The complete employee onboarding checklist: From pre-boarding to 90 days

October 22, 2025

 

Alex Oliver

14 min read

So, you found your next great hire. Now, get them excited about their new role with an effective employee onboarding checklist. A solid onboarding process can improve retention by 82% and productivity by 70%.

But when you have 500+ employees across departments and locations, consistent onboarding feels impossible. If high turnover and low productivity sound familiar, this guide will help you build a comprehensive, compliant, and streamlined onboarding checklist that works.

Why employee onboarding matters (the business case)

Onboarding is an extension of your talent acquisition strategy. During this time, new employees decide if your company meets expectations. If not, they leave early, hurting team morale and your budget from starting the recruitment process over again.

Here’s what you can gain with an effective onboarding process:

• Reduced hiring costs: Companies save $4,700 per hire in recruitment costs when employees stay long-term.
• Better retention: Best-in-class onboarding retains 91% of first-year employees.
• Faster productivity: Structured processes cut time-to-productivity from months to weeks.
• Higher engagement: Employees feel more connected and invested in the company, increasing employee net promoter scores (eNPS) by up to 50%.
• Stronger employer brand: Strong onboarding creates brand ambassadors who drum up organic interest with your brand.

Free employee onboarding checklist template

With time, money, and company culture at stake, an onboarding checklist template can be the difference between a smooth ride for you and your new hire and one that goes off the rails. Download our complete template with:

• Phase-by-phase breakdown (preboarding through 90 days).
• Customization tips for your circumstances.
• Implementation guidance and success metrics.

Access your free template using the button below!

[Onboarding template download]

Downloadable checklist content structure

You’ll notice our downloadable onboarding checklist covers three phases: 

• Preboarding.
• Orientation (day-one and first week activities).
• Training (30-90 days from start date).

We’ll cover the main to-dos in each phase below. You can also use them as inspiration to build or revamp your existing onboarding workflow.

Preboarding phase (1-2 weeks before start date)

Preboarding is the time between when your new hire accepts their job offer and their first day of work, usually around two weeks before their start date.

Use this period to build excitement by having them complete new hire paperwork, explore training schedules, and answer questions on their interests and career aspirations before their first day. Key tasks include:

Start these tasks immediately after the offer is signed. Many all-in-one talent acquisition and onboarding platforms, like iCIMS, use automation and reminders to give new hires time to complete tasks without overwhelming them.

Day-one checklist

The focus of new hires’ first days is to wrap up any remaining preboarding tasks and introduce them to the company’s policies, systems, structures, contacts, and resources. Day one and the first week comprise new hire orientation — or phase two of onboarding.

The first day typically sees the most involvement from your human resources (HR) team as they collect outstanding preboarding paperwork, review company policies, and answer questions on benefits information. Key tasks include:

First-week activities

First-week activities will continue to acquaint new hires with job expectations, company workflows, schedules, and team dynamics.

Your HR team may also still be involved, assigning employees to complete any mandatory compliance training, such as data privacy, before moving to company-specific training courses, like security measures or software how-tos. Key tasks include:

Pro tip: This week is information-heavy. Balance learning with hands-on projects to help knowledge retention and give you insight into the new hire’s progress. You may also adjust the number of check-in sessions as you see fit.

30-day milestone

The next 30, 60, and 90 days comprise the third phase of new employee onboarding: training.

You’ll continue to assign new employees more learning courses and assignments until they become confident in their role. You’ll also explain how their performance will be evaluated, from success metrics to specific key performance indicators (KPIs) in their role. The training phase follows a repeated cycle of goal setting, assessment, feedback, and adjustment, with only slight differences at each milestone.

Here’s what it’ll look like a month into their new role:

• Goal setting: Provide specific and measurable development goals for the next 30 days.
• Skills assessment: Review completed projects and assignments with the new hire, and identify successes and development gaps.
• Gather feedback: Discuss with new hires any concerns, challenges, support needs, and areas in need of improvement.
• Adjust processes: Take action based on any input, like modifying job descriptions or workflows for better alignment.

Pro tip: Send onboarding surveys to new hires at 30, 60, and 90 days to gather feedback and reduce early attrition. Follow up with additional surveys at six months and one year for further insights.

60-day check-in

Similar to the new hire’s 30-day milestone, at 60 days you’ll set goals, review progress, collect feedback, and adjust strategies as necessary. The biggest difference at 60 days is a greater focus on the new hire’s long-term career goals and development.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

• Employee development plans: Plan for long-term advanced training, such as role shadowing or license and certification exams.
• Career progression discussion: Explore interests, role bands, and growth opportunities.
• Responsibility modifications: Adjust duties based on new hires’ skills, interests, and business needs.
• Networking and relationships: Introduce the new hire to internal and external contacts.

Pro tip: Rewards and recognition are great motivators during onboarding. Celebrate new hires’ achievements in private chats or public shout-outs to boost their confidence and keep them enthusiastic about learning and growing.

90-day evaluation

At 90 days, employees should be familiar with the day-to-day aspects of their role and feel a certain amount of autonomy to troubleshoot and resolve issues without direct supervision.

You’ll follow the pattern of goal-setting, assessment, feedback, and adjustment. You may conduct a formal new-hire performance review to evaluate the new hire’s progress against initial expectations.

You may also plan for their continued development by setting long-term goals, such as quarterly, six-month, and annual objectives, or by providing mentorship opportunities.

This is also the time to evaluate the effectiveness of your onboarding program. Ask yourself:

• Did training courses adequately prepare the new hire for their position?
• Were there any gaps in their training?
• Were onboarding goals challenging yet realistic and achievable?
• How efficient was the onboarding process?
• How much did the process interfere with the team’s day-to-day responsibilities?

Take these learnings to improve your onboarding process and shorten time-to-productivity for future new hires.

Did you know? Many companies use the first 90 days as a probationary or introductory period, aligning with benefits waiting periods. Don’t forget to follow up on new hires’ benefit enrollments.

The 4 pillars of successful employee onboarding

The four pillars of a successful onboarding process are compliance, clarification, culture, and connection. Think of these as your North Star.

Every task should support at least one pillar:

• Compliance: Verifies compliance with all labor laws for new hires, from completing onboarding documents like I-9 and tax forms to mandatory background checks, training, and industry-specific certifications.
• Clarification: Focuses on role clarity for new hires, such as explaining job descriptions, performance standards, goals, and career paths, to reduce anxiety and align expectations.
• Culture: Shares and encourages participation in company values, norms, and team dynamics to foster workplace integration and culture-fit.
• Connection: Covers organization relationship building, from networking to mentorship and social integration to build community and improve job satisfaction.

Employee onboarding best practices and expert tips

Onboarding becomes increasingly more complex as you grow: more stakeholders, more steps, and more versions, depending on the role, seniority, department, and location.

While the four pillars establish alignment with onboarding best practices, try some of the expert tips below to develop a process unique to you:

• Structure everything: Plan tasks and owners and hold prearrival stakeholder meetings.
• Make it accessible: Offer multiple ways to complete paperwork and adjust based on individual progress.
• Create feedback loops: Conduct regular check-ins with new hires and stakeholders to fix issues quickly.
• Think globally: Learn local regulations and cultural norms when hiring internationally.
• Stay current: Monitor labor law changes, like new forms and mandatory training, and update processes accordingly.
• Keep improving: Review your process annually to address bottlenecks and update training.

Remote employee onboarding best practices

Growing companies benefit from accessing top talent anywhere. But, that means transforming in-person onboarding into a digital experience.

The first challenge is technological. You need IT support, hardware, and software to minimize communication gaps. Your IT team must ship equipment, provide installation instructions, and troubleshooting protocols.

Consider designating an IT onboarding expert to manage all tech requirements. Managers also need to review technology standards with new team members, like meeting etiquette, response times, and time zone considerations.

Besides video conferencing software, remote recruits also need messaging systems like Microsoft Teams or Slack, HR platforms to access personnel files and training materials, and project management systems for tracking work and accessing resources, such as video tutorials.

The second challenge is isolation. To prevent disconnection, increase check-in frequency to daily for the first week and weekly for the first month.

Encourage new hires to participate in virtual introductions, coffee hours, mentorship programs, and culture events that foster feelings of inclusion and reduce the chance of proximity bias.

Pro tip: Make remote introductions personal. Collect new employees’ interests during preboarding, then send favorite snacks on day one or use icebreaker games, like bingo, during team introductions.

Common onboarding mistakes to avoid

Onboarding is an iterative process. Structured planning can anticipate and reduce common onboarding mistakes like:

Measuring onboarding success

Effective onboarding affects several key company KPIs, from new hire retention to employee satisfaction. To track onboarding’s return on investment (ROI), you’ll need to gather and analyze data on the areas most important to you.

• For productivity focus: Track time-to-productivity against industry and historical benchmarks and monitor quality of hire during ramp-ups.
• For employee satisfaction focus: Send new hires onboarding and manager surveys to identify and act on your onboarding experience’s strengths and weaknesses.
• For cost focus: Compare cost-per-hire and onboarding costs to new hire retention at 30, 60, and 90 days and beyond. How are their contributions affecting your company’s bottom line?

Remember: You’re more likely to be successful improving one or two onboarding metrics rather than everything at once. Collect as much data as you can, but focus first on the most important areas to you before moving on. You’re more likely to see improvement and less likely to burn out from major revamps.

Looking for other metrics to track? Explore onboarding and recruitment metrics.

How iCIMS streamlines onboarding

You have a basic onboarding process. Next, you need to scale it up to fit your enterprise needs.

Begin by evaluating your onboarding tools. iCIMS automates preboarding, integrates with your human resource information system, ensures compliance, and tracks metrics like completion rates and task progression.

And, its mobile access lets new hires and staff complete tasks anywhere, while integration with its applicant tracking system prevents duplicate data entry.

Fulton Financial used iCIMS to achieve 100% automated onboarding, eliminate 43 pieces of paperwork, and raise new hire satisfaction scores.

Put your onboarding plans into action and get hours back to you each day with the right software. Schedule an iCIMS AI hiring platform demo to see how automated onboarding can streamline your process.