Sample Onboarding Plan for New Employees: Your Ultimate Resource

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.

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.

Sample onboarding plan and editable checklist

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

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 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
• 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?

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 newsletters – If you use an internal network, welcome your new employee with an appreciation post. You can include details about their role, background, and how happy you are to have them onboard

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?

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.

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 onboarding

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

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

Leverage Deel for scalable and effective onboarding

Deel Engage offers a range of features designed to support remote and in-office onboarding. Here are some ways you can leverage Deel Engage and save hours—all while making onboarding more engaging for your people:

1. Seamless Slack integration: Engage allows for onboarding directly within Slack—this integration helps new hires access onboarding materials and participate in onboarding activities within their primary communication tool
2. Customizable onboarding workflows: Easily create customizable onboarding workflows tailored to specific roles—include automated tasks, training modules, and checklists so that new hires receive a structured and personalized onboarding experience
3. AI-powered LMS: Create interactive courses, track progress, and assess learning outcomes—use AI to accelerate course creation
4. Interactive and engaging content: Create interactive onboarding journeys, including video tutorials and quizzes, for a more enjoyable and effective onboarding process
5. Continuous improvement and feedback: Collect feedback from new hires about their onboarding experience—use them to refine and improve the onboarding process, ensuring that it meets the needs of all employees and adapts to changing requirements
6. Evaluate new hire performance: Evaluate your new hire’s performance and share constructive feedback to help them grow in your organization

Additionally, Deel HR, our truly global HRIS solution, is always included for free.

Book a demo to see how our solutions will help you create an engaging and effective onboarding program for increased productivity and retention.