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When it comes to employee onboarding, the stakes are high.
You either fix up your onboarding process or face the quick quitting phenomenon.
According to an onboarding study by BambooHR, employers have roughly 44 days to convince new hires to stay. That being the case, your onboarding process must be well-planned, properly executed and continually optimized.
If you have only 44 days to retain an employee, then you must be super prepared for their arrival.
That's where the new hire checklists come in handy.
With an onboarding checklist, you can check off all the tasks on the go so nothing slips through the cracks throughout your busy day.
Sticking to the checklist will help the welcoming committee prepare efficiently and make the new employee’s integration smooth and successful.
Most importantly, it’ll help make those first 30-90 days an awesome experience that your new hires will cherish as they become part of your organization’s culture.
In this guide, we share ten new hire checklist templates to help you spearhead an onboarding process that makes an impact and keeps new hires at your company for the long haul.
A new hire checklist, also called an onboarding checklist, is a document that keeps track of necessary actions to welcome and integrate a new employee into your organization.
Onboarding checklists can be long or short, depending on your organization's size and HR processes. Small or medium companies typically have simple checklists, while large corporations implement longer checklists that different people must sign off on at various stages.
Here’s an example of a new hire checklist for a developer.
A successful onboarding process depends on well-organized systems. And the new hire checklist is a crucial component.
Here’s why:
Following a comprehensive list before the new employee starts work creates a positive environment for them to settle into. Continuing with it over the first weeks and months helps them integrate into the organization’s culture.
As you hire more employees, the checklists are duplicated and optimized from hire to hire. This way, all new employees are welcomed with a standard onboarding system and the correct resources.
Using a checklist reduces guesswork and missed opportunities. Everyone involved in the onboarding process has the necessary information at their fingertips, and there’s less time wasted looking for answers.
New hire onboarding checklist templates outline all the key activities to be completed by everyone involved in the onboarding process.
Each organization will have a different combination of tasks, but these are some of the most common.
The best and most efficient way to get started with your new hire checklist is to use a template.
Here are ten customizable new hire checklist templates that’ll fit nicely into your onboarding process. They are all fully customizable to fit other roles if needed. Plus, once you customize the template once, you can replicate it for more new hires.
But before customizing, ensure your Visme Brand Kit is set up. You’ll need it to turn these templates into branded checklists. Use Visme’s Brand Wizard to pull all brand assets from your website, and you’re ready to go.
And one last thing. When using Visme to create new hire checklist templates, your HR teams also have access to onboarding presentations, training manuals, and much more.
Before a new employee can put their feet under the desk, there’s a list of activities that need taking care of.
Some of these include creating an employee ID badge, setting up an email and password for them, sharing an onboarding presentation and inviting them to 1-1 meetings with team members. All these activities must be tracked so nothing is forgotten or put aside.
With this new hire checklist for managers, you’ll ensure that everything is ready before the new hire starts, that their first day is a breeze and that there’s an efficient follow-up process.
Onboarding is conducted in stages, and your new hire checklists must cover all of them. This template outlines the actions to complete on the first day, first week, and first month.
These tasks are simplified to fit into the checklist. So, to ensure that all the relevant information is accessible, add interactive hotspots that link to paperwork, scheduling apps, the onboarding presentation and feedback forms to collect the new employees' thoughts on the process.
As a new customer service representative, your new hire needs to get up to speed quickly. Ensure they’re adequately welcomed into the company by taking care of onboarding activities before they come in for their first shift.
Then, as soon as they start, share a live link to this checklist so they know what to expect and when. As your HR team and onboarding manager check off the tasks, the employee will be aware of it and can continue getting set up in a timely fashion.
Create a new hire checklist that not only covers the actions in the pre-boarding stage but also outlines what will happen through the first quarter. You also want it to look good, like this example.
This new hire checklist template includes sections for pre-boarding, first day, first week, first month and first quarter. It also boasts an image placeholder, which you can easily switch out for another from Visme’s extensive stock photo library.
Use this template as a base to create two versions, one for the welcoming team and another for the new hire. They will also need to check things off a list to feel like they’re progressing in the onboarding process.
There are several options for organizing the sections in a new hire checklist: by time frame, department or topic. This template, for example, separates the onboarding tasks into HR, Orientation and Work—each listing the relevant actions.
Inside every section is an icon representing it, helping with visual skimming and information retention. As you customize the template, keep the icons as is or change them for others in Visme’s vast icon library.
When creating your new hire checklist with this template, consider using it digitally instead of printing it out. Not only will you save paper, but it’ll also be more accessible for anyone on a remote team to reference.
One of the advantages of a digital checklist is Visme’s analytics feature, which will show you if the person who received the document has opened it or not.
Plus, when you send this as a live Visme link, you can include a page with instructions like “download as a PDF, check actions off as you progress and send back to me when you’re done.”
In this new hire checklist template, the tasks are labeled Plan and Act, making it easier for the task owner to know how to proceed. It also includes a section for the sign-off approval and start datewhich are useful for a project management onboarding checklist.
Best of all, like all Visme templates, this checklist looks stunning. It gives a good impression while also being practical. Not convinced? Check out what business owner has to say about Visme’s templates:
Business Owner
This checklist template includes actions for the HR department, the new hire’s manager, and the IT department. To ensure everyone involved checks off all items, create a collaborative Visme workspace dedicated to onboarding processes.
Create a folder for each new hire and keep the checklist and other important information in it. Within the checklist itself, use the workflows feature to assign tasks to the people in charge of them and deadlines. This way, all onboarding activities will be handled, and the new hire can start their first day with a solid foundation.
According to research by Paychex, 36% of remote workers found the onboarding process confusing. That’s why onboarding remote employees is particularly tricky and needs due diligence.
Making them feel welcomed and appreciated is imperative for creating an excellent first impression. To achieve that, you need a new hire checklist like this to make it easy for your team to cover all the necessary actions.
One way to facilitate the remote onboarding process is to make the tasks simple and easy to understand. To avoid long-winded explanations, use Visme’s AI Writer to summarize the text and make it short and to the point.
According to a survey by Glean, 42% of respondents said that onboarding information at their new job was scattered on different platforms and difficult to find.
Much of this problem can be solved using a comprehensive new hire training checklist template to help new hires feel less overwhelmed.
To create a checklist for your new hire to follow, use one of the templates in this list and customize it, or harness the power of artificial intelligence with Visme AI.
The wide array of AI tools in Visme’s editor can help you create a checklist from a text prompt with Visme’s AI Document Generator, write the text for the tasks with AI Writer and add relevant visuals to the design with AI Image Generator.
Onboarding a new hire is not a one-person job. Actions start with the HR department and extend to the new hire’s manager, the IT department and the new hires themselves. Everyone has a part to play.
As the onboarding process progresses and different parties complete activities, there are best practices to follow to ensure a seamless experience for all.
Below is a list of best practices pertaining to each person and department involved.
If you still have questions about new hires and onboarding, these FAQs will help clear your doubts.
Dr. Talya Bauer developed the 5 C’s of onboarding, which are:
The best way to onboard a new hire is to prepare before they step into the office or sign in for their first remote day. Follow best practices like the ones in this article and always use new hire checklists to keep track of all the necessary actions for a seamless integration.
There isn’t much difference between a new hire checklist and an onboarding checklist. They will only differ in terms of each organization or company that uses them. Both of these checklists are documents that help organizations welcome new employees into their company.
New hire onboarding starts at the recruitment stage and continues for a few months after the employee begins work. Therefore, an ideal onboarding process lasts around 90 days but can continue for up to a year. Unfortunately, in many companies, it only lasts a few days to a week.
Effective new hire checklists and conscientious onboarding practices keep your organization from losing top talents.
Without a checklist, the onboarding process becomes chaotic. This situation can negatively impact the new employee’s perception of your organization.
Remember, you only have 44 days to convince them to stay. Make every moment count!
Thankfully, your HR department has Visme in their toolkit, ready to create not only new hire checklists but also feedback forms, onboarding presentations, training manuals and many more content types.
Plus, they have access to professional business design features like dynamic fields for multi-project editing, a rich library of templates for many purposes, collaboration and workflow tools to work as a team and dozens more.
If your HR team hasn’t started using Visme yet, you can create a team account right away and get them prepared for new hires and other HR duties.
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