---
title: Employee Onboarding Process and Checklist | PPS International
description: A four-phase employee onboarding process from selection through the first year, with a checklist by phase, best practices, leader onboarding and metrics.
image: https://www.ppsinternational.net/hubfs/pps-international/resources/images/pps-resource-5a36fae369a4983af919.jpg
---

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Guide & Tool [Talent Management](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources?topic=talent-management) May 18, 2016

# A Proven Employee Onboarding Process: Four Phases, a Checklist and Best Practices

![Tool: A Proven On-Boarding Process](https://www.ppsinternational.net/hs-fs/hubfs/pps-international/resources/images/pps-resource-5a36fae369a4983af919.jpg?width=680&height=572&name=pps-resource-5a36fae369a4983af919.jpg)

Onboarding is a critical process to create fully contributing, engaged leaders in your workplace. Even the most experienced of leaders can benefit from a structured onboarding process, and so does every other hire. Here is one we often recommend for clients: a four-phase employee onboarding process that starts during selection and runs through the first year, with a checklist for each phase, the best practices we see in organizations that onboard well, notes on leaders and on remote hires, how to measure the result and answers to the questions HR teams ask us most.

The case for structure is easy to make. Gallup reports that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees \[1\]. Most onboarding fails in the same two places: it stops after the first week, and it is left to HR alone.

## What an employee onboarding process is

An employee onboarding process is the structured set of activities through which a new hire, or a newly promoted leader, learns what the organization expects, builds the relationships and knowledge the role requires and becomes a fully contributing member of the team. Orientation is the first day or week of it: paperwork, systems access, introductions and policies. Onboarding is the months that follow, and the difference matters because most of what determines whether a hire succeeds happens after orientation ends.

Bauer's research for the SHRM Foundation describes four building blocks of successful onboarding: compliance (the rules and policies), clarification (what the role and its expectations are), culture (how the organization works, written and unwritten) and connection (the relationships the new hire needs) \[2\]. The four-phase process below covers all four, and adds the piece most onboarding leaves out, which is development.

## The four phases of a proven onboarding process

### Phase 1: Identification

This phase occurs during the selection process, and the action items below should be completed through your hiring activities. A [strategic staffing process](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/videos/video-strategic-staffing-process) makes them routine rather than dependent on the interviewer.

[![On-Boarding & Orientation Framework](https://www.ppsinternational.net/hs-fs/hubfs/pps-international/resources/images/pps-resource-f0a5fe592a0dc2fe09f9.png?width=1008&height=1024&name=pps-resource-f0a5fe592a0dc2fe09f9.png)](https://www.ppsinternational.net/hubfs/pps-international/resources/images/pps-resource-48a99f7d0ad6cdb47afb.png)

- Present organizational context by discussing company goals, organizational culture, your competitive landscape and, for agencies and municipalities, major constituents.
- Share departmental functions and any key players in the departments.
- Determine fit with individual roles: identify the responsibilities of the role as well as the authority and scope of the position and any resources available to the candidate.
- Offer community perspective by sharing the company culture and any benefits or offerings available to your employees and staff.

### Phase 2: Indoctrination

The action items listed below should be presented as structured, self-paced activities to be completed within three months of hire.

- Present organizational context by outlining policies, customers, clients and constituents, identifying any partners and alliances and defining the organizational mission, vision and strategy.
- Share departmental functions and obligations by discussing topics such as budgeting, operations and procedures, and current initiatives and their progress to date.
- Determine fit with individual roles by identifying tools and logistics as well as personal performance objectives.
- Offer community perspective by defining a support network and how to navigate it.

### Phase 3: Development

During the first year of employment, development happens through a series of structured, formal coaching and training programs. These programs should include things like:

- A personal development needs assessment, such as the [*Harrison Assessment®*](https://www.ppsinternational.net/assessments) and an [*Interaction Styles®*](https://www.ppsinternational.net/interaction-styles) self-profile, to identify growth opportunities within the role.
- Working with a coach, creating a personal development plan focused on the findings from the needs assessments. Our guide to [individual development plans](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/guides/individualdevelopmentplans) shows the format.
- Attending a baseline program such as [*Management Essentials*](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/programs/management-essentials) or [*Manager as Mentor & Coach*](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/programs/manager-as-mentor-coach) to build skills.

### Phase 4: Expansion

The final phase is an ongoing process focused on the continuous development of your employees. These objectives should be completed through structured, on-the-job experiences and formal training.

- Check progress against expectations and development, using tools such as a customized [*Lockwood Leadership Assessment®*](https://www.ppsinternational.net/assessments) 360 to help you.
- Meet with a trained coach to revisit and refine the development plan.
- Complete on-the-job development actions such as pre-determined projects and activities, regular meetings with the coach and additional development programs. Our guide to [20 ways to develop skills and knowledge](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/guides/tool-20-options-for-development) lists the options.

## Employee onboarding checklist by phase

Here is the same process as a checklist, with the owner of each item. We suggest keeping one copy per hire, visible to HR, the hiring manager and the new hire, so that nobody assumes someone else did it:

| Phase And Timing | HR And Talent Development | Hiring Manager | New Hire |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Identification (during selection) | Success profile and role scope written; interview guide covers context, culture and constituents; offer package explains benefits and community. | Presents goals, department functions and key players in interviews; confirms authority, scope and resources of the role. | Asks what success looks like at 90 days and one year; meets future peers where possible. |
| Indoctrination (first 90 days) | Self-paced activities prepared: policies, customers, partners, mission and strategy; systems access on day one; buddy assigned; 30- and 60-day check-ins scheduled. | Sets performance objectives in writing by week two; walks through budgeting, operations and current initiatives; introduces the support network; holds weekly one-on-ones. | Completes the self-paced activities; builds the support network; raises questions early. |
| Development (first year) | Needs assessment administered and debriefed; coach assigned; baseline program scheduled; development plan on file by day 90. | Reviews the development plan; creates opportunities to apply what the program teaches; gives feedback on the new behaviors. | Owns the development plan; attends the baseline program; applies and reports back. |
| Expansion (ongoing) | 360 or progress check scheduled at the one-year mark; development options curated; program participation tracked. | Assigns projects and stretch work; revisits the plan with the coach and the employee; connects development to the next role. | Completes on-the-job development actions; revisits the plan; seeks the next stretch. |

## Onboarding best practices from our client work

Here are the practices that separate onboarding that produces contributing employees from onboarding that produces completed paperwork:

- Start before day one. Everything in the Identification phase happens during selection, which is when the organization has the candidate's full attention and can still be candid about the role.
- Make the hiring manager the owner. HR designs the process and supplies the tools; the manager runs the relationship. Weekly one-on-ones in the first 90 days do more than any welcome event.
- Assign a buddy with a role description. A peer who is expected to check in, answer the questions people are reluctant to ask their manager and make introductions, rather than a name on a form.
- Structure the self-paced activities. A list of policies to read is not onboarding. Give the activities a sequence, a completion date and a conversation in which the new hire discusses what they learned.
- Assess early and individualize. A style profile and a work preference assessment in the first weeks turn a generic plan into one built for the person, and they give the manager a shared language for feedback.
- Put a development plan on file by day 90. A hire without a plan may struggle to find resources.
- Build the checklist so it works remotely. As part of our work in designing an executive onboarding package for a well-known retail brand, as well as their all-employee brand onboarding toolkit, we built a checklist that would work well for both in-person and remote scenarios, which turned out to be the version everyone used.
- Plan for the role's specific knowledge. When a global defense subcontractor of more than 100,000 employees needed to onboard pursuit and bid-capture teams across 7 divisions in the U.S., many of whom had not worked through a request for proposals, a week-long bootcamp on the tools and systems came first, followed by microlearning with case-based learning as ongoing development.

## Onboarding leaders, managers and executives

The process above was written for leaders, and it applies with a few additions. A new leader inherits a team, a set of stakeholders and decisions already in motion, so the Identification and Indoctrination phases need to cover the people as carefully as the policies:

- A stakeholder map prepared by the hiring manager or HR: who the leader depends on, who depends on the leader and who expects to be consulted.
- An assimilation session with the intact team in the first month, facilitated by someone other than the new leader, so that the team can say what it needs and the leader can say how they work.
- A coach or mentor for the first 90 days, with a standing agenda: what was expected, what was observed, what to try next.
- Skills for the transition. Newly promoted managers often believe that, because they were promoted, they already have the skills; a baseline program on core leadership conversations closes that gap.

In a [new manager development program for a large, technically focused global organization](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/case-studies/new-manager-development-a-case-study), the learning journey began with a welcome-to-the-role package of self-paced resources, a style preference survey and a scavenger-hunt style game matching existing resources to typical manager issues, followed by a roundtable with subject matter experts, a facilitated workshop on core leadership conversations and peer discussion groups. The structure is the Indoctrination and Development phases applied to a leader population.

## Onboarding remote and hybrid employees

A remote hire goes through the same four phases with less incidental contact, so the connection elements have to be scheduled rather than assumed. A few practices we suggest:

- Keep a connection checklist for new remote hires, and be sure that a new remote hire is not the name with the oldest last-contact date on it.
- Give the buddy a cadence, with check-ins before meetings and in the first weeks rather than an open-ended offer to help.
- Use a shared "A User's Guide to…" document for each team member, covering working preferences, communication preferences and style-based information, so that a new hire can learn how colleagues work without months of observation.
- Ship materials and equipment before day one, and run the first-week schedule on the new hire's time zone.

Our article on [staying connected when you manage a remote team](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/articles/ways-to-stay-connected-when-you-manage-a-remote-team) covers the practices managers use after the first 90 days.

## Measuring onboarding

Onboarding is easy to measure badly, by completion of the checklist, and worth measuring well. Here are the indicators we suggest tracking for each cohort of hires:

- Time to productivity: the point at which the manager rates the hire as performing the core of the role independently.
- 90-day and first-year retention, compared with the organization's history.
- New hire survey at 30 and 90 days: clarity of expectations, quality of manager conversations, whether they would recommend the organization.
- Manager check-in completion, which in our experience predicts most of the rest.
- Development plans on file by day 90, and the share of first-year hires who attended the baseline program.
- Hiring manager survey: whether the process gave them what they needed.

Our guide to [measuring training effectiveness](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/articles/measure-training-success-transform-ld-from-cost-center-to-impact-creator) describes how to set up the comparison so that the results are credible.

## Where onboarding processes fall short

Here is what we have learned about the failure points:

- Onboarding ends with orientation, so the Development and Expansion phases do not happen.
- The process lives in HR, and the hiring manager receives a calendar invitation rather than a role.
- Expectations are set late or not at all, so the first performance conversation is the first time the hire hears them.
- Leaders are exempted because they are experienced, which is the population that most needs the stakeholder and team work.
- Remote hires get the same checklist with none of the scheduled connection, and lose touch with the team.
- Nothing is measured beyond completion, so the process does not improve.

## Frequently asked questions

### What are the stages of the employee onboarding process?

We recommend four: Identification during selection, Indoctrination in the first 90 days, Development through the first year and Expansion as ongoing growth. Models with five stages usually split orientation and the first months apart; the important point is that the process runs for a year, not a week.

### What is the difference between onboarding and orientation?

Orientation is the first day or week: paperwork, systems, introductions and policies. Onboarding is the months of expectation setting, learning, relationship building and development that follow. Orientation is one activity inside onboarding.

### What is the 30-60-90 day onboarding rule?

A planning convention that sets what the new hire should know, do and deliver at 30, 60 and 90 days, with a check-in at each point. It fits inside the Indoctrination phase above, and it works best when the manager writes it with the new hire in the first week.

### How long should onboarding last?

Through the first year. The first 90 days settle expectations and relationships; the rest of the year is where skills are built and the development plan is put to work. Ending at 90 days is the most common reason a well-started onboarding produces an average employee.

### What are the four C's of onboarding?

Compliance, clarification, culture and connection, from Bauer's research for the SHRM Foundation. Some versions add a fifth, check-back, for the follow-up conversations. The four phases above cover all of them, with development added.

### What is the hiring manager's role in onboarding?

To set expectations in writing early, hold weekly one-on-ones in the first 90 days, introduce the support network, review the development plan and give feedback on the new behaviors as they appear. HR designs the process; the manager is the person the new hire experiences it through.

## Where to start

Take one recent hire and walk their experience against the four phases and the checklist. The gaps are usually in Development and Expansion, and in what the hiring manager was asked to do. PPS International Limited designs onboarding processes and the tools that go with them, from success profiles and [interviewing skills for hiring managers](https://www.ppsinternational.net/resources/programs/hiring-the-best) to assessments, coaching and baseline programs for new leaders. Learn more about our [HR training and development](https://www.ppsinternational.net/sales-hr-effectiveness) work, or [contact us](https://www.ppsinternational.net/contact) to talk through your onboarding process.

## References

1. Gallup. Why the Onboarding Experience Is Key for Retention. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/235121/why-onboarding-experience-key-retention.aspx
2. Bauer, T. N. (2010). Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success. SHRM Foundation Effective Practice Guidelines Series.

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