Onboarding 101: A Complete Guide to the Employee Onboarding Process

Summary

Onboarding is the structured process of bringing a new hire from offer acceptance through preboarding, joining, and ramp-up to productivity. The timeline can vary by role, region, compliance requirements, and business complexity, but generally takes up to 6 months. Onboarding traditionally happens in four phases. It starts with preboarding, which bridges the offer and the first day. Then transitions to orientation, which covers culture and logistics on day one. Next is training, which builds role-specific skills. Finally, you end with ongoing learning and development, which continues for the length of an employee's tenure. Done well, onboarding drives higher satisfaction, stronger retention, and better long-term performance. This guide walks through each phase, shares practical checklists, and answers common questions about how onboarding works.

In This Article

Getting Onboarding Right

All organizations stand to benefit from getting onboarding right—and they face significant risks if they fail to deliver. Whether your company is looking for improved employee satisfaction, higher retention rates, or fewer skill gaps, prioritizing onboarding can make a real difference. Effective onboarding programs begin before the new hire’s first day and can last up to six months — and organizations need to get every phase right over the course of this process, from preboarding to ongoing professional development.

Whether you’re creating an onboarding program for the first time or need to improve your current onboarding process, this guide will cover everything you need to know.    

What is onboarding?

Onboarding is the structured process of integrating a new hire into an organization, from offer acceptance through their transition to full productivity. Great onboarding programs guide new hires through their first days, weeks, and months with your company. They familiarize employees with your company culture, provide them with role-specific training, and help them build enduring relationships with their new team members. Your company should aim to provide personalized onboarding experiences to meet the unique needs of each hire using onboarding checklists and software.

The exact duration of onboarding varies, but it typically includes an intensive phase over the first one to three months of an employee's tenure. The best onboarding programs will then transition to a long-term process focused on talent development.

The onboarding process includes new hire paperwork, sharing information on company culture and policies, and getting the new hire set up in their physical and digital workspaces. It also involves introducing the employee to the company and their specific team, before finally starting the employee on their first real assignments.

During onboarding, leaders should provide structure to a new employee by outlining their first few months in their new role and establishing a cadence for check-ins, one-on-ones, and team meetings.

Onboarding is often used alongside a few related terms that have subtle but important distinctions.  Candidate onboarding refers to the post-offer, pre-start experience of keeping a new hire informed and engaged before their start date, and prepared before their first day. This closely overlaps with what this guide calls preboarding. Talent onboarding is generally just another term for employee onboarding, used by organizations that view their workforce through a broader talent lens. Employee onboarding, the focus of this guide, covers the full process from offer acceptance through long-term development.

Why is onboarding important?

Onboarding helps employees feel more comfortable in their role at your organization, which drives employee engagement and productivity. According to Gallup, employees who have exceptional onboarding experiences are 2.6 times more likely to be extremely satisfied with their workplace.

Companies that get onboarding right also have better company culture and greater retention, leading to increased revenue. While the interview process gives candidates a taste of company culture, the employees' first days and weeks in their role settle whether your organization exhibits the supportive, transparent, and collaborative values it may talk about.

Strong onboarding also drives retention and ultimately organizational profitability. A poor onboarding experience makes it much harder to recoup the cost of hiring and training a new employee. 

A step-by-step guide to onboarding employees

Onboarding is different at every company, and often even within an organization, as various departments and employees have unique needs. Consider, for example, the difference between onboarding an in-person employee compared to a remote employee, or a line cook versus a software engineer. But regardless of the exact form onboarding takes at your business, it’s helpful to break it into four distinct phases:

Preboarding encompasses the time between when the employee accepts an offer and their first day and should ensure that the employee is excited and ready for their first day.

• Preboarding encompasses the time between when the employee accepts an offer and their first day and should ensure that the employee is excited and ready for their first day

• Orientation involves familiarizing the employee with their workplace, introducing them to their co-workers, and educating them about your company culture and their general responsibilities

• Training should then familiarize the employee with more detailed aspects of their role, like the projects they’ll be working on, the resources and tools available to them, and all the other information they need to work effectively   

• Ongoing learning and development should last as long as the employee’s tenure with your organization, so they’ll always have the skills and knowledge needed to keep contributing

Let’s take a look at each of these phases in more detail and cover some actionable checklists you can refer to as employees pass through each stage.

Preboarding 

The preboarding phase begins before the new hire starts their first day and should bridge the gap between when the candidate accepts your company’s offer and when they start. It should feature regular communication between the hire and contacts at your company so the new employee hits the ground running on their first day, never doubting that they’ve made the right choice by joining your organization.

Preboarding is also a great time to get some of the initial paperwork completed so that the employee can have a productive first day.

Consider including these specific activities in your company’s preboarding process:

• Send a welcome message from the hiring manager or HR

• Provide a goody bag, including company swag

• Connect the new hire with the team member(s) who will serve as their onboarding buddy and their mentor

• Deliver background information, such as the employee handbook and mission statement

• Complete new hire paperwork, including state/federal tax documents, W-4, I-9, and direct deposit forms in the US

• For international workers, the employer will need to confirm the employee’s work visa and/or work permit, passport information, EU Blue Card, or fill out other forms specific to the country in which the employee will work

Onboarding vs. Preboarding

New hire paperwork can be handled on an employee’s first day. However, if this information can be submitted ahead of time, the employee’s first day can focus more on orientation than administration. Let’s take a look at what orientation includes. 

Orientation

Orientation begins on the hire’s first day. During orientation, your company should refamiliarize the employee with its mission and values, introduce them to their co-workers, and establish the goals and schedule for the remainder of onboarding. The goal here is to start building the collaborative relationships employees will need to succeed while aligning the new employee with your organization’s core philosophies and approach to business.

Orientation should include these steps:

• Cover benefits information, including details on health, disability, and life insurance

• Conduct a tour of the office or physical workspace for in-person employees

• Give the employee any keycards, badges, or password and login information

• Handle IT setup, including hardware, software, and communication tools

• Share the onboarding schedule for the employee’s first one to three months

• Send invitations to meetings with fellow team members, one-on-ones with the employee’s manager, synch-ups with potential buddies/mentors, and introductions to clients or customers, if applicable

Training

Training covers the more detailed, role-specific work of onboarding. This encompasses the systems, tools, and context a new hire needs to actually do their job. This phase breaks down further into: 

• Provide internal documentation on processes relevant to the employee’s role

• Conduct role-specific training, with the goal of familiarizing the employee with the tasks, systems, and processes they’ll use in their daily work

• Share an org chart and explain how the new team member fits into your company structure

• Cover the teams the employee will interact with and name which co-workers to contact if the employee has specific questions

• Continue to support the employee by having them spend more time with a mentor, shadow more experienced team members, and engage further with their onboarding buddy and cohort

Ongoing learning and development 

Ongoing learning and development is the long-term phase of onboarding that keeps an employee's skills current for as long as they stay with the company. Depending on the organization, team, and role, getting an employee up to speed may take anywhere from three months to a year. Where the most intensive portion of onboarding ends, continuous learning and development begins. No matter how successful your onboarding program is, policies change, regulations are updated, processes are improved, and customer needs evolve.

Ongoing training aims to identify and close emerging skills gaps before they impact your company. Companies with a strong learning culture also enjoy a 57% higher retention rate and 23% higher internal mobility.

Gaining an understanding of the existing skills your employees have, and impactful opportunities to uplevel your team, is challenging though. For this reason, many HR professionals use workforce intelligence tools to support upskilling and reskilling their workforce. The right platform can analyze the existing skills of your employees, measure learning and development opportunities against the long-term goals of the organization, and provide recommendations for how best to utilize your existing workforce. 

There are many talent development opportunities your company can take advantage of:

• Set up a long-term mentorship program, so team members can continue to benefit from the guidance of their more experienced counterparts—and so these colleagues can benefit from the fresh perspective new employees bring in turn

• Implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, including unconscious bias training, employee resource groups, and training for leadership

• Conduct semi-regular skills assessments to ensure leaders and HR have a firm grasp on the strengths and potential weaknesses of your current workforce

• Establish clear career paths for each role in your organization, and train managers on how to work with their direct reports to collaboratively develop individualized paths that suit team members’ talents and interests along with organizational needs

Empower your team and boost retention with The Definitive Guide to Employee Development and Retention

Employee onboarding best practices

Now that you know what employee onboarding looks like, here are some best practices to help your onboarding process run smoothly:

• Use onboarding software. Today’s employers and HR teams have an advantage. Onboarding software provides a personalized, consistent onboarding experience to every employee.

• Align expectations. Connect the dots between what the employee read in the job description and their day-to-day tasks. This shouldn’t be a heavy lift if you’ve written an accurate job description, invested time and effort in orientation, and are providing ongoing support.

• Make it personal. Pair data gathered from the interview process with specific information about the employee’s new role to create a custom onboarding journey and tailored training and development plan.

• Vary training. Alter the type, format, and duration of training sessions to provide variety in the first months of onboarding. All-day video calls or marathon sessions of watching recordings can result in even the most motivated employees becoming disengaged.

• Provide structure and set clear expectations. From the very start of onboarding, be clear about company policies. Provide the employee with your employee handbook, address the most relevant policies, and answer any questions the employee has. Set up regular ongoing meetings between the employee and their supervisor to maintain alignment as well. Give the employee a clear path to find out additional information or get questions answered in a timely manner.

• Give internal hires the same treatment. When your company fills a job opening internally, that current employee still needs to be onboarded into their new role. While already familiar with company culture and processes, it’s important to provide internal hires with time to acclimate to their new role and training to help them succeed.

How does software support onboarding?

Onboarding leads to a satisfied and productive workforce — when it’s done the right way. But creating a successful onboarding program is a complex undertaking. Onboarding software can help move new hires through their initial paperwork, their first day, and beyond. 

The best onboarding software makes hiring and onboarding easy for the employee and your team. These platforms use automation to provide personalized experiences and streamline processes. They provide custom checklists for specific departments and locations so you never miss a step, and they help ensure compliance by centralizing all of your data in a single source of truth. Even better is an onboarding solution that integrates with your talent acquisition and management systems for a seamless, end-to-end employee experience.

Learn more about how Phenom can help your organization create a great onboarding experience or book a demo today.