Did you know that 88% of employees believe their company fails to do a great job with the onboarding process? 

And that a positive onboarding experience makes employees 69% more likely to stay with a company for three years? 

Conclusion: you need a solid onboarding process not to lose your employees to your competitors.

A robust onboarding process is an often overlooked cornerstone on the path to success as a company. Besides boosting employee retention, it also ripples positively into productivity.

This article will guide you through a successful employee onboarding process. 

You'll walk away with a ready-to-use employee onboarding checklist.

📄 What's an onboarding plan?

An onboarding plan outlines the steps of integrating a new employee. The whole process can take from a couple of months to a year. 

We suggest using a 90-day plan to help your new hires gain confidence and feel ready to work independently – and smash it in their new roles!

Ideally, the onboarding plan starts before the employee's first day to make them feel welcome and soothe their nerves. 

📊 Why do you need an onboarding plan? 

If you had a new hire start tomorrow, would you know how to best onboard them? 

A thoughtful onboarding process is needed for your business to reach the top 12% of companies doing a great job at onboarding. And it comprises quite a few steps: preboarding alone comprises 75+ tasks at Twitter. 

With a detailed onboarding plan in place, you don't need to sweat it. 

Save time by automating it! 

Even if you're busy with deadlines and stakeholder meetings, you're just a few clicks from giving your new hires an excellent onboarding experience – over and over. It will look like you've spent hours preparing for their arrival (don't worry, your secret is safe with us!). 

Since the process is so complex and involves many stakeholders, it's paramount to keep track of every step. 

Besides informing the new employee of the agenda, you need to ensure that every participating person – the manager, team leader, and mentor – knows exactly what you need from them and when. 

A smooth onboarding process helps your new hires:

• Feel welcome and included from day one.
• Get up to speed faster.
• Understand expectations. 
• Keep track of their goals and how they're pacing.
• Learn everything they need and strengthen their new skills.
• Understand and align with the company culture and values.

Besides, it helps avoid common pitfalls from you as an employer – such as forgetting to order a new laptop or requesting access to the relevant software.

📝 Sample onboarding plan & editable checklist

Here's our suggestion for a comprehensive plan to include in your onboarding programs.

Download our new hire checklist and sample onboarding plan for new employees to easily create your custom onboarding process. 

As a rule of thumb, each activity relates to one of the five C's of onboarding. 

Tip: If you edit the onboarding checklist template, verify that the task falls under at least one of the five C's: compliance, clarification, culture, connection, and check back.

Preparation 

Documents

• Send out necessary documents for signing.
• Make sure the documents have been signed.

Access and hardware

• Order hardware (e.g., laptop, phone, tablet – and office equipment if applicable).
• Prepare accounts and access rights.
• Prepare other assets.

Team prep

• Notify colleagues and book meetings. Ideally, you would schedule an appointment with each team member during the introductory week.
• Intro meetings are essential for distributed teams lacking the spontaneous coffee break chats.
• Block time in your calendar. You'll want to have a welcome meeting with your new hire during their first day and set aside time for quick catchups during their first week.

Ensure content is up-to-date

• Plan the first week – Outline all the training courses and tasks for your recruit.
• Gather company culture materials. Make sure to include any onboarding videos.
• Introduce key departments. Present the main stakeholders to your new hire: the department head, team leaders, mentor/coach, and (optional) CEO/director.
• Product & landscape - Focus on offering answers to the following questions:

✔️ What are your products and services?

✔️ What is your company's competitive position in the marketplace?

✔️ What is the mission of your company and product(s)?

✔️What is your market brand? 

• Internal policies, including hybrid work policy – In post-pandemic times, many companies offer flexible work arrangements where staff can work part of their hours from home. Make sure to clarify your WFH policy.

➡️ Check out our Work From Home Policy Template: A simple structure and best practices for your hybrid or work-from-home policy.

• Update compliance documentation (if needed).
• Gather role-specific content. 
• Make sure to include privacy and data protection training. Include a contact: Who will the new hire turn to with tech issues? 

➡️ Get compliance in check with Zavvy's ready-to-use Data Security training template. It covers topics like phishing, password management, GDPR, and more.

Preboarding 

A successful onboarding starts with preboarding.

Send a welcome package

• Sending a welcome package lays the foundation for employee satisfaction from day 1. 
• Besides the housekeeping and essential information, you can include extras like company merch, lunch coupons, or even a flower bouquet.

Send a welcome message

• Tease culture, team, and benefits – This helps your new hire get hyped to start!
• Preview the schedule for day 1 – Having a mental image of what they can expect during their first day helps alleviate stress and anxiety.
• Include starting date, time, and location – Even if you've mentioned it before. Your new hire has a lot to keep track of. Maybe they have also relocated for the role, so make their life as easy as possible!
• Offer to answer any questions. 

Create relationships

• Encourage networking – Depending on their personality, your new hire can feel more or less compelled to engage with others. 
• New hires can have imposter syndrome and feel they must prove themselves before networking. Let them know that their opinion is valued from day 1, and look for ways of including them in networking events.

Day 1

Host a memorable reception

You only have one chance to make a first impression – so make it a good one!

• Celebrate with a team intro message. 
• Say hi in person (or on a call).
• Host a (virtual) lunch.
• Encourage ways to share on social media – Let the team members share the exciting news of your freshest team member on Twitter or LinkedIn. 
• Share on internal networks and newsletter – If you use an internal network, welcome your new employee with an appreciation post. You can include details about their role and background and how happy you are to have them onboard. 

Tip: Encourage team members to engage with the post and express their excitement.

Hand out access to

• Access card / ID / Key;
• Hardware;
• Tools.

Get them on track

• Introduction to company goals and projects – Focus on quarterly and annual goals and the main project/product pipeline. 
• Present business KPIs and the competitive landscape. Remember, you can delegate these tasks to team members – even junior ones. They'll feel appreciated and fulfilled when asked to teach a new hire.
• Introduction to departments and processes – Even if your recruit comes from a similar company or position, the workflow may have been vastly different. 
• Make sure to cover the communication routines – what's the hierarchy? What kind of messaging medium is appropriate for what type of message? Some communication may be better via email, while others are smoother via direct chats like Slack.

Onboarding buddy

• Introduce them to their onboarding buddy (and prepare both). The role of the onboarding buddy is more informal than the team lead's. It is someone who's not in a position to evaluate performance but rather a point of contact for any questions. When starting, it may feel less intimidating to talk to a colleague rather than bring things up with a manager. 

Tip: Ideally, the onboarding buddy embodies the company values and knows your new hire's role.

Week 1

Formalities

• Have them sign off on compliance policies. 

Clarity

• First 1:1 conversations – Starting a new job can be overwhelming. So clarify to your new employee that they can turn to you with any questions. Regular temperature checks are key during the onboarding process.

Socialization

• Make sure they attend all relevant meetings. You don't want to hear "what meeting?" and discover that you have forgotten to invite your new employee.
• Encourage networking. As previously mentioned, invite your recruit to internal and external networking events. Maybe there's an industry meetup approaching? 

Tip: Going that extra mile can make a difference and turn your employees into avid promoters of your workplace. And happy employees translate into lower turnover and higher revenue.

Process

• Create or communicate a 30-60-90-day plan.

Tip: The plan should be in the hands of your new employee as soon as possible. 

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Productivity

• Create an initial assignment. The best onboarding processes include hands-on experience as early as possible. 
• Suggest helpful day-to-day resources. What are additional resources to facilitate the learning procedure? 

Here are some examples: a podcast, a free online course, or even a game, depending on what your employee is learning.

Appreciation

• Celebrate the first week with a small message. The first week is hopefully exciting and interesting, but it can also be intense. There's a lot of new information to remember and faces to recognize. Your employee may worry about whether or not they have lived up to your expectations. A little message of appreciation and encouragement can go a long way! 

First 30 days

Feedback

• Ask for feedback. Use an onboarding survey to collect insights,
• Focus on: How are they finding the process so far? The communication, teaching, and social integration? 
• Stay open and thankful for any feedback – this is valuable information to bring to your coming onboardings. 

Guidance

• Send regular day-to-day tips. These can range from a handy Excel formula making their daily calculations easier to the tastiest flavor in the coffee machine.
• Combining practical information with fun trivia will engage your new hires more. 

💡 Discover 11 best practices to boost new employee engagement. 

Buddy

• Check in with the onboarding buddy and give guidance.
• Ensure everything is flowing and, if necessary, give directions for how to proceed.

First 60 days

Role-training

As the first month has passed, you and your new hire should have completed most of the housekeeping. Now your employee can dive deeper into their tasks. Here's where role-specific training takes a more significant portion of the onboarding tasks.

• Expand role-related training. Naturally, the first week is mostly about administrative tasks and learning new systems and routines. 
• Sprinkle introductory job tasks in to make training even more relevant.

Goal review

• Review the first goals and iterate. Onboarding is a delicate procedure. You don't want to intimidate your new hire – but you still want to let them know the performance expectations. 
• Consider tying every onboarding task to a goal. Review the objectives early on and see what needs fine tuning.

First 90 days

Continuous development

During the last month of the onboarding, the transition from new hire to core team member should take place. 

The advantage of a 90-day onboarding process is that your employee won't feel thrown into the deep end of the pool and expected to know everything. 

• Ensure a smooth transition to the overall development process.
• Encourage the employee to create their first growth plan. 
• The regular check-ins and feedback unique to the onboarding get replaced by the standard feedback and evaluation system.

Feedback

• Collect feedback once more – this time for the entire onboarding process. 

Buddy

• Hold the final check-in with the onboarding buddy to collect insights on the usefulness of the buddy program.

➡️ Ditch tedious checklists for an onboarding experience your employees will remember with an automated onboarding workflow.

➡️ Run an onboarding plan your new hires will love on autopilot 

Employee onboarding is an investment in your people – and, thus, your company. 

A great onboarding plan should be comprehensive, but it doesn't need to be complicated from an admin perspective.

Use an automation tool to create an onboarding experience that stands out and delivers information and integration beyond what a dull spreadsheet can convey. It will pay off in more loyal employees – and save you time to focus on your zone of genius. Win-win!

Zavvy lets you create an automated onboarding process that still gives a memorable onboarding experience with a human touch. Many of our clients appreciate how easy it is to use – even for employees who aren't tech-savvy: 

Time is money – and we're pleased to see how one of our clients, Storyblok, has saved 15 hours weekly while scaling the company! 

Imagine what you could create with 15 extra weekly hours. 

If you want to experience getting your people productive faster while saving a lot of time, reach out for a free 30 minutes demo!

❓FAQs

How can I use the onboarding plan template? 

You can use it for inspiration – our advice is to edit it and make it your own. Use it as the basis for planning your automated onboarding workflow.

How long should the onboarding take?

Usually 3-6 months – but sometimes a whole year. The duration of the onboarding process depends on factors like the role's complexity and the amount of training needed. What resources you have access to also matters. Many companies have way too short onboarding processes, resulting in a lack of confidence and productivity. 

What are the phases of onboarding? 

The four phases of onboarding are:

• Preboarding
• New hire orientation
• Role-specific training
• Easing the transition

Whether you keep it to 3 months or an entire year, don't forget to include these in your onboarding process.