Employee onboarding process: How to get it right

Employee onboarding shouldn’t feel like handing someone a login, a stack of forms, and a calendar full of unfamiliar names. This guide shows you how to create a clear, supportive process that helps new hires settle in and start contributing sooner.

We’ll walk through each stage, from preboarding to the first 90 days, and explain who should handle what. You’ll also get practical checklists, training ideas, and ways to reduce the administrative load on HR.

Key Takeaways

In this article, you’ll discover how to build an employee onboarding process that works from preboarding through day 90. We cover who owns each step, what new hires need at every stage, how training and automation fit in, and which metrics help you improve the experience over time.

What is new employee onboarding?

New employee onboarding is the structured process of helping a new hire adjust to their role, team, and organization. It begins as soon as the employee accepts the offer and typically continues through at least their first 90 days, although complex roles may require a longer onboarding period.

Orientation, sometimes called induction, is only one part of this process. It usually takes place during the first day or week and covers immediate essentials such as introductions, paperwork, policies, and workplace systems. Onboarding goes further, giving new hires ongoing training, guidance, and support until they can work confidently and independently.

Although every organization approaches onboarding differently, organizational psychologist Dr. Talya Bauer from the SHRM identified The Four C’s that a successful onboarding program must include. They stand for:

• Compliance — teaching new hires the basic company policies.
• Clarification — ensuring that employees are aware of their responsibilities and how to fulfill their role.
• Company culture — providing the formal and informal company rules.
• Connection — building relationships with colleagues and feeling like a part of the team.

A successful employee onboarding program develops all four areas gradually rather than trying to cover everything on the employee’s first day. This gives new hires time to absorb information, practice new skills, and become productive without feeling overwhelmed.

Why is employee onboarding important?

Starting a new job means learning everything the job description leaves out. A new hire needs to understand how work actually gets done, what their manager expects, and where to go when they need an answer. Employee onboarding shortens this period of guesswork. With clear direction and the right support, people settle into their roles and start contributing sooner.

Those first weeks shape more than productivity. When managers make time for questions and feedback, new employees can tell whether they are on the right track. Everyday contact with coworkers also helps new hires feel like part of the team. People who understand their role and feel wanted at work have more reasons to engage with it — and more reasons to stay.

New employee onboarding process checklist

Onboarding is a lengthy process that includes numerous stages. To make it easier for you to guide newcomers through their first days and months in a company, we’ve created an onboarding checklist. Follow it to ensure that each stage of the employee onboarding process is complete.

Preboarding: before they start

It’s important to frame your new employees’ experience in a positive light right from the get-go — and that means setting their expectations and comfort level before they ever set foot inside the office.

Consider taking these actions before the start date:

• Send all pre-hire documents electronically so employees can complete them in advance. If you can use e-signatures, that’s even better. Examples of these types of documents could include legal and contract documents, employee manuals, first-day parking passes, and any additional information the employee should look over.
• Plan out what will happen in the first week and beyond — this can include a 3-month new hire roadmap.
• Prepare their workspace, tools, and other essential resources ahead of time. Walking in on day one and having your laptop, company cell phone, and desk ready to go will create a great first impression that will set the tone for the relationship. Even if the employee is a contractor or will use hot desk arrangements, this will go a long way toward making them feel welcome and productive.
• Inform the team about the incoming hire’s name, role, and other important details. If they know you’ll be making the rounds to introduce new hires, they’ll be more likely to make time to be friendly and welcoming.
• Plan ‘meet and greets’ with important contacts. Face time with people who will be key to the new employee’s working success opens a gateway for future communication. This should include any managers, team members, and colleagues from other departments.

First day at work

The first day can be stressful as well as exciting, so follow these steps to build a good employee onboarding process:

• Make a general announcement in the department, floor, business unit, or whatever level of organizational structure your new hire will be joining. It’s a good morale booster and a way to get the department together and introduce the new member. To cover the rest of the bases, send a group email to the broader community providing brief details about the new hire, their role, and a little background information as a conversation starter.
• Conduct a tour. This should cover all the basics, like restroom locations, where to find each department, parking spots, break rooms, and lunch spots. This is also a good time to make more informal introductions to the team.
• Lay out the week-one schedule. Make time to sit down without distractions and have a real conversation about what the first week will look like, so the new hire knows what to expect.
• Assign a mentor. Nominate a senior member of the team that the new hire will be joining in order to mentor them on the particularities and inner workings of the organization. What the mentor will cover is entirely up to the organization but typically includes everything from company-wide policies and procedures to how to perform essential daily tasks.

First working week

It is important to not overwhelm the new hire during this stage of the employee onboarding process. While it’s necessary to complete onboarding in a timely manner, you also want your new employee to be productive and settle in.

• Walk through important procedures and standards. Things to cover here would be rules and regulations for the use of the Internet, social media, email communications, and time allowed for breaks.
• Introduce the company culture. Hopefully, at this point, the employee has a general understanding of the company’s vision, mission, goals, and values from the day one content. Now it’s time to relate all that back to your company culture and help them understand how the culture relates to the product or end service you provide.
• Provide setup guides. From email and computer setup to essential processes and platforms your team uses, each company has its own way of doing things, so a quick reference guide they can keep handy in their workspace is a great idea.
• Create a workbook. Build a workbook that includes milestones of where they should be on day 5, week 2, and the end of month 1. Giving your new hire concrete milestones to reach will help them plan their time.
• Outline the training process. Familiarize the new employee with how training works at the organization and what will be expected of them. At this point, you can make available any training materials or modules they need to complete within the first week and provide HR or other contacts for training.
• Start training. The second day is a good time to start their training.
• Follow up at the end of the week. After giving the new hire time to get used to the office, workspace, and their mentor, follow up with them to make sure they’re comfortable and are picking things up at an appropriate pace. The end of the first week is a good time to discuss how the next month or so should progress, what you expect of them, and where they should be once they reach that time.
• Schedule a 2-week check-in. Put this on the agenda toward the end of week 1, and it will act as a milestone for both you and the new hire.
• Encourage activity. Give new hires something to do. It may sound obvious, but don’t get caught up in the employee onboarding process; allocate a few hours per day to them completing actual work.

Days 30-90

• Establish lines of communication. At the first month mark, the new hire should be settled into their office and getting into the meat of their training. Find out what’s going well and what they might need support with.
• Start providing regular feedback. Get updates from colleagues who work closely with the new hire and make an effort to correct their course if necessary.
• Encourage independence. You’ve created a great onboarding program and backed it up with some great training and an evaluation and readiness process — so now is the time to encourage them to take all that and run with it.
• Set performance goals. Goals not only encourage good performance, but also encourage employee engagement. So, before the first scheduled monthly review, assign some goals to accomplish within their first 3 months.
• Give them their first performance review. After 90 days, your new hire should reach a decent level of proficiency. The review is a good time to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and decide if the current training program is meeting all of their needs.

You can also download the new employee onboarding checklist templates and tick the items when they’re complete. This will help ensure that your new employee adaptation process goes smoothly.

Who is responsible for employee onboarding?

Employee onboarding often lands on HR’s desk, but HR can’t do it alone. The people who arrange the paperwork are not always the ones who explain the job or set up the laptop. A clear handoff between them matters.

• HR keeps the overall plan moving. The team handles employment requirements, shares essential company information, and follows up when a task falls behind.
• The hiring manager helps the new employee understand the actual job. This means setting priorities, choosing useful first assignments, and making time for regular conversations.
• IT makes sure the employee can work from day one. The laptop, accounts, software, and permissions should be ready before they are needed.
• A buddy or mentor answers questions that may seem too minor to warrant a meeting with a manager. They also explain the everyday habits and unwritten rules of the team.
• The new hire needs to do their part, too. They should complete assigned training, ask when something is unclear, and speak up if the plan is not giving them the support they need.

In a smaller company, one person may wear several of these hats. What matters is that every task has a person’s name attached to it; “someone will take care of it” is usually where steps get missed.

How to build the employee onboarding process in 4 steps

Training is an important part of the onboarding process, and it sets the scene for the learning that will be provided throughout the employee’s career with your company. Let’s look at how to train new hires online.

Step 1. Define goals, the journey, and responsibilities

Start with what a new hire needs to achieve, then work backward. Set clear checkpoints for the first week, the first month, and the end of onboarding. “Complete a first sale,” for example, gives both the employee and the manager more direction than “learn the sales process.”

Most employee training programs need two layers:

• Company-wide onboarding introduces new hires to the organization, its culture, and the rules that affect their work.
• Role-specific onboarding covers the knowledge and skills needed for a particular position.

Place each goal at the right point in the employee onboarding journey. Then give every activity an owner and a deadline. A task such as setting up CRM access is far less likely to slip when the plan names the person responsible.

For example, an asynchronous training program for new hires that utilizes eLearning has many benefits, most notably that it is available on demand, so it can be accessed at any time. It is also reusable, which means creating a training course once and providing it to all new hires — updating it as needed with minimal effort. It’s also customizable, so you can make multiple versions or pathways for different types of employees.

Now, let’s consider another example. Here is what a one-week onboarding plan for a salesperson might look like:

Step 2. Create reusable and role-specific onboarding/training materials

Once you know what new hires need to learn, decide which materials can be used across the company and which should change by role. A welcome course, for example, can serve everyone. Training on specific processes or systems will depend on the employee’s job.

If you’re new to eLearning, creating these materials may look like a job for a professional course developer. However, modern authoring tools make it possible for HR and L&D teams to handle much of the work themselves.

iSpring Suite works inside PowerPoint, so authors can start with slides they already have and reuse content from Word or PDF documents. It supports slide-based courses, quizzes, training videos, role-play simulations, and interactive modules. The built-in AI Assistant can draft text and generate images or quiz questions. Authors can also create AI voiceovers and translate courses into more than 50 languages.

Here are several types of onboarding materials you can create with iSpring Suite.

Videos

How about a professional-looking welcome and introduction to the company from the CEO or chairman? Video also works well for role-specific content. Subject matter experts can record software demonstrations, process walkthroughs, or short introductions to a department. For materials that change often, AI voiceover makes it easier to update the narration without rerecording it.

Slide-based courses

Slide-based courses work well for subjects that need more detail, such as company culture, mission, and core values. Because the source file remains in PowerPoint, teams can update one core course or adapt it for a particular role without rebuilding it.

Forever Direct, the regional distribution center for Forever Living Products, used iSpring Suite to create a standard introduction course for new hires. It covers the company’s objectives, general rules, and social and safety guidelines. Employees also receive additional instructions based on their roles.

The onboarding program for new employees at Forever Direct

Quizzes

Quizzes show whether new hires understood the material and where they may need another explanation. They are especially useful after compliance training, where employees need to remember and apply specific rules.

Forever Direct, for example, includes a quiz in its onboarding programs. New employees complete it after studying the introductory materials.

Compliance quiz created with iSpring Suite

Interactive modules

Interactive modules let employees explore information instead of reading through a long document. They can work as short standalone lessons or form part of a larger course. iSpring Suite includes ready-made templates, so authors don’t have to build every interaction from scratch.

Here are a few examples of onboarding micromodules created in iSpring.

This interactive module gives new employees a tour of the office:

The following module shows how the company was growing over a number of years:

And this one provides new hires with answers to many commonly asked questions:

Step 3. Deliver and automate the program

Once the materials are ready, the next job is to get each person the right content without turning HR into a full-time reminder service. A learning management system (LMS) gives new hires a single place to see what they need to complete and what comes next.

With iSpring LMS, HR can build a learning track for each role and arrange the courses in a set order. Assignment rules enroll new hires automatically based on their team, job title, or other profile details. The system sends reminders and lets managers know when employees complete their work.

New hires can study in a browser or through the native mobile app, including when they are offline. For blended onboarding, live sessions can sit alongside self-paced courses in the same calendar.

Not every question needs a course. Knowledge Base gives employees a place to return to setup guides, policies, and FAQs after training ends. Its articles can also sync with courses, so authors do not have to update the same information twice. The Company section shows divisions, managers, and team contacts, which helps a new employee work out who handles what.

For the practical side of onboarding, use Development Plans. They bring courses, workplace tasks, and on-the-job training into one path. Entire plans can now be assigned automatically when an employee meets the criteria you set.

Use Development Plans to:

• Build custom employee onboarding checklists for new hires. Complete them with action-based tasks to help employees practice key skills and apply new knowledge on the job.
• Launch mentorship programs. Assign mentors and supervisors to support new hires and help them adjust to the workplace faster.
• Track onboarding progress. Detailed reports allow managers to spot areas for improvement and provide extra resources to struggling hires before productivity drops.
• Foster continuous skill development. Support employee growth across the organization with targeted training.

Step 4. Measure and improve it

Course completion is useful, but it does not tell you whether onboarding programs worked. Return to the goals you set in Step 1. Can the new hire handle the core tasks of the role with less help than they needed a month ago? If not, a 100% completion rate doesn’t mean much.

Use LMS data with employee onboarding metrics to see how the learning itself is going. In iSpring LMS, you can track overdue assignments, completion rates, quiz results, and individual attempts. Simulation reports can also show where employees struggle with a particular decision or conversation.

Then look at what happens on the job. Development Plans show whether new hires complete practical tasks and reach their onboarding milestones. OJT reports record a manager’s observations across multiple sessions, which makes it easier to see whether performance improves over time.

Feedback fills in the parts that reports cannot explain. Ask new hires what felt unclear or arrived too late, and check whether managers think the program prepared employees for real work. Time to productivity and early turnover will show whether those improvements carry through to the business.

Review the results after each group completes onboarding. If people finish every course but still miss workplace milestones, the answer may be more practice or better manager support — not another module. See this guide for more on how to evaluate a training program.

Onboarding challenges and how to overcome them

Most onboarding failures are fairly mundane. A manager reschedules a one-on-one three times. IT sends a laptop, but the login details never arrive. The new hire has six courses due and no idea which actual task matters today. None of these is a crisis on its own; together, they make the first month feel improvised.

Challenge 1: defining the new hire’s role

An orientation program is a key component of effective onboarding, but providing new employees with a realistic understanding of their roles can help them adjust quickly and confidently.

When the new hire onboarding process is initiated, the employee should be given a clear outline of what is required of them and how they should go about achieving those objectives. The employee should also be given a date by which they should meet those objectives.

Challenge 2: no clear owner

New hire onboarding tends to expose the seams between departments. HR may finish its part while IT is still waiting for the manager to approve access. From the new hire’s perspective, the distinction doesn’t matter. They still can’t work.

Use one shared checklist, with an owner and due date for each task. The person coordinating onboarding doesn’t have to do everything. They simply need to notice when something hasn’t happened and follow up before it becomes the employee’s problem.

Challenge 3: inconsistent manager involvement

Manager involvement is usually strongest on day one, when the welcome meeting is already on the calendar. Trouble begins later, after regular work takes over. A new hire can remain quiet for an entire week without anyone realizing they’re stuck.

Book the first month of check-ins before the employee starts. Early on, 15 minutes spent reviewing a real piece of work is often more useful than another polished presentation. The meetings can become less frequent as the employee gains confidence and needs less direction.

Challenge 4: information overload

Companies often deliver onboarding according to their own internal structure. HR sends the policies. IT shares the setup documents. L&D assigns a full course catalog. The employee receives everything at once.

Release information when it becomes useful. First-day material should help someone get through the first day; deeper process training can wait until they understand the context. Keep reference materials somewhere that’s searchable rather than expecting new hires to remember every detail after seeing it once.

Challenge 5: delayed access to tools

Few onboarding problems are as visible as a new employee with nothing to do because a password hasn’t arrived. It wastes time and is awkward for everyone involved.

Treat “request sent” and “access works” as two different statuses. Test the essential logins a few days before the start date, and give the new hire one clear IT contact in case something still fails.

Challenge 6: adapting to company culture

Company culture becomes visible in ordinary moments: who speaks during meetings, how people disagree, and what happens when a deadline slips. A slide about company values cannot show any of that.

Bring the new hire into real team conversations early. An onboarding buddy can help explain what they are seeing and answer the questions that feel too minor to justify accessing a manager. For remote employees, leave room for informal conversations on the calendar because they won’t happen by accident.

For a more detailed look at common onboarding challenges and ways to overcome them, see our guide to employee onboarding.

The 5 best platforms for new employee onboarding

Before comparing employee onboarding software, decide where your onboarding process is breaking down. An LMS handles training and progress tracking, while HR and onboarding systems are better suited to paperwork and cross-team workflows. Communication and knowledge tools fill another gap by helping new hires find answers after the welcome meetings end. The five options below overlap in places, but they do different jobs.

1. iSpring LMS

iSpring LMS handles the training side of the employee onboarding process. HR and L&D team members can create a learning path for each role and set rules that automatically assign it to new hires based on their team, job title, or other profile details.

The platform sends reminders and notifications to employees, while managers can track course completion, quiz results, and overall progress through reports. Development Plans bring workplace tasks into the program through action-based checklists, milestones, and mentor support. New hires can also complete courses in the mobile app, even when they’re offline.

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2. Freshteams

Freshteam focuses on the paperwork and coordination that take place before a new hire starts working. Once a candidate accepts an offer, HR can send a welcome kit, collect forms and documents, and request electronic signatures through the platform.

Onboarding checklists help divide the remaining work among HR, IT, and the hiring manager. Each task can have its owner and due date, while automated reminders keep important details, such as preparing equipment or arranging system access, from getting lost before day one.

3. Enboarder

Enboarder is an online platform that helps companies optimize preboarding, onboarding, reboarding, and offboarding workflows. It connects HR, IT, managers, and employees, so everyone knows what needs to happen from offer acceptance through the first 90 days and beyond.

Users can create virtual spaces for new employees and their teams to get acquainted and bond using introduction videos, coffee catch-up calls, and an onboarding buddy system. The tool also provides you with onboarding checklists to make sure no important item gets missed and built-in coaching for HR professionals to ensure they’re effectively guiding new employees toward success.

4. Monday.com

Monday.com is a general work-management platform that teams can adapt for the employee onboarding process. A shared board gives HR, IT, and hiring managers a clear view of each new hire’s tasks, owners, deadlines, and current status.

The platform offers an onboarding template that team members can customize around their own process. They can also use it to organize 30-, 60-, and 90-day plans, automate reminders, and track progress after the employee starts.

5. Deel

Deel is a global HR, payroll, compliance, and IT platform for distributed teams. It brings contracts, employee data, payroll, and equipment requests into the same onboarding process, which is particularly useful when new hires work in different countries.

Teams can create workflows that change based on an employee’s location or role. Deel then assigns tasks, sends reminders, tracks required documents, and helps coordinate steps such as signing contracts, adding employees to payroll, and preparing equipment before their start date.

Final thoughts

We hope you got some actionable ideas from this in-depth look at new employee onboarding to use in your own onboarding programs.

Would you like to get more details on how you can streamline the onboarding process with iSpring LMS and see the LMS in action? Sign up for a free demo.

And if you’d like to build compelling online courses, take iSpring Suite for a test drive with a full-featured 14-day trial.

FAQ

Here you’ll find the most common questions people ask about the onboarding process.

How long should onboarding take?

Many HR professionals agree that the structured onboarding process should take at least three months. But this isn’t the norm. The main thing here is that your onboarding process should be tailored to the needs of your company and employees.

What is the difference between onboarding and induction?

Induction usually lasts one or up to a few days, whereas onboarding can begin before an employee’s first day and last for weeks or months. Inductions can be focused on so-called “tick-box” tasks like new hire paperwork and compliance training. And onboarding is a long-term process that is designedto help people integrate into a company and become a productive member quickly.

Is it possible to onboard employees remotely?

Sure. This is more challenging than doing it on-site, but there are some great practices that can help your remote employees get used to their new environment and become productive quickly. Check out this article on how to onboard your new hires online.

What should an employee onboarding process include?

Effective employee onboarding includes preboarding paperwork, clear goals, job training, introductions to key colleagues, and ongoing check-ins that help the employee find their footing.

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