Onboarding Checklist

When to activate

• Creating onboarding plans for new hires
• Setting 30-60-90 day milestones for new roles
• Building team-specific onboarding documentation
• Tracking onboarding completion and new hire satisfaction
• Standardizing onboarding across departments

When NOT to use

• For offboarding/exit processes
• For training program design (separate scope)
• For performance management frameworks

Instructions

1. Define pre-start tasks. IT setup (laptop, accounts, access), HR paperwork, welcome email, buddy assignment.
2. Build Week 1 schedule. Orientation, team intros, tool walkthroughs, codebase/project overview, first small task.
3. Create 30-day plan. Learn team processes, complete onboarding training, ship first contribution, 1:1 with key stakeholders.
4. Create 60-day plan. Own a project end-to-end, participate in code/design reviews, build cross-team relationships.
5. Create 90-day plan. Fully productive, proposing improvements, mentoring others on domain knowledge.
6. Add check-in schedule. Manager 1:1 weekly, buddy check-in bi-weekly, HR check-in at 30 and 90 days.
7. Define success metrics. Time-to-first-contribution, onboarding satisfaction score, 90-day retention rate.

Example

Onboarding Plan — Senior Backend Engineer

Pre-Start (Day -7 to Day 0):
☐ Laptop shipped with dev environment pre-configured
☐ GitHub, Slack, Jira, Datadog accounts created
☐ Welcome email from manager with Week 1 schedule
☐ Buddy assigned: [Peer Name]

Week 1:
☐ Complete company orientation (2 hours)
☐ Deploy a bug fix to staging
☐ Attend team standup and retro
☐ 1:1 with manager: set 30-day goals