60% of employees don’t feel welcome and valued during the onboarding stage—and that is a scary reality.
Why is it scary? Because a smooth onboarding process sets the stage for the success of your new employee and enhances employee satisfaction and retention rates.
However, most businesses don’t have the right resources to navigate the challenges of building a sound onboarding system, but we’re here to help.
In this guide, we cover the different steps of a new employee onboarding and the process of creating the perfect new hire checklists. Let’s break it down!
How to Write a New Hire Onboarding Checklist
- Understanding New Hire Onboarding
- Steps in the New Hire Onboarding Process
- Creating the Perfect Employee Onboarding Checklist
- Leveraging Technology for Onboarding
- Special Considerations for Remote Onboarding
- Strategies for Employee Retention and Onboarding
- Create a Smooth Onboarding Experience With Clickup
Summarize this article for me pleaseUnderstanding New Hire Onboarding
We have two scenarios to help you understand the importance of new hire onboarding in the hiring process.
- In the first scenario, as soon as a new employee is onboarded into your company, you share your philosophies, values, mission, and the trajectory of the business. Your new hires learn about their roles, responsibilities, and how they can contribute to the company’s growth
- In the second scenario, the new hire is confused, disengaged, and unproductive because nobody took the time and effort to create a foolproof onboarding plan. This increases employee turnover—resulting in high costs of time, money, and energy
What would you choose? The first scenario—obviously.
That’s the case for a company that invests in creating a system for successful onboarding.
So, what do we mean by onboarding?
Onboarding is the process of integrating new employees into the organization. It is typically the first proper experience after joining your company. It helps them get access to all resources related to login credentials, systems, processes, work culture, goals, and responsibilities
A great employee onboarding process can help you achieve the following:
- Higher commitment leads to numerous brand ambassadors who support your company’s growth and tenured employees
- Clear onboarding guidelines enable employees to understand their roles, Key Result Areas (KRAs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), benefits, processes, etc. This allows them to hit the ground running and reduces time on Return on investment (ROI)
But how do we set these processes?
This is where the HR team should step in. If you’re part of the HR department or in a leadership position, create onboarding goals to build a more impactful program and a new hire checklist for your new employees that lasts longer than the first day!
Pro tip: A robust client onboarding software helps to provide a smooth onboarding experience for your clients. Similarly, employee onboarding software can assist new employees in planning their career roadmap, increasing employee engagement, improving productivity, and reducing attrition.
Summarize this article for me pleaseSteps in the New Hire Onboarding Process
When dealing with new employees, it is essential to do it with the same vigor as onboarding clients.
You need to build a comprehensive process that is not just limited to the first day or week. Instead, it is a mix of short and long-term activities that last for weeks—maybe months.
Here are the four onboarding steps that could be followed for new hires:
1. Preboarding process
Preboarding is the period between offer acceptance and the first day of work. So you need to be prepared even BEFORE your new hire steps into the office.
Unfortunately, this step does not get the attention it deserves from most organizations.
During this period, you can:
- Coordinate with the IT and legal team to create access to communication channels and learning platforms, go through legal considerations, project management tools, time tracking tools, and security policies
- Take them through essential tasks that can be completed in advance, like setting up their bank accounts, filling all required forms so that it does not pile up on the first day
- Share your company’s mission, vision, values, and culture with a new hire before they join your team. This helps new employees align with your organization in advance
Most importantly, make sure that you maintain communication throughout the entire pre-boarding process. Touch base regularly, make sure that they don’t have any questions, and share company updates to make them feel engaged and motivated.
2. First-day orientation
Now that your new hire is in the office, they are ready to kickstart their first-day orientation.
Take the time to arrange team introductions.
If possible, set them up with a buddy system for easier collaboration or share an employee handbook to ease them into their new environment.
Your new hire might expect you to take them through the company tech stack, processes, systems, and tools, which allows them to settle in faster and hit the ground running. Make sure they can access all the necessary documentation, including company policy, organization chart, team plans, etc. You can give them easy access via ClickUp Docs.
Since this process might be almost similar across departments and hierarchy, you could set up a template for first-day orientations in your company. This helps in:
- Providing a consistent onboarding experience which also saves time and effort
- Helping you cover all the necessary information, policies, and procedures
- Setting clear expectations and goals, along with access to tools and resources for faster integration into the team
With ClickUp’s Employee Onboarding Template, you have a fully customizable doc that you can use to create clear and consistent guidelines for orientation.
This template helps in:
- Creating a consistent onboarding experience and boosting employee engagement
- Setting up training programs and promoting teamwork among employees
- Cutting down on the amount of time it takes to train new employees
3. Role-specific training
By this step of the onboarding process, start pushing your new hires toward specific roles and responsibilities. At this stage, they should clearly understand their key responsibility areas, KPIs, and how they could contribute to the organization’s growth.
Your action items at this point should be:
- Specific: Get new hires to attend departmental training sessions and shadow peers for 20 hours
- Measurable: Track attendance and progress for training sessions
- Attainable: Make sure that you identify seniors/colleagues who are available to teach new hires
- Relevant: All training and shadowing should be specific to the job role
- Time-bound: Set a clear deadline for the number of hours of training and shadowing to be completed
This is also when you could introduce 30, 60, and 90-day goals for your new hires. But what should you cover here?
A great 30-60-90 day plan has five elements:
- Goals: Categorize the new hire’s goals into professional, learning, and personal goals for the best results
- Focus: Specifies what every hire needs to focus on each phase to achieve success
- Priorities: Identifies vital tasks and projects that the new hire needs to prioritize in each 30-day period to manage their time and progress effectively
- Metrics of success: Defines the key performance indicators to help them track progress and understand success
- Flexibility: Goals should be flexible to adjust goals and priorities as per the overall objectives of the company
A 30-60-90 day plan is the most effective method for your new hires to get up to speed. You can use ClickUp Tasks to set up tasks and subtasks with deadlines that are based on the role, hierarchy, and KRAs.
Finally, to keep track of the 30-60-90 tasks, you can easily build full-fledged dashboards to visualize goals, track task progress, and recognize team efforts.
And if this seems like too much work—we’ve got your back. Use ClickUp’s 30-60-90 Day Template to get started on your onboarding with one click. It makes it easy for you to:
- Set goals for new hires, teams, and the business
- Identify competencies required to succeed
- Document actions and progress from day one
4. Evaluation and feedback
Your new hires will be hungry for performance feedback from their leaders.
They are in a completely new environment, so they would want to gain insights that advance their abilities and build more career opportunities.
You can use performance review templates to encourage new hires for the value they provide to your company.
From a business point of view, it makes sense to build good feedback systems, as 80% of employees who receive meaningful feedback are more engaged with the organization.
You can use ClickUp’s Performance Review Template—it’s totally customizable. No need to sift through confusing spreadsheets or tools. Instead, optimize your team’s performance with ease—all in one place!
This template makes gathering and giving 360-degree feedback easier and straightforward. It can also make your new hires feel at ease knowing what to improve and how. This creates a culture of meaningful feedback, which helps in long-term success.
Summarize this article for me pleaseCreating the Perfect Employee Onboarding Checklist
Now that we know all the essential steps in the best onboarding process, you can easily create an employee onboarding checklist for the perfect onboarding.
1. On the first day
The first day is extremely important for all new hires. Here’s when they get familiar with the company through orientation tasks, introductions, and processes. Here’s what you could include on their first day:
- Welcome them and show them to their workstations: Take the time to greet them and help them with their workstations/work setup. If you have the time, try to give them a tour of the office, including conference rooms, cafes, and chill zones. Keep it light, personal, and friendly
- Schedule their orientation: Create a formal presentation or document to explain the company’s vision, mission, culture, and values. Give them a high-level overview of job responsibilities, teams, point of contact, reporting managers, leave policy, salary disbursement, etc.
- Organize team introductions: Help them get familiar with their teams, colleagues, and seniors. If possible, you could create a buddy system or even take them out for lunch/dinner
2. By the first week
After the first day, the new hire may expect you to hand-hold them through the entire process until they understand the organization completely.
- Introduce equipment and systems: By the first week, you need to collaborate with IT teams to set up access to necessary software, systems, accounts, and permissions. If required, you could offer training sessions for specific software applications required for their role. Most importantly, make sure that they are well aware of all compliance and safety procedures to prevent security lapses
- Explain their job responsibilities: Create a detailed job description with flowcharts or process maps for complex procedures. If possible, you could get new hires to shadow experienced team members performing similar tasks. It could be extremely beneficial if you could explain how their role fits into the larger team and organizational structure. Finally, discuss key performance indicators (KPIs) and how they would be evaluated
- Start specific training programs: Learning programs will be crucial to set up the new hire for success. Begin with mandatory compliance training (e.g., safety, ethics, data protection) and then implement role-specific training modules via e-learning, workshops, or on-the-job training. If you can, incorporate quizzes or practical exercises to reinforce learning
3. By the first month
Most new hires tend to learn the ropes of the organization in the first month. During this time, make an effort to teach them about their job responsibilities and company policies. Feedback goes a long way in helping them learn about their role.
- Train them on job responsibilities: While your new hires may have the desired qualifications and experience of the role, the work setup for any organization is bound to be different. Take the time to assign job responsibilities and take them through systems and processes so that they are able to get their best work done
- Schedule feedback sessions: Have mentors/ senior managers check in at least once per week. This can be used to provide regular performance feedback and discuss challenges, successes, and areas for improvement. As the HR professional, you must encourage open communication and address any concerns promptly
- Set short-term goals: Help the employee set clear, achievable goals for the 90-day period
4. By the third month
Your new hires should be settling down in the organization by this time, but the onboarding process is far from over. Here’s what you should keep in mind:
- Regular feedback sessions: Continue setting up a consistent and dedicated time for performance evaluations. You could also suggest structured formats like 15 minutes for updates, 30 minutes for discussion, and 15 minutes for action items. These feedback sessions will allow new hires to discuss progress, concerns, or questions from their point of contact
- Increase the complexity of responsibilities: Since the new hire has settled into the organization, introduce more challenging tasks. This could be greater utilization of the employee’s skills, collaboration with team members from different departments, or that has a significant impact on the team’s performance. Don’t forget to provide clear expectations and deadlines. Finally, while you are adding responsibilities, make sure to offer support and resources to help them succeed
- Provide regular performance feedback: Offer constructive feedback on completed and ongoing projects. You could also encourage self-reflection and self-evaluation of the new hire’s performance. Finally, document all feedback to track progress over time
- Career progression: Schedule a dedicated meeting to discuss long-term career aspirations and growth in the organization. This could allow the new hire to identify their strengths, interests, and areas for development. If required, you could even identify potential mentors or sponsors within the organization
- Participation in social events: Encourage new hires to participate in company-wide meetings, offsites, or town halls. If your organization has specific social clubs or interest groups, you could introduce them to the other members for increased engagement. Make sure that they know about company traditions, celebrations, or annual events, which makes them feel motivated
5. After 90 days
Once an employee reaches 90 days, the new hire is mostly settled in the organization, so they don’t require as much support. However, it is important for them to know that they can still count on you.
- Frequent check-ins: Keep checking in to see if they have been fully integrated into the team and workflows. You could also continue with formal evaluations every three months for the first year.
- Additional support: If certain new hires require additional support in terms of learning materials, resources or mentors, you could always look at it on a case to case basis.
This entire process can feel like the employee is juggling multiple things– so give them a template to help make it easier for the new hire.Â
ClickUp’s New Hire Onboarding Template is the checklist you wish you had on your own first day.
Designed for employees, this template helps new members hold themselves accountable with customizable tasks. It shows employees exactly what needs to be done, how much time they have to complete it, and what will happen next.
With custom fields, new hires can easily view key information about which departments own what tasks, progress percentages, deadlines, priorities, and more.
This custom onboarding template can help you by:
- Creating a standardized roadmap for new hires to navigate the workplace
- Helping establish clear communication between all stakeholders in the organization
- Helping new hires adjust to the new work culture easily, enabling them to feel more engaged and motivated
Summarize this article for me pleaseLeveraging Technology for Onboarding
In a technology-driven environment, you can leverage the capabilities of an HRMS, digital/AI tools, and training software to streamline and automate onboarding practices.
This is particularly advantageous because:
- With an HRMS, new hires can complete necessary forms and documentation online rather than physical paperwork
- AI tools for HR offer a centralized platform for HR professionals to track all onboarding tasks, information, and access to essential resources and materials
- Helps you send an automated welcome email to new hires and relevant stakeholders to stay on track
ClickUp has created an all-in-one HR management platform that works as onboarding software, automates tedious tasks, engages with employees, and helps you organize your enterprise—it’s an absolute game-changer. Let’s take a look at some features.
1. Efficient onboarding documentation
ClickUp Docs is your central hub for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Use it to create comprehensive onboarding documents, wikis, and guides, then seamlessly connect them to orientation or training tasks.
2. Comprehensive task management system
With a comprehensive task management system, ClickUp can help create onboarding flows to stay organized and on track. ClickUp Tasks can make it easy to manage onboarding tasks and sub-tasks with details like assignee, due date, priority, and progress.
3. AI assistant
The new joiners can use ClickUp Brain with built-in, role-specific prompts to help analyze data, generate reports, and recommend potential solutions. It can also create curated content and communication depending on the type of brief or stakeholder involved.
4. Free essential templates
The platform offers free HR templates that are useful for employee monitoring, training, performance review, and feedback.
5. Interconnected workflows
Last but not least, ClickUp’s Dashboard gives you a bird’s eye view of everything. See how your docs fit into your workflow, visualize your team’s progress, plan your next big event, and even get smart insights to boost your team’s performance.
If you want to make your onboarding processes 1% better, like ClickUp did, then read about how the ClickUp onboarding team uses ClickUp.
Summarize this article for me pleaseSpecial Considerations for Remote Onboarding
Remote onboarding is a necessity for modern companies. With the transition to a remote work environment, you need to be prepared how to welcome new hires remotely.
However, onboarding remote employees comes with its own set of challenges:
- New hires may struggle to navigate remote communication and tech stacks
- They may feel isolated and could have trouble building strong connections with team members and other staff members
- New hires could also feel overwhelmed by the volume of new information during their onboarding process
- It can be quite challenging to monitor the progress and engagement of employees hired remotely
With the right onboarding template, you can make the process easier with smooth transitions, consistency across verticals, and reducing the time and effort spent on onboarding.
With ClickUp’s Remote Onboarding Template, you can easily set up your remote onboarding process with all the right tools in one place.
It will help you break down onboarding tasks into manageable pieces, build a paced onboarding t timeline, and create collaboration pathways with team members This makes your new hires feel welcomed and supported, irrespective of the remote work environment.
Summarize this article for me pleaseStrategies for Employee Retention and Onboarding
Shane McFeely and Ben Wigert of Gallup estimate employee turnover accounts for $1 trillion in costs for American businesses. This means that most organizations cannot afford their employees to leave, so what must you do in such a scenario? Get a solid onboarding process. Here’s why:
1. Explain the values and culture of the organization
This can help new hires feel more connected to the organization. The Hyatt philosophy is good to emulate in such a scenario. Hyatt Hotels treats employees like family. By creating a supportive and people-driven environment, Hyatt is #73 among the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® 2024. In fact, 89% of employees at Hyatt Hotels Corporation say it is a great place to work compared to 57% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company, which can be attributed to the fact that 93% of people believe that when they join the company, they are made to feel welcome.
2. Set up clear job responsibilities, key performance metrics, and feedback
Clear expectations, goals, and constructive feedback contribute to higher job satisfaction because new hires feel like valued members of the team. Companies like Asana give people the freedom to contribute at their full potential while also providing the support to help them succeed. They emphasize personal growth, especially through mentorship, which is why they are #8 in Fortune Best Workplaces for Millennialsâ„¢ 2023. More than 96% of employees feel welcome when they join, while 89% of employees at Asana say it is a great place to work.
3. Avoid micromanaging
With a solid onboarding process, you incorporate elements of treating employees like adults rather than micromanaging all tasks. That’s what worked extremely well for Netflix. Netflix offers unlimited vacation time, paid parental leave, and other benefits, which shows that Netflix trusts its employees to do the right thing. They convey a sense of value and trust, which helps retention. In fact, their Culture Book is highly recognized for its innovative and efficient ways of building an organization.
Summarize this article for me pleaseCreate a Smooth Onboarding Experience With Clickup
Onboarding for a new hire can be a complicated and time-consuming task. However, the impact of this crucial step can’t be overlooked in ensuring long-term engagement and retention.
Whether you’re building the pre-boarding process with ClickUp Docs or using ClickUp Brain to help guide orientation, everything can be simpler and faster.
Not just that, you can use free HR templates from ClickUp to make sure that everything is in one place. From automating tasks to generating onboarding updates, ClickUp Brain does it all with ease. So, why settle for less when you can have the best? 🚀✨
Ready to supercharge your onboarding process? Sign up for a free Clickup account today!
Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.