Astudio galupfound that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job with onboarding.
Furthermore, a Harvard Business Review study found that nearly33% of new hires look for a new job within the first 6 months, much of which is down to a bad onboarding experience.
That's why it's so important for hiring managers to provide new hires with thethe best onboarding experience possible.
In Hipercontexto, we created aincredibleonboarding experience for on-site employees. We've since modified this experience to accommodate new remote workers. I can say that this process works wonders for both situations!
Our new hire onboarding checklist is focused on enabling managers, not just HR, to grow new hires faster. In fact, we use this template internally with every new hire on Hypercontext!
In this article, we'll cover:
- Why Hiring Managers Should Care About Employee Onboarding
- Onboarding Checklist for Managers
- New Employee Onboarding Checklist Tutorial
Go straight to thenew employee onboarding template.
Why should you care about properly onboarding a new employee?
If your employees are excited and set up to succeed from day one, it makes a world of difference. According toSHRM, 69% of employees are more likely to stay with their company for three years if they have gone through a major onboarding.
There's a huge business case for having a strong onboarding experience for new hires.
Speaking from experience, when I started at Hypercontext, it was without a doubt the best onboarding process I've had at any company to date. In fact… It was so amazing that I made an effort to let everyone know on LinkedIn:
Imagine if all of your employees spoke about your organization publicly in this way. 👆 All this thanks to an amazing integration experience.
Onboarding Checklist for Managers
Before your employee's first day, it's important that you have everything you need to set them up for success from day one. Let's look at some of the ways you can better prepare:
1. Book multiple 1:1 sessions on tool and process tutorials
Don't throw your employee to the wolves. Instead, spend time showing them how (and why) things are done:
- Is there some type of resume they need to submit to get marketing images for the blog?
- Where are all the team metrics? How often are they updated and where is the data pulled from?
- How is the team's Jira workspace set up?
- How do you use tools like Google Analytics, ahrefs, Intercom and Stripe?
- What is the 3, 6 and 12 month strategy for the team?
Even though you just hired top talent, that doesn't mean they'll come in as experts on your customers, products, or technology.
These sessions are a great way to jumpstart new hires as they give you the knowledge they need to become an expert faster.
2. Describe the results you expect them to achieve in the first 30-60-90 days
In a perfect world, you've already outlined this person's expected outcomes. After all, this information would help you make the right hiring decision.
Now that you've hired someone for the job, it's important to document these results in a place accessible to both you and your new direct report. That way, they can continue to reference those numbers, prioritize their work, and stay aligned with the team's overall goals.
I personally document these results in my 1:1 meeting with my direct reports usingHypercontext Goal Setting Platform.
3. Audit and update your team's internal documents
To save yourself a lot of time and future headaches, stay on top of updating your team's internal documents throughout the year. But this is not always the highest priority, totally understandable.
However, 2-3 weeks before the first day of your new hire, it's important to have a thorough audit of all your internal documents to ensure all information is up to date.
- Have your buying journeys changed in the last year?
- Has your team developed new features that need to be documented?
- Are your contribution guidelines up to date?
These are just some of the questions you might ask yourself when auditing your documentation.
5. Advertise your new employee in multiple places
You just hired someone. It's incredibly exciting!
Get everyone on the team excited about your arrival with new hire announcements. They were talking:
- demo days
- team meetings
- Loose
- Let the social media team know so they can queue the public announcement
Shout to the four winds! 🥳
Heck, we even share the good news every time an offer is signed on our #wins Slack channel. 👇
When everyone is excited about each new hire, and that excitement builds in the first few weeks, the onboarding experience will be that much better!
5. Establish your first face-to-face contact
While one-on-one meetings are ultimately about the employee's time with you, it's important that you set the stage from week one. Prepare a schedule for yourfirst in a meetingin advance so your new hire can read your articles and show up prepared.
From there, you can decide the time of day, week, and pace to hold these meetings together.
A review of the new employee onboarding checklist
This onboarding checklist details what IT/HR/Admin needs to do internally in the weeks leading up to the new hire start date, then details the first two weeks of onboarding the new hire. If you are using Hyper Context, all you have to do is select theonboarding agenda templateAnd invite your incorporated stakeholders to contribute!
Before your new employee's first day
Start your list with things that need to be done before the new hire starts. Be sure to assign each task or activity you set to a person with a due date to ensure things actually get done.
🗂 HR things to do
- Enroll employees forbenefits program
- Complete background check
- Subscription options grant
- assign a friend
- Other necessary procedures
💻 Desktop and loot settings
- To bring togetheremployee welcome pack(serve, stickers, etc.)
- Configure the desktop (laptop and other technologies ortoolsnecessary)
📩 Invite to all meetings and platforms
- Calendar invites to various meetings/events
- Google Drive (or equivalent)
- human resources platform
- password management tool
- All the tools they need to access
Daily onboarding checklist for your new hire
Note that you can edit this template to better suit your team and process. The steps below explain how we onboard new employees during their first week in Hipercontexto.
🗓 Day 1 – Welcome to the company!
- configure your notebook
- Accept invites to tools, calendars, other platforms, etc.
- Start reading your incorporation document
- Set up your Slack account
- Take a tour of [name]'s office
- Fill out HR paperwork
At Hypercontext, each employee receives an onboarding document containing ouremployee handbook, department-specific information, and other important information. Our onboarding documents have proven to be a great way to share information about things like our values, team structure and more.
🗓 Day 2 – Meet your team and company!
- Start building your demo deck
- Meet with your manager to discuss department details
- Continue reading the constitutive documents
- Welcome orientation with the CEO
Each new Hypercontext employee is asked to create a "Demo Day Presentation" to present on their first day of the demo. The presentation includes things like your role, previous experience, trivia (e.g. "I hate peanut butter with a passion".🤮”), what they are excited to work on, and much more. This is a great opportunity for new employees to introduce themselves to everyone at the company. It also gives current employees easy talking points to introduce the newcomer to (i.e. "I hate peanut butter with a passion too."🤢), which makes the onboarding experience even better!
🗓 Day 3: Let's learn how things work here!
- Meet your officemate for coffee or a treat
- See the company's website for more information about the product and brand.
- Learn about your team's work and process (this could be doing a developer code review, reading help articles and participating in customer success conversations, or reviewing the product roadmap, etc.).
- Guidance from the HR department
Each new Hypercontext employee is assigned a partner from a different team. We have found that doing this helps greatly reduce the first week jitters. This gives the new employee a chance to meet a friendly new face and ask questions about things that aren't necessarily work related (eg "How do I use the coffee machine?"☕️). It's also great for building more interdepartmental relationships within the office!
🗓 Day 4 – First project and welcome lunch!
- Start your first project!
- Enjoy your welcome lunch
- Guidance from the marketing department.
We welcome each new employee with a welcome lunch. We invite your direct team members, as well as others with whom you will collaborate. Building connections in a space outside the office walls is a great way to help everyone relax and create more genuine connections.
🗓 Day 5 – TGIF! How was your first week?
- Contact your manager: how was your first week?
- Finish your treasure hunt
- Product department guidance
At Hypercontext, we give every new employee a scavenger hunt to complete within the first week. It's a great way to gamify what would otherwise be menial tasks like getting Wi-Fi passwords or learning how to use the coffee machine.
Looking back on my own onboarding experience, I can't begin to explain how crucial a good onboarding process is when starting a new company. Within a week, I felt like I had been a part of the organization for months. It was created for success from day one. Having my first two weeks planned, with multiple opportunities to speak with people from all departments, took a lot of the stress out of joining a new organization.
New employee onboarding template
Now is the time to prepare your new employee onboarding checklist so that you can increase your employee level in a smooth and timely manner. There are probably a lot of things you'd like to share with that new employee, but you need to make sure you don't overwhelm them from day one.
Get started with our new employee onboarding model!
Use this template for free!