The new employee onboarding checklist is the first official interaction between HR and employees. Checklists explain to the team what they should expect during the onboarding process and their company's expectations and themselves. The new employee onboarding checklist will guide them through all of their key points and help them, their managers, and the management team to develop a framework that the company can stand behind due to their honesty, fairness, and transparency.

It is essential to have an excellent onboarding program for any HR team. This process can become a little complicated since it involves a lot of documentation and knowledge sharing about the organization and the roles offered. The checklist needs regular updating and maintenance as the relationship between HR and employees grows.

New Employee Onboarding Checklist Process

The process of hiring a new employee consists of three important stages namely Pre-onboarding, Onboarding, and Orientation and Induction. Each stage has different elements and gathers employees' information and provides role clarity and organizational functionalities.

1. Pre-onboarding Stage

This is the first exchange between the HR management and the newly onboarded employee. Once the employee gets shortlisted, the HR recruiter will roll out the offer letter via email to the employee with all the necessary details.

The HR recruiter will further gather the candidate's information, eligibility status, and work permit details. After gathering all the personal details of the employee the next step involves the background verification process. This is the stage where the verification of the candidate's academic information, address, and work experience details will take place.

After the verification of the employee details, HR will further guide the candidate with brief details on the date of joining and credentials for the HR onboarding portal.

Checklists for the Pre-onboarding stage:

• Rolling out the offer letter.

• Sending an official welcome email.

• Acknowledgment of offer.

• Background verification form.

• Point of contact person details.

• Sharing location details, date of joining, and time.

2. On-boarding Stage

This is the official onboarding stage where the newly hired candidates meet the company, and their respected teams to begin their journey. The employee meets the HR manager to know about the company and the respected team to know their roles and responsibilities. The official exchange of paperwork gets finalized at this stage.

Employees will come to know about their compensation, perks, organization policies and procedures, dress code, leave policies, and other benefits. This is the stage where the employee will get an opportunity to discuss their doubts and concerns and get them clarified.

The point of contact person will help the new candidates to take a look at the entire work location, work station, transport facilities, cafeteria, food court, and recreational facilities if any.

Checklists for the Onboarding stage:

• Contract or Agreement paper.

• Login credentials for new hire onboarding site.

• Official creation of organization email IDs.

• Providing employee welcome kit.

• ID card photo, access card, and key activation.

• Provision of employee IT assets.

3. Orientation and Induction

As a best practice, many organizations arrange the induction program on the first day of joining. Orientation is a process of events that is inclusive of several stages of an employee's initial period with the organization.

Simply put, induction is for the employees to know about the organization's mission, vision, policies, organization's products, and services, clientele and partners details, the origin of the organization, founder details, and much more. Whereas, orientation

Induction is usually a one-way program as the event is curated to provide the onboarded employees with information about the organization. Orientation on the other hand is a process of events that includes introducing the new employees to other team members, providing them with onboarding recorded videos about the organization, probationary period, etc., This is the stage of integration between the new employees and the organization.

Checklists for the Orientation and Induction stage:

• Video recordings about the organization.

• Briefing about the employee's team and organizational chart.

• Creation of goals and metrics for the employee's probationary period.

• Explaining the career framework.

• Discussing employee's expectations.

• Scheduling of training period and employee progress meetings.

Best of New Employee Onboarding Software 2022:

1. Zenefits

Zenefits is a SaaS cloud-based software for human resource management and onboarding platform. This application comprises tools for onboarding, recruitment, career management, and development. The application also eases the work of HR administration. They exclusively support small and mid-size businesses. Organizations can use this software for all-in-one HR activities.

Notable Onboarding features:

• Offer letter templates

• Background checker

• Self-onboarding

• Digital tax documents

• Digital signatures

• Account provisioning

2. GoCo

GoCo is a web-based B2B onboarding software that enables organizations to onboard and manage remote teams across multiple geographies. GoCo is highly flexible software with great customer service capabilities that can be used to manage HR and support teams across organizations. They will allow you to describe your procedures, rules, and relationships before assisting you in developing an HR solution that will precisely fit into your present operations.

Notable Onboarding features:

• Paper free new hire onboarding

• Customized offer letters with embedded signatures

• Automated and streamlined onboarding workflow

• Self-service employee benefits enrollment

• Task management

• Simplified payroll setup

3. Gusto

Gusto is a cloud-delivered, B2B onboarding software, which helps companies with HR payroll services, benefits, onboarding, and other people management tools. Gusto, which is designed to ease small business HR operations, takes care of all paperwork-related complexity. Documents are stored and shared online using this platform and can get e-signature instantaneously from any location. Gusto's platform also includes comprehensive onboarding checklists to assist you and the recruit in getting everything in order as quickly as possible.

Notable Onboarding features:

• New hire report

• Create and send offer letters

• Hiring module

• Customized onboarding checklists

• Time tracker

• Employee handbook

4. BambooHR

BambooHR is a web-based B2B onboarding software. It provides a human resource information system for small and growing businesses that includes an applicant tracking system. Any HR team or department may use BambooHR to optimize the hiring process, onboard new workers, manage compensation, monitor and analyze employee data, and workforce data analytics to manage all aspects of the employee lifecycle. It simplifies the whole recruitment process, from applications through first-day orientation, by utilizing an integrated ATS and onboarding tools.

Notable Onboarding features:

• Onboarding templates

• Preboarding packages

• New hire packet templates

• Automated onboarding tasks

• Built-in e-signatures

• Applicant tracking

5. WorkBright

WorkBright is a B2B software that helps companies to launch their employee's onboarding. It is an HR solution that assists with the processing and induction of new workers. By automating the process and reducing paperwork, the web-based program claims to cut the traditional administrative efforts and related costs of onboarding. Hiring companies may easily add new employees to WorkBright and have the service send out registration letters, urging home portal login and internet-enabled mobile-based application.

Notable Onboarding features:

• Activity dashboard

• Job description management

• Orientation workflow management

• Recruitment management

• Workflow management

• Self-service portal

Closing Thoughts

A new employee boarding checklist is a useful tool for anyone, whether they work for a huge organization or a startup. The basic goal behind this guide is to provide a list of checklists that are intended to make things easier.

At the end of the day, everyone who hires a new employee should be pleased with how things went. Checklists are created not only to simplify the work for the newly onboarded employee but also the entire HR process. The whole idea behind these software tools is to make the onboarding process as smooth as possible.

No checklist is perfect, but that's what the next step is for. Help us build a better checklist by offering feedback and testing it out.