Onboarding Checklist: Tasks by Phase and Owner

What goes wrong when someone new starts is rarely difficult. Usually it's small things. The laptop wasn't ordered, or nobody booked lunch on the first day, or the conversation about expectations kept getting postponed and never happened. In each case, someone assumed someone else had it in hand.

This checklist gives every task a named owner. It covers 22 tasks in four phases, from preboarding to day 90, and each one is marked HR, manager, buddy or IT. Copy it and swap the roles for the ones you actually have.

Why does every task need an owner?

Without a named owner, nobody checks that a task gets done. "We" and "the team" don't count. When everyone is responsible, the task waits until the new hire notices it's missing, and by then the first impression has already been made.

The manager matters most. According to Gallup, new hires are 3.4 times as likely to say their onboarding was a success when the manager takes an active part. That holds even when HR has built a good portal and sent every document as a PDF. The manager still has to be genuinely involved.

Four roles share the work, and each takes the part it does best.

• HR runs the process: documents, the right training assigned, follow-up surveys, and the same quality for every new hire.
• The manager sets direction: expectations, goals, feedback, and the relationship that makes someone want to stay.
• The buddy makes the new person feel at home: the unwritten rules, the questions that feel too small for anyone else, and a human safety net.
• IT handles access: equipment, accounts and logins that work on day 1.

We see this with our own customers at Learnifier: the checklist holds up when the four roles actually do their part.

The reasoning behind each phase is in our onboarding process guide. This post is about who does what, and when.

Before day 1: the preboarding checklist

The weeks between the signed contract and the start date are the easiest to forget, because the new hire isn't around yet. They're also the weeks when silence does the most damage. Someone who hears nothing for six weeks starts to wonder whether they chose right, and some keep interviewing.

Five tasks cover the essentials. For why it matters, read our article on what preboarding is and why it pays off.

• Owner: HR. Send the welcome email and the digital employment paperwork within a week of the contract being signed, so everything is completed and returned before day 1.
• Owner: IT. Order the equipment and set up accounts, email and access rights. Tested and ready before the start date.
• Owner: Manager. Call the new hire, walk through the first week, and describe in concrete terms what day 1 will look like.
• Owner: Buddy. Send a short personal hello, so at least one face is familiar on the first morning.
• Owner: HR. Send the preboarding material: a welcome video, an introduction to the team, and the practical details people actually wonder about, from dress code to parking.

Two of those five tasks can run on their own once your HR system is connected to your learning platform. The new hire's details are in the HR system from the day the contract is signed, so the welcome email can go out that day and the material and training can be released on schedule, with nobody keeping track of who starts when. The connection is an integration you set up once, and a few steps will still be done by hand.

The manager's call, the buddy's hello and IT's setup still need a person.

Day 1 checklist

The goal for day 1 is that the new hire goes home feeling it was right to say yes. Nobody remembers the policy walkthrough afterwards. Everybody remembers whether someone was waiting at the door and whether the login worked.

Keep the admin short and let the day be about meeting colleagues. Eight hours of information is more than anyone can take in.

• Owner: Manager. Meet the new hire in person at the start of the day, show them around and introduce their closest colleagues.
• Owner: IT. Be on hand and check that the computer, logins and key systems work. If something fails, fix it within the hour.
• Owner: HR. Cover the remaining admin: payroll details, policies, security basics, and whatever preboarding didn't get to.
• Owner: Buddy. Take the new colleague to lunch and answer the questions nobody wants to bother the manager with.

Week 1 checklist

By the end of the first week, the new hire should be clear on what the role is about. That is less common than you'd think. Research from Gallup suggests that about half of all employees don't really know what is expected of them at work.

The confusion often starts right here. The calendar fills with introductions, and nobody has talked about what the job is meant to lead to. One proper conversation now saves the new hire months of guessing.

• Owner: Manager. Hold the expectations conversation: what the role should contribute, what a good result looks like, and how progress will be followed up.
• Owner: HR. Start the mandatory training: compliance, security and the job's key tools, preferably as short modules rather than one long session.
• Owner: Manager. Book intro meetings with the people the new hire will work with most, inside the team and outside it.
• Owner: Buddy. Check in every day, even if it's only five minutes. You don't need a reason. The point is that asking questions starts to feel normal.

Day 30, 60 and 90 checklist

The follow-up is where onboarding usually falls short. According to Gallup, only 29% of new hires say they feel fully prepared and supported after their onboarding. Most checklists stop after week 1, and the new hire feels forgotten once the welcome week is over.

Split the time to day 90 into three checkpoints with three tasks each.

Day 30: adjust

• Owner: Manager. Hold the 30-day conversation. Give feedback, ask for it, and adjust the plan.
• Owner: HR. Send a short onboarding survey while the details are fresh, so the next onboarding gets better.
• Owner: Manager. Hand over the first task or project the new hire runs on their own. Pick one they can succeed at.

Day 60: raise the bar

• Owner: Manager. Check progress against the week-1 goals and give more responsibility where things already work well.
• Owner: HR. Confirm the training is completed and plan the next development step after onboarding.
• Owner: Buddy. Taper the daily check-ins, but make it clear the new hire can still come to you.

Day 90: look ahead

• Owner: Manager. Hold the 90-day conversation: performance, wellbeing, and goals for the next six months.
• Owner: HR. Formally close the onboarding checklist and let the regular employee journey take over.
• Owner: Manager. Mark the three-month milestone and ask what you'd do differently the next time someone joins.

Onboarding checklists for customers and partners

Everything above is employee onboarding, because that's the most common case. The same structure of phases and owners works just as well for a customer learning your product or a partner representing your brand.

For customers and partners, swap HR for customer success or partner managers, and the training is about your product and your processes.

The interactive timeline in our onboarding guide shows the employee, customer and partner tracks side by side, from preboarding to day 90. For the partner track, our partner onboarding guide has a checklist of its own.

How do you keep the checklist from becoming a paper exercise?

Many checklists get ticked once, by the person who wrote them, and then sit in a shared folder nobody opens again. The way out is to move whatever can be automated out of the document and into the learning platform.

That uses the same link between the HR system and the learning platform as in preboarding. Once the flow is in place, the new hire gets their training in week 1 and the survey on day 30 without HR sending anything out, and HR gets that time back for the parts that need a person. The survey also becomes worth more, because it now arrives after every hire and you can see what the next person will need.

Tracking 22 tasks by hand for every hire works for a while, but not once you're hiring every month. That is why we at Learnifier put the effort into automating the parts that repeat, so the owners have time for the rest.

Start with what you have. Take the checklist, run it by hand at the next hire if you need to, and then automate what repeats. Ready-made checklists are in our free guide Preboarding and onboarding: keys to a great start.

The next new hire's first day is already in someone's calendar. Put the names in the checklist before then.