The Employee Onboarding Process (+Checklist, Template)
- Published:
- Updated: October 2, 2024
Both HR teams and new hires go through lengthy processes to find the right fit for both of them. After devoting countless hours in recruiting the right talent, all that hard work goes down the drain if the new hire ends up quitting in the next few months – taking HR back to step one.
To build an engaged workforce that is committed to staying with your company for the long haul, the employee onboarding process is the first critical factor in building that commitment.
A strong onboarding process increases employee engagement, invokes a sense of loyalty in new hires, promotes proper training and adoption of business processes, and helps improve long-term employee retention rates.
What Is the Employee Onboarding Process?
An employee onboarding process is the systematic and purposeful transformation of promising candidates from a new hire to a high-performing employee of an organization. The onboarding process begins the moment a new hire signs their offer letter. It includes introducing them to the organization, setting them up with the hardware and software they need to be productive, training them on their role, familiarizing themselves with the company and its products, and more.
By carefully crafting an employee onboarding process, companies empower new employees with the knowledge, tools, and relationships that they need to be comfortable, confident, and productive in their new work environment.
Benefits of Effective New Employee Onboarding
Here are a few benefits of implementing an effective onboarding process for your new hires.
1. Builds a strong employee experience
Creating a thoughtful, educational, and engaging onboarding program for new hires will make them feel welcomed and valued, creating a positive employee experience. This fosters employee engagement from the very first day, which will echo throughout an employee’s tenure with an organization.
It’s easy for a new hire to feel disconnected from the company (and, therefore, detached from its success). This is especially true in remote-first environments, where cultivating a strong company culture is even harder.
Investing in new employee onboarding can help new hires feel more connected to their work and teams so they can easily assimilate into the company culture.
2. Improve job satisfaction & retention
Employee turnover is expensive. When you factor in things such as the cost to backfill the position and the cost of having open vacancies, it’s no wonder why employee retention is a top priority for businesses.
A strong onboarding process improves new hire retention by up to 82%. An onboarding program ensures a better employee-to-employer from the start. It assimilates new hires properly to their new roles to improve job satisfaction and retention in the long run.
3. Increase employee productivity
While a bad onboarding experience may lead to low employee engagement, a strong experience is the start of a long-term positive experience that coincides with strong employee performance.
The better the onboarding process, the faster your new team members can start working on the tasks they were hired for. In fact, onboarding employees correctly decreases new hire time-to-proficiency and improves productivity by over 70%. When onboarding is done correctly, the entire team — not just the new hire — can work more efficiently.
4. Attract top talent
An engaging onboarding program that provides a great employee experience not only helps retain new hires for the long term, but also helps attract strong, top-level candidates. Providing a world-class onboarding experience motivates your new hires to write positive reviews about the company culture on review portals such as Glassdoor. Positive word of mouth attracts top talent.
Additionally, if your new hires feel happy and satisfied with joining the company, they are most likely to recommend your company to other high-quality talent within their networks.
How Long Should Employee Onboarding Take?
Employee onboarding is more than a one-time event. It’s an ongoing process that should support your new team members to feel confident that they’re equipped with the knowledge to effectively do their job, as well as welcomed by the company.
That’s why we advocate for organizations to create an employee onboarding process that lasts an entire year – something that only 2% of new companies are currently doing.
By extending onboarding out over an entire year, it allows HR teams to transition from a traditional employee onboarding strategy into a continuous learning & development strategy for new hires.
It’s important to remember that not all companies require the same amount of onboarding time—some require longer, and some require less. The same thinking should be applied to various roles inside a company.
For example, a SaaS company has two new hires starting on the same day. One is a new business development rep (BDR), and the other is a new product marketer. The BDR will need to learn various sales processes and call scripts, while the product marketer will need to research and understand the buyer persona and value proposition of a product.
What is the average length of onboarding time for new employees?
For most growth and enterprise companies, the standard onboarding time for new employees is 90 days. However, CareerBuilder says most companies’ onboarding process is much shorter. Across 2,300+ HR professionals, 72% said the length of their employee onboarding time is less than one month. Even more staggering, 51% said it was one week or less.
The argument for longer employee onboarding cycles
Why does a longer onboarding process lead to new employees being more successful? It combines many factors, but here are the most important reasons why your organization should spend more time in the employee onboarding phase.
- Provides more comprehensive training: This enables new employees to learn how the company works, understand their role, acquire knowledge, master tasks, and meet team members, instead of feeling pressured to maximize productivity from day one. When new hires feel pressure to start performing right away, they can lose confidence, adopt bad habits or practices, and cut corners, ultimately leading to an underperforming employee with low job satisfaction.
- Better learning retention: Starting a new role at a new company is knowledge overload. Research from Goins & Fisher revealed that without positive reinforcement, new hires will only retain 10% of what they’ve learned during onboarding after just 30 days on the job. The 70-20-10 rule of learning says 70% of a new hire’s knowledge comes from things they acquired from on-the-job training. This means that organizations must combine new ideas being introduced in onboarding and put it into practice as soon as possible – helping to form a link between the conceptual idea and the physical art of practice.
- Supports learning in the flow of work: HR departments have begun to look at onboarding as less of a transactional process (ie. filling out paperwork and completing compliance training) and more of a continuous performance support process. By extending the onboarding length, L&D teams can implement slow, integrated training directly into an employee’s day-to-day. With training technologies like digital adoption platforms (DAP), organizations can create step-by-step guided tutorials to embed directly into their digital applications and processes.
- Improves employee retention: Onboarding is the key to reducing turnover. According to a report from Workology, 1 in every 3 new hires will start searching for a new job within six months. 23% of those who began looking for a new job within six months said that a lack of clear job responsibilities and guidelines was their only reason for leaving. A longer onboarding timeline will give employees a better understanding of the “what” and “why” behind their job requirements and expectations. It will also help HR teams improve employee retention rates during one of the toughest talent acquisition markets ever.
- Promotes a culture of continuous learning: Post-COVID, organizations are heavily investing in their L&D strategies – specifically to help reskill and upskill their workforce as rapid digital transformation occurs across roles and industries. A longer onboarding process allows companies to get new hires acclimated to a culture of continuous learning built into their job responsibilities from day one. This will give companies a strong learning culture – driving innovation and growth for individual employees and the company.
8 Steps for Creating a Great Employee Onboarding Process
Developing an effective employee onboarding process begins with a commitment to invest in employee success before your new employee starts their first day.
The goal of an employee onboarding process is to create a welcoming environment that helps new hires familiarize themselves with the team and company culture, as well as overall organizational goals and processes, and empowers them with the right knowledge and processes to be productive quickly.
Creating an onboarding process requires HR teams and people managers to think through the experience as a new employee would, and consider what these new hires will face at different points in their new role – ultimately making their transition into their new role as easy as possible.
Here are the steps you can follow to create a strong onboarding process for the new hires.
1. New hire welcome email
The employee onboarding process starts right after the recruitment phase. Once a prospect signs their offer letter, the HR manager sends a new hire welcome email to give employees a chance to prepare for the new role and familiarize them with the organization’s culture.
To give new hires an idea of what to expect, send out an email with the following included:
- Orientation day activities
- Schedule for their first few days
- Information on company dress-code or other office policies
- Onboarding documents that they need to sign and complete (ie. employment agreement, NDA, employee handbook, tax forms, etc.)
- Information on benefits package (holidays, health insurance, life insurance, retirement benefits, training reimbursement, gym memberships, workplace perks, etc.)
2. Set up a call with your new team member before they start
After sending a welcome email, it is good practice for HR teams to schedule a quick call to review all forms, benefits, and company policies – as well as set clear expectations for day one.
This keeps new hires engaged and affirms their choice that they’ve made the right decision accepting your offer.
3. Prepare your new employee’s set-up for success on their first day
To implement a successful onboarding program for new employees, HR teams must help employees feel welcomed and included from day one. HR managers should create a checklist to complete the day before a new hire is set to start, including:
- Setting up the new hire’s desk before their day one to avoid keeping them waiting for equipment and technology such a computer/laptop, email account, etc. A pre-arranged workspace communicates how essential they are to the company.
- Creating a welcome kit that includes a company t-shirt and other swag, a welcome letter, an employeee handbook, etc.
- Activate the new hire’s email, Slack, and other company accounts – and make sure they have access to all the tools and resources they need in their new position.
- Notify the respective teams and managers about the new employee’s start date by sending an announcement email.
4. Make their first day special
You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression, so make sure that your new employees have an awesome first day.
Invoking a sense of belonging in new hires makes them feel committed towards the organization and gives them a sense of pride in their work. Plan out all the employee activities on the first day to help them settle down effortlessly.
- Prepare a formal employee orientation. Delivering personalized presentations on the company’s history, mission, and values helps employees feel like a part of the family and connect the dots between their day-to-day duties and company goals.
- Schedule a team lunch or virtual lunch with the new hire’s immediate team, dedicated to informal small talk and getting to know the new hire.
- Assign an onboarding buddy for your new hire who is always available to answer their questions or problems. This is also a great way to build up relationships between co-workers.
- Don’t let the day be dominated by filling out tons of paperwork.
- Give them a tour of the office while introducing them to everyone you pass by. This allows them to explore the office and ask any lingering questions.
- Schedule one-on-one meetings between the new hire and HR to help elaborate the code of conduct, leave & insurance policies, rewards & recognition programs, and other employee benefits.
- Prepare an employee onboarding spreadsheet or document with different company collaterals such as value props, case studies, slide decks, sales pitches, to familiar new hires with the company’s products or services.
5. Coordinate with other departments
It is essential to coordinate with key stakeholders across the organization to notify them of the new hire’s start date. New employees may easily get to know their immediate peers, but a quick introduction to others they might not see or work with regularly provides a sense of organizational belonging.
Schedule “meet and greets” with team leaders across the company – especially those teams that will often collaborate with the new hire’s team. This allows new team members to hear what different departments do and learn from each department’s unique experiences.
You can also create an organizational chart for new hires that contain the titles and contact information for all the employees working across the organization. This helps new hires understand who is responsible for what and how to connect with them.
6. Set new hires up for success with personalized employee training
New employees require essential training to get started in their new role. Preparing and scheduling new hire training programs is important to bring them up to speed quickly.
Training should always be tailored to the employee goals and requirements. Personalized employee training programs take on a learner-centric approach that ensures each training pathway is relevant to the learner and their goals. This approach helps new employees learn quickly and perform better.
Investing in personalized learning tools such as digital adoption platforms (DAPs) that integrate with your organization’s existing employee training software helps provide a framework for learning in the flow of work.
The Whatfix digital adoption platform runs on top of other software platforms and helps new employees understand how to use your organization’s CRM, ERP, HCM, and other tools and digital processes, while they use it.
This is the best way to ensure that new employees develop a high level of application proficiency, from the first day of work. The training is hyper-personalized to the needs of each end-user and allows them to self learn.
7. Schedule a 30 or 90-day check-in meeting
Set up check-in meetings with all new hires after they’ve settled into their new role. It’s common for HR departments to schedule these meetings 30 or 90 days after their start date – but the exact check-in date can be flexible.
While this meeting should be kept informal, it still needs to be filled with active dialogue on the continued progress of the new employee in becoming a productive team member.
Here is a first-quarter employee onboarding process “to-do task list” for HR managers:
- Ask employees about their first 90-day experience
- Review their performance with their manager and offer feedback
- Ask the employee what have been their biggest challenges
- Talk about career planning and progression
- Gather feedback on your employee onboarding process and training session
- Find out if they have the specific support, resources, and equipment they need to work efficiently
- Ask direct managers to establish a regular check-in schedule for all employees
- Mentor them and use your leadership skills to discuss their employee development plan
- Pace the workload to reduce the possibilities of stress and burnout.
8. Request feedback on your organization’s onboarding process
The last step in your employee onboarding process is to gather feedback to learn more about how to improve your employee onboarding best practices with post-training surveys.
Discuss with your new hires what worked for them, as well as what didn’t, in the onboarding process. Employee engagement chatbots such as Infeedo attempt to understand the sentiments employees have on your onboarding process through ongoing employee conversations. This helps HR managers understand their employees and onboarding processes better. In the goal to improve the employee onboarding process, chatbots also indulge the employees in quizzes, employee engagement surveys, and feedback loops to improve future human-bot interactions.
Once you have gathered feedback on your employee onboarding process, make changes in your processes accordingly. Notify your employees about the changes made while thanking them for the feedback. This empowers employees, letting them know that their voice matters within your organization.
The New Employee Onboarding Checklist
Most companies treat employee onboarding as a one-time affair. They focus on onboarding documents, paperwork, and other admin tasks. Proper onboarding involves much more than only signing contracts and completing forms.
An effective team member onboarding strategy should focus on educating and engaging new employees before they begin their new positions and through the first year.
To help get you started, here are easy-to-follow checklists to effectively onboard new hires at various stages of their new role.
1. Pre-onboarding checklist for new employees
Get prepared to onboard your new employee before they even step foot in the office. These tasks should be completed anywhere from 1-2 weeks before the employee begins.
Here’s a checklist to set you up for a successful onboarding process:
- Send an email to your company announcing the new hire, including their name, position, and start date.
- Set up an employee record portal to collect and store important new hire information.
- Prepare all HR onboarding documents.
- Prepare, order, and test all IT support items and admin essentials, including laptop and other technical equipment, company email and/or phone number, desk essentials, business cards, building ID or keys, software subscriptions, etc.
- Connect with department heads or supervisors to ensure they’re prepared for the new hire.
- Schedule onboarding meetings and events with all applicable parties.
- Create a welcome package including company swag.
2. New hire welcome pack checklist
Welcome your new hire to the team with a welcome email. Your welcome email should be sent at least a few days before the new employee is scheduled to begin.
Here’s an example new hire welcome email checklist:
- Welcome them to the team and express excitement to start working with them.
- Confirm the start date, time, and location.
- Provide phone numbers and email addresses of contact persons.
- Give directions and arrival instructions if they’re meeting at a physical office.
- Provide a schedule of their first day.
- List documents or information they should bring with them (such as I.D., Social Security Number, etc.)
- Share the company dress code or attire expectations.
- Share a copy of the employee handbook.
- Share company background/overview, etc.
3. Checklist for your new employee's first day
It’s your new employee’s first day on the job! The steps you’ll want to follow during this onboarding process will look pretty different depending on if your company meets in-person or if you work remotely.
If you operate out of a physical office, here is a checklist to get you started:
- Greet the new employee upon arrival.
- Show the new employee to their desk or workstation.
- Introduce the new team member to colleagues, focusing first on the employees they’ll be working with closely.
- Give an office tour, including the kitchen, restroom, break rooms, phone booths, conference rooms, etc.
- Explain office policies and rules for shared spaces.
- Ensure laptop and other equipment is working properly.
- Ensure the new employee can access all software, apps, and tools.
- Explain go-to resources or team members are available for assistance or support the new employee through the onboarding process.
- Outline company and employee goals and KPIs in an employee orientation meeting
- Establish a 90-day plan with projects, goals, and check-ins to set expectations
- Introduce the new hire to their onboarding buddy.
- Host a group activity with the new employee’s team or department, such as a lunch, happy hour event, or welcome party
- Reconnect one-on-one at the end of the day to gather feedback, answer questions, and provide additional support
Pro Tip: While we label these as “first-day” checklists, don’t feel you need to cram every task into one day. If the day feels rushed or you need to cut steps short, pushing some meetings or conversations off until the next day is okay. It’s more critical your new employee retains the information they’re given than to get through everything on day one.
4. First month onboarding checklist
After one month on the job, your employee should start to feel more comfortable in their new position but they’re probably not completely up to speed quite yet. This is the time to touch base on how the employee is performing in their role and iron out any lingering issues or challenges.
Here’s what that first-month employee onboarding checklist might look like:
- Create and send feedback surveys for the new employee, the new employee’s supervisors, and other crucial team members.
- Schedule a touch-base meeting with the new employee.
- Revisit the 90-day plan created on the new employee’s first day and assess goal and project progress.
- Get feedback from the new employee on feelings and comfort level with the new job.
- Identify areas of misalignment between day-to-day activities and the new employee’s expectations of the position.
- Address issues or give praise based on supervisor or team survey findings.
- Work together to identify any necessary adjustments to the original 90-day plan.
- Work together to identify any necessary skills or software training to improve productivity.
- Discuss opportunities for the new employee to get further involved with the company culture, including participating in activities or group outings.
- Set a regular schedule to continue to touch base on the rest of the 90-day plan.
5. First year onboarding checklist
Onboarding continues long beyond a new employee’s first few days in the office. While the initial onboarding processes are designed to bring your new hire up to speed as quickly and efficiently as possible, ongoing check-ins can set your employee up for a long, successful career at the company.
Here is an employee onboarding checklist to cover a new hire’s first year:
- Create and send continuous employee onboarding surveys to your new hire and those working closely with the new position.
- Schedule once-a-month meetings to check in, answer questions, review survey findings, and realign on goals.
- Ask the new employee their ideas for the future of their position or where they see themselves in three months, six months, one year.
- Work together to identify areas of improvement for both the employee and the company as a whole.
- Work together to list action items and ongoing new-hire training to address gaps or weak spots.
Employee Onboarding Template Pack
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5 Best Software Tools for Onboarding New Employees
Organizations implement employee onboarding software to facilitate smooth and simple employee onboarding for new hires. These software platforms provide a full introduction to a company’s product, structure, internal policies, values, and more. Here are some popular employee onboarding software providers:
1. Whatfix
Whatfix digital adoption platform creates personalized and engaging employee onboarding checklists at scale, that are embedded in your digital apps and processes.
This catapults your new hires to achieve integration into your company at a fast speed. The platform allows you to create employee onboarding task lists and self-help widgets within the application to empower users to become proficient quickly.
Highlights:
- Enable new hires to discover enterprise applications and software with guided tours
- Welcome new users with the first call-to-action based on their role
- Analyze impact on onboarding objectives and optimize guidance flows in real-time
- Track each user’s task completion rate and remind them when tasks are incomplete
2. Bamboo HR
Bamboo HR is widely popular for being a self-onboarding solution. It relieves the HR teams of the majority of repetitive tasks and allows them to spend more time getting to know the new hire and introducing them to the overall culture and practices of the company. Bamboo’s overall user experience makes it easy for the HR team to track progress and focus on the bigger picture of the onboarding process.
Highlights:
- Electronic signature software to complete paperwork for new hires quickly
- Custom workflows
- Open API
- 7-day free trial
3. Click boarding
Clickboarding is a purpose-built onboarding software that comes loaded with pre-designed templates and content to set up your onboarding flow with ease. One of the best features of the software is the ability to track employee progress through the onboarding flows.
Highlights:
- Simple design
- Easy to use
- Manage employee progress
- Nice offboarding feature
4. Talmundo
Programming and customizing the employee onboarding roadmap is super straightforward with Talmundo software. In addition to this, the interactive to-do lists and the fun quizzes do a great job of digitizing the onboarding process and making it fun for the new hires. Talmundo also offers valuable feedback and analytics to you identify sticking points across the onboarding cycle and remedy them as required.
Highlights:
- Fun onboarding quizzes
- Interactive to-do lists
- Detailed analytics
- Great customizability
5. Zenefits
Zenefits is an HR platform that manages all processes such as hiring, onboarding and employee records all in one place. You can design custom onboarding flows, send job offers, run background checks and let new hires complete their own onboarding before their first day to work.
Highlights:
- All-in-one HR platform
- Custom offer letters
- Background checks
- Easy sync with payroll
How your new hires feel in the initial days of joining your organization shows in their improved performance, work ethic, and most importantly, their commitment to your organization throughout their tenure.
To provide new hires with a satisfying employee experience, consider the steps mentioned above to build a comprehensive and effective employee onboarding process for your organization.
For more help, explore the benefits of digital adoption platforms like Whatfix to take care of your software onboarding needs, with its real-time and automated in-app guidance, saving you day to day time and money.
Request a demo to create personalized and engaging employee onboarding programs at scale and catapult your employees to rapid productivity.
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