing employee device set-up, configuration, security, and monitoring. Their IT onboarding tools ensure all workplace apps and software are installed and password protected before the employee ever gets to their desk. You can even control team password management (with single sign-on and multi-factor authentication) to ensure no one’s password is left as “1234” or “password.”
Rippling starts at $8/user/month and offers a free 30-minute demo.
Employee Onboarding Process
Employee Onboarding is the process of introducing new employees to the organization’s environment and culture. However, the time taken to achieve that might vary from one organization to another.
You may consider onboarding a one-day affair or stretching it out for 18 months. However, for nearly all organizations, the employee onboarding process starts right after the offer letter is sent to a prospective employee.
A solid employee onboarding process is necessary to help your new hires settle down in their jobs, get to know the organization, obtain clarity on their job objectives, and forge a good relationship with other employees.
A memorable onboarding experience not only makes employees feel welcome but also helps them gel with the existing organizational family faster. Here is the list of onboarding processes you can consider:
Prepare colleagues for the new employee
Send an announcement to all employees, either in person or via email, welcoming them to the company. The announcement should tell them about the new employee’s role, a bit about their experience, what they’ll be doing at your company and encourage other employees to welcome them.
When employees are aware of a new staff member ahead of time, they can be prepared to assist them on their first day. This will go a long way to making the new employee feel welcome.
Have the new employee’s workstation ready to go
Having a “home base” that is ready for your new arrival is crucial to an employee’s first impression of your company. As a new employee, nothing is worse than not having the tools you need to be successful. Setting up the new employee’s computer, email, and phone numbers ahead of time, and providing any necessary office supplies, can help a new colleague feel valued from day one. This gives the new employee the tools to perform at their best.
Make sure your new employee has access to any necessary programs
In line with getting their workstation ready, make sure the new employee has access to any programs, software, or electronic files they will need before their first day. Skipping this step can stunt the new employee’s training, stall their ability to get to work and, in turn, affect their outlook on your company.
Make introductions
Schedule some time for the new employee to meet with key people and departments on their first day. Although they may not remember everyone’s name, this will give them a good overview of where to go to get what they need. These introductions will also help them understand how your company works and how their role plays in the overall picture.
Plan a team lunch
Arrange a lunch meeting or after-work gathering for the new employee and their immediate team members within the first week. This will help break the ice and allow the employee to get to know their new colleagues in a relaxed environment. When an employee feels valued by their team on both a personal and professional level, they are more likely to stick around for the long haul.
Allow plenty of time for training
The first week or so with the new employee should focus on training. Even if the employee has performed the same job function elsewhere, there are bound to be differences between companies. Having a training plan in place is a vital part of helping new employees find their feet in an organization.
Assigning a mentor from the employee’s department can also help them acclimate to their job by giving them a person who is ready to answer their questions and walk them through some of their assignments.
Don’t forget to follow-up
This step is the most important and often the most overlooked by employers. Commit to your 30, 60, and 90-day check-ins with the new employee. Even if the employee is doing well and you feel like they don’t need an evaluation, meet with them. Find out what they liked and didn’t like about your process and make changes as you see fit.
Successful onboarding processes reflect the time and effort put into them. Take the time to be thoughtful and do your homework. The first few weeks are the most influential to a new hire’s outlook on your company - positive or negative - and set the tone for their relationship with your business in the long term.
Employee Onboarding Orientation
New employee orientation is the process you use for welcoming a new employee into your organization. The goal is to help the new employee feel welcomed, integrated into the organization, and perform the new job successfully as quickly as possible.
New employee orientation generally contains information in areas such as:
Safety
The work environment
The new job description
Benefits and benefits eligibility
The employee's new manager and coworkers
Company culture
Company history
The organization chart
Anything else that is relevant for the new employee to working in the new company
New employee orientation often includes an introduction to each department in the company and a list of employees to meet who are crucial to the new employee's success. The best orientations have set up these meetings prior to the new employee's arrival. It also frequently includes spending time doing the jobs in each department to understand the flow of the product or service through the organization.
Timing and Presentation of Employee Orientation
There are different ways to do employee orientations: it ranges from a full day or two of paperwork, presentations, and introductions to a daily orientation program that was effective in one company for years.
In the daily orientation program, you can set up a 120-day orientation during which the new employee learns something new about the company every day while also performing the job.
From meeting the CEO to operating each piece of equipment in the plant, this longer-term orientation welcomed the new employee and gradually immersed them in the organization's operation, history, culture, values, and mission.
Effective new employee orientations often contain components over time whether for 30 days, 90 days, or more. It is not effective to hit a new employee with too much information during their first few days of work.
The best new employee orientation:
Has targeted goals and meets them
Makes the first day a celebration
Involves the family as well as co-workers
Makes new hires productive on the first day
Is not boring, rushed, or ineffective
Uses new employee feedback to continuously improve
If your new employee orientation incorporates these six factors, you know that you are on the right path to an effective orientation that both welcomes and teaches your new employees.
Check out different ways that you can do for your new hires here!
