Ask HN: Best practices for onboarding new employees?

When I start at a new company I create the "Onboading Guide" I wish I would have had. I take notes on all the things I had to do and where (and sometimes how) to do them. I include a "Link Bank" of all the random URLs that no one knows because they all have them in their history or bookmarks, and all the IT requests / installs that need to happen. As I continue with the company I update this doc as things change or new things come up and refer back to it myself when I need to remember how to do a rare but important task. This is the third company I've done this at and each time I get a bit better at creating it, and the feedback I get from new team members I send it to is really positive. Crucial - This doc is online in a format that others can contribute to and I encourage new team members (and interested current team members) to update it themselves.

We're all human and changing environments can be tough. My first task as a manager is to always make them feel welcome and comfortable on their first day. Everyone can understand the feeling of being lost and unsure of what the next steps are.

I always detail the stupid things in an email before the new hire shows up. Where to park, what entrance to use, what to wear, etc. Always make it a point to greet them at the door on their first day. It can make a huge difference to see a smiling face first thing when you walk in as opposed to having to talk to a receptionist to page someone.

What we are doing at my company (we have a general onboarding process):

Before the onboarding: - we make sure all access has been give to every SaaS/software/etc needed for the employee to be able to work day one. We have defined a list of access needed for each job (engineering, finance, customer success, etc). - we make sure that we have all necessary hardware (e.g macbook, screens, keyboard etc.) and that all necessary software/update are already there.

Onboarding day: - First meeting is about presenting our company, what we do, our values, the market in which we work, etc. - Second meeting is finalizing the computer setup (e.g. password) - Third meeting is about security (my job). I'm presenting security, talking about our policies and etc. It's a pretty lightweight discussion. - Fourth meeting is the HR meeting (e.g. sign the NDA, talk about insurance, etc.) - Final meeting is a presentation of our application.

All along the day, we make it clear that they can ask any questions, anytime.

After the onboarding: 1 week after the onboarding day, we sent a survey about the onboarding day (what did you like, what could be improved, etc.). Only the Head of HR see this (for confidentiality).

I like to keep this kind of info on 4x6 index cards. Easy to reorder, toss, review. Group them into a few categories, like how to, questions, that's weird, diagrams of how things fit together, etc.

Then set aside time to go through them on a regular basis. Make scripts from them, checklists, docs...

Take all their time that you need and don't hold back. If due to all your questions they realize their onboarding process is weak then they'll at least know they have to put more thought into it. If you avoid asking questions then nothing might improve.

What's cool though is if YOU write the onboarding process from a new person's perspective as you go. Someone already working there trying to set up an onboarding process is maybe going to be blind to the things that new people might want to know.

I just started as a new dev for a medium-sized company and their onboarding process was literally a firehose of HR communications about corporate things and people's milestones and birthdays, a tree of links to various neglected documents in various disconnected systems ("Confluence for this, Google docs for that, oh and a treasure chest of MS Office documents and PDF's in Dropbox"), a neverending series of credentials-related mysteries, and here's a series of webinars we recorded 6 years ago for stuff we rarely use any more, watch all of them so you can be out of our hair. Oh and good luck if you need anything, your IT guy has better things to do than correct your stupid name in the directory.

Probably pretty typical but coming from small companies it's a total shitshow.