Onboarding a New Employee: A Checklist That Runs Itself
Onboarding fails in the gaps between people. Make the new starter a case, and the gaps have names, dates and owners.
A new starter's first fortnight involves HR, IT, their manager, payroll, facilities and the person who orders the laptops. Each does their part reliably. What fails is the handover between them: IT did not know the start date moved; payroll had the old bank details; the manager assumed HR had sent the contract.
The new starter as a case
An onboarding template: the employee in a contact role (with the starred email being their personal one until day one, and the work one after); start date, probation end and contract review as tracked dates; the manager and the buddy in roles; a tasks list — contract sent, contract signed, right-to-work checked, equipment ordered, accounts created, induction booked, first-week check-in, probation review — each assigned to the role that owns it, each with a due date relative to the start date.
Change the start date and every relative task moves. That alone removes the most common failure.
Documents and signatures
The offer letter and the contract are documents generated from the case — name, role, salary, start date pulled from the fields — and sent as an e-sign request from the case. The signed contract comes back into the case with its audit certificate. Policy acknowledgements are a second request. Nobody chases a PDF.
Files that arrive by themselves
Right-to-work documents, bank details, emergency contacts: a file request sends the new starter a link and the uploads land in the case's Files tab, encrypted at rest. The personal data lives in one place under the HR role's access, not in the manager's inbox.
The people who need to know
A rule on the start date emails IT ten working days before with the equipment list. A rule on the probation end creates a task for the manager three weeks ahead and asks them to decide — confirm, extend, or end — with the answer recorded on the case. The point of contact on the case gets the notifications; the rest of HR does not.
Offboarding is the same case, in reverse
When someone leaves, the same record already holds their contract, their equipment list and their accounts. An offboarding task list on the template — return equipment, revoke accounts, final pay, reference policy — runs from the leaving date. Then the retention rule sets the review date, and years later asks whether the file can go.
