Employee onboarding process checklist: The best onboarding practices ✅

The first and one of the most important steps in your onboarding checklist is to send out offer letters, contracts, and welcome packs.

Keep your new hires in the loop about how often they can expect to hear from you in the time before they start, and include them in company-wide emails – a great way to make them feel involved before they’ve even started.​

In many ways, onboarding is all about communication.

And communication is crucial at this early stage: make sure your new staff member feels in the loop and listened to.

• Organise technology and other logistics

During the week leading up to their start date, set up their email address and ensure that all technology is in good working order.

Make sure you have your employee’s desk is set up and ready for them.

Ensure their workplace is how you would want to find your own – clean and tidy, with business cards if they are going out to clients straight away, and maybe some company swag.

Remember the courage it took you to ask where the stationery supplies were kept on your first day of work? Make sure their desk is fully stocked with notebooks, pens, and anything else they need.

Then, contact the candidate via phone or email, make sure they know what they need to bring (passport, bank details, etc), and who to ask for on arrival.

Especially with graduates who have little previous office experience, their first day can be hugely daunting.

So, taking steps to ensure they feel comfortable and welcomed at your company is an important part of the process.

• Assign a mentor and launch a workplace mentoring scheme

One of the best ways to onboard new employees is to have a mentor to support them. Assign a member of your team who’ll act as your new recruit’s buddy.

Ideally someone who has been at the company long enough to be able to answer questions, but also someone who hasn’t been at the company too long – so they can empathise with them as a ‘new starter’.

If you’re looking to introduce a workplace mentoring program as part of your onboarding plan, make sure to check out our complete guide to employee mentoring.

Create an induction plan so that your graduate’s first couple of days aren’t a lonely mix of refreshing their temporary inbox (nope, still just the automatic email welcoming them to Outlook) and looking around in the hope that someone will ask them to do something.

On their first day, introduce them to the team and take them on a tour of the office/building/surrounding area (showing them some of your favourite places!)

Arranging brief induction sessions with members of your team will help a new starter settle in, understand more about your business, and get started on tasks that will be of value to them and to you.

Then, take 10-15 minutes to sit, have a tea or coffee, and explain what will be happening on their first day, and what they can expect from their first week.

Throughout the day, encourage them to ask as many questions as possible. Finally, we think it’s a nice touch to take them out for lunch or for a post-work drink. 

You’ve gone through all this effort to hire them – so, show your new employee how much you value them.

In their first week, create a clear and structured agenda.

If they are training, sitting in meetings, or working on projects, tell them when, where, and what they should bring to each one.

Then, encourage them to sit down with their line manager or supervisor to discuss their goals, ambitions, and where they see the role developing.

Finally, why not kick off their first week by getting them to work on a meaningful task with other team members?

This will give them great insight into what the role is going to involve.

Manage yours and your team’s expectations.

Even though your graduate hire or new employee may have some previous work experience under their belt, chances are they won’t have spent much time in a similar office environment.

They may also be new to your industry.

The first month is integral to both parties – so, early initiatives like mentors can be hugely valuable.

Giving ownership of a task, no matter how small, can boost your graduate hire’s confidence and engagement.

How can you challenge them, stretch them, and offer them experiences in their first few weeks they’ll feel are valuable and worthwhile?

Assigning a new hire a mentor is particularly useful for sales roles, helping give your new employees a standard to work towards and experience hands-on training into the sales practices of your business.

Looking for a sales recruitment company? Get in touch and discover why we’re London’s graduate sales recruitment experts.

Consider how you can enhance your graduate’s soft skills too.

Could they be responsible for manning the phones for a few hours a day to improve their communication skills, or be working on multiple projects to strengthen their time management?

Then, at the end of the month, organise a check-in to ensure that they’re enjoying their new role.

The check-in doesn’t need to be with a HR team – it can be conducted by a line manager, a team lead, or a mentor.

Make sure to use this time to listen, too. The feedback they give can provide a real insight into your company culture and management styles.

Ask them to evaluate their onboarding experience:

What was useful?

What might need more clarification or attention?

Is your buddy system working?

Did they feel their induction was thorough enough?

What new skills have they learnt so far?

How could you improve the onboarding of future hires?

Their evaluation will help you improve your process, as well as help improve employee morale in the workplace, as individuals like to have their voice heard!

The graduate recruitment process isn’t over once you’ve completed the initial onboarding program (up to their first month).

More than 22% of new starters leave a firm within the first 45 days of employment due to poor onboarding.

Moving forward, you can retain your new hires by providing ongoing support, scheduling regular reviews and catch-ups, providing clear and constructive feedback, running through their achievements to date, and setting some objectives in place so they have clear goals to work towards.

Think about opportunities for growth and development, rewards and salary reviews, further mentoring schemes and company-wide perks.

If you’re operating internationally, and you have teams in different parts of the world, onboarding can be even more challenging.

In this case, you can outsource your HR services to a Professional Employer Organisation.

For example, Global PEO, or other providers local to where you are, which can oversee the onboarding process to ensure optimal international employee retention.

It’s understandable, many businesses fall foul of this mistake, even big brands.

You’re so eager to get the candidate on board that you create a picture of an ideal that doesn’t exist.

This can result in a decrease in retention where the new hire just can’t quite adjust to what they were sold versus the reality.

In this case, try getting recruitment and the line manager in the interviews, or describe how you’d induct someone, so they know what to expect.

It may be a probationary period, but you still need to be clear about what success looks like for your graduate hire in month 1-3.

They’ll not be able to hit big targets or complete adventurous projects, because a lot of their time will be spent learning the ropes.

But break it down week by week so they can gauge how they are performing.

It’s always a good idea to put this structure in place at the start, to help new hires (especially graduates) feel that they are being supported.

Make a list of what you would expect them to achieve, and work through it with them so you’re aligned.

This could be making introductions to key clients, engaging with online learning to fill any skill gaps, and starting small projects to get an insight into where their strengths lay.

One of the best ways to induct new employees is to send through an inventory before their state date, detailing what activities they’ll be involved in during the first week.

Removing this uncertainty will help develop their confidence: they can see if they need to dress a certain way for a meeting or do some background research on a key client.