Thank you to Erin Rice for inviting me to The Employee Onboarding Podcast from Process Street to discuss The Human Element Missing in Employee Onboarding!
Process Street is a workflow and operations software platform, and this podcast helps listeners learn from HR experts and business operators about how to design a magical employee onboarding experience since 2022. The next class I plan to create will be about creating an employee onboarding program, which is an experience that led to my interest in training and instructional design! As I am trying to finish my new master's degree and book before I take on another big project, this class will likely be available in 2026.
In the meantime, you can help shape the course by answering a few of the questions in this survey, which is the start of my research.
I also want to thank Kate Meda for creating this excellent summary and takeaways from the episode on Process Street's blog!
If you'd rather listen than read the blog below, here is the audio:
Or you can listen on any of these platforms:
Introduction
Erin Rice. People and Operations Specialist at Process Street. welcomed everyone to the Employee Onboarding Podcast, where we are unpacking great onboarding ideas and best practices from the world's top HR practitioners and thought leaders. At Process Street, that starts with our mission to make work fun, fast, and faultless for teams everywhere.
Erin introduced my work as involving creating and delivering educational experiences to help people grow their careers and businesses, using the lessons I learned from building an agency from the ground up as employee number one. I also created plans, processes, and programs such as a knowledge management program, an award-winning comprehensive employee onboarding program, and an award-winning referral partner program that generated 45% of company revenue. I am currently creating courses for Maven, Teachable, and HubSpot Academy, and also writing a book on RevOps to combine a love of research, writing, and lifelong learning.
Erin asked an icebreaker question: What is your biggest bucket list travel destination?
This is a great question, and my answer is Paris. I actually have a Paris background behind my desk of the Eiffel Tower. I think it's taken from the Arc de Triomphe.
Erin asked if I was able to watch the Olympics this past summer, and yes, I was! I was enjoying the scenes where they have bike racing through Paris, and Versailles for the equestrian events.
Tell us a little bit about this course that you've been working on, and the research for it
I'm still in the very early stages of research, but I wanted to chat a little about it. I created an onboarding program for the last company I worked for was called Remotish. It was an agency. When I was making the program, it was really hard to find any kind of resource that said what a good employee onboarding program is, especially for smaller companies.
I was trying to create the resources I wish I had during onboarding at past companies. And now to make that into a course and help more people, I've started the research for a course with a survey (Find the survey here). I've only gotten about 10 answers so far, because I'm in the very early stages, but it's already interesting to see some of the answers to people that people have about things they might want to learn about, things that haven't been successful, things they've experienced that were not good and they want people to avoid with their onboarding programs.
And so similar to the course that I've made about documentation, I'm starting with a live course to get feedback first about what's helpful for people, what they want to learn more about... And then I'll probably make the recorded on-demand course after I've iterated a few times and made it really helpful.
What have you learned so far in terms of what makes a great employee experience?
For the experience from the program I made, I'll try to give both sides, the research side, and my experience. I think a great employee onboarding experience looks like helping that new team member feel confident that they can do their job, like not wondering what they should be doing, not overwhelmed from being thrown into the fire to figure everything out on their own with urgency, not thinking they're going to get fired if they don't figure this out on day two.
It is an experience of supported education about the company, the role, and learning about other team members. It's giving people enough time to process that information and put it to use, while also helping them feel that belonging part of a team, connecting with other humans. It's treating people as humans, not treating them like a piece of software you're installing and expecting to magically work by itself. That is not even true for software onboarding, but it's definitely not true for people onboarding.
As for what a great employee experience looks like from the survey results, some of the top results about what makes a successful onboarding program that they've experienced are meeting team members, meeting leadership, either in video calls or in person. And a key part about that is making sure those other people have time for those meetings, so getting on their calendars is actually possible for the new person. Also, have a suggested agenda for some of those meetings, so both sides get the most out of that time.
Another person answered about having an onboarding buddy, which I think I've heard mentioned on the show before. Other guests have mentioned having someone to shadow and ask questions, or an onboarding host or onboarding guide, a human who helps the new person daily.
And not to do a promo for myself, but somebody in the survey results actually did say having documentation to refer to, so they don't have to remember everything, and they can self-serve answers. I know my audience, who has answered the survey so far, is kind of prompted to talk about documentation because I talk about it a lot. But another person said, having a documented and clear onboarding plan so the new people feel like they're cared for. They know it's well thought out. They know what's next, what's coming up, what's expected of them.
And one final thing mentioned in the survey results so far was learning from other teams, not just their day-to-day people that they work with, like finding out what other teams are doing. What are their roles? How does everything fit together in the company?
I would love to hear your thoughts. I know you've had numerous interviews. You've probably picked up on patterns and trends as well. What stood out to you, Erin?
Erin said the most important part of onboarding is reinforcing what they learned in the recruitment process. It can be really overwhelming when you start a job. You are so excited for your first day and to see all the people that you met in the interview process. And maybe you did a test assignment during the interview, and it made you really excited about the product or whatever it is that you're working on.
And then you show up on that first day, and they're disheveled, they're disorganized, and they don't deliver on all the things that they promised. And you're kind of in shock thinking, what did I just get myself into? Did I pick the wrong company?
Erin said she definitely thinks that reinforcement is important. And sometimes at Process Street, we get feedback from new team members that this almost feels too good to be true. Is everybody really happy? And they are that happy and they are excited to meet you because we do have documentation around our own onboarding. So everybody is prepared, everybody's aware of the expectations, and I think that sort of sets everybody up for success.
What do you feel like, maybe in your research or your own experiences, that employee onboarding experiences are missing?
The human element is often missing, not just saying, "Here's your job description, here's an organizational chart, here's how you use software, bye, a one-hour call is done." Having a person to guide the new team member through the process or a go-to person for questions, a human who's checking in with this new person somehow every day, is super important. I heard this in the feedback on the program I created in my last role.
We had a one-on-one meeting with everyone across the company, which was possible because it was a small company of about 20 people. But that was a lot of people's favorite part of onboarding, which they mentioned in the surveys after onboarding. And I haven't read or experienced anything like that in other onboarding programs I've either read about or experienced myself yet.
Adequate time to complete onboarding is another thing that many processes are missing.
The onboarding I made was 30 days of onboarding to the company culture in general: how the company works, and your team. And then 30 more days of role-based learning with their manager and 30 more days to finish ramping up to doing a hundred percent of the role. So they're not expected to be like fully productive, fully knowledgeable, and doing their job until about 90 days in, which seems more realistic than expecting it all on day one.
And then in the surveys, one of my questions was: What was the worst part of onboarding they'd experienced? Some of the answers, as you can expect, were getting nothing. That's the most common answer, about having no onboarding. Even lacking in the HR pay benefits and how-to information. People mentioned having an unclear path or unclear outcome, a lack of effort or care put into it, and having the hiring manager not involved in the onboarding, which Erin was talking about earlier.
During the hiring process, if you're just talking to one person in your interviews, the manager, but then you don't see them for who knows how long after you start the job, that makes it hard to build a relationship with the manager. If they're not there in the first few weeks or aren't available to you.
No documentation was another answer to this question, from the survey. No documentation about what the previous person in the role did when it's not a new role. So, where are they picking up from, what needs to be done, and how? Who knows? They have to do a lot of investigation now before they can start any work.
One person did mention that a fully automated virtual process was a bad experience, with no human touch, no humans caring for them.
What have you heard most from your conversations, Erin?
Erin said it's really interesting to take a step back and look at the differences between company onboarding, learning all that high-level stuff, such as the benefits and the handbook.. And then more of that team learning about how the inner workings of your department work. And then also that third piece being role-specific.
Erin said she hadn't heard anyone mention the lack of visibility into what the previous person in that role was doing. That's a really interesting thing to hone in on.
What are your thoughts about the different types of onboarding?
In addition to that company, role, team onboarding, I also got some feedback from someone asking if the class is going to be for individual contributor level onboarding, manager onboarding, or VP/executive onboarding. Those are also three different kinds of onboarding.
That made me realise this is getting very complex already in the first stages of research. But I think those six different kinds or pieces of the onboarding process could kind of mix and match and module together. If I am onboarding into a new company, I want to have that full experience of how the company works, feel like I understand what's going on, not feel lost, and feel confident that I know who to ask questions to and when or when I can self-serve answers.
Erin said it is interesting to think about the different levels within a company because managers have direct reports and maybe they've managed before, but they're not only managing their own job description, they're also managing other people's job descriptions. They're making sure that they have the tools to give feedback and to give positive accolades and to coach as needed, which is a whole other boat of onboarding.
Being that you were employee number one, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how onboarding was managed when there wasn't a specific onboarding person or HR representative. How did you all manage that?
We evolved that process, using continuous improvement, of course, as each person onboarded. But we had very low employee turnover in the first year or two before we started ramping up to double the size of the company. That ramp forecast is what led to the creation of the more robust onboarding program. But we had bits and pieces, such as the HR stuff so we can get paid, and little bits and pieces about roles, and since we were an agency, we had some content about how to help clients.
We had some documentation that we created from the beginning, mostly about how to do the projects we served to clients. Client onboarding and offboarding was our first robust documentation and project management task template journey because that process happened a lot more often than employee onboarding.
So we slowly built a lot of the employee onboarding process, but many times the new team members were still having to do client work at the same time as doing some of the onboarding, until we made this program about two years into the company. Then we set aside time for them, where they weren't expected to be doing any client work until the second month, when they were into their role-based learning. They were doing a lot of shadowing of client work and learning about it, but we kind of separated out that role work until the second month to give people time and space to get used to the company and complete other parts of onboarding first.
Erin talked about how when you're client-facing, it's even more important to make sure they're truly ramped up.
Do you have any tips or tricks on getting hiring managers involved in the process?
Yes, this was something we definitely improved on throughout the evolution of the program. Originally, I was the onboarding host or onboarding guide for the first month because I was the operations manager, I made the program, and I was the most tenured employee, so I could easily answer questions. But we were getting the manager involved more and more that first month as well, as time went on. The new team member would definitely have a meeting with their manager in the first week to talk about their role.
And I think the second week, they had another longer meeting with the manager about what they were going to be doing during months two and three. That was to help set expectations about how we know they're not doing a lot of role stuff right now, but here's your plan, you'll begin soon. They would meet every week with their manager, along with all those meetings with the other team members. That manager also helped create the month two and three programs for their role, so they would be directly involved.
At what point did you all decide to have somebody who specialized in onboarding? Was there a head count number, or how did you make that decision?
We hired a people ops person who was taking over from me as I was leaving, and I think that was our third year. It was maybe six months into my running this program, if I can remember correctly. I don't think it was based on a specific headcount, but onboarding was taking up a lot of time when we were doing this big hiring push, as well as other People Ops duties. Most of which had defined processes by that point, so it made sense to break off into their own role instead of having me and the CEO share those duties as part of our roles.
Would you have any advice for new people coming on board in terms of how they can ramp up quickly and start contributing quickly?
Ask a lot of questions, and feel confident asking questions.
I asked for clarification about whether the question is about how people can ramp up quickly. Would this be if they do not have an onboarding program? Like, how can they onboard themselves?
Erin said that individual contributors are just very eager in the beginning. So, you know, how can they set themselves up for success?
I'm gonna go back to that asking questions advice. So, asking questions will help the person who is running the onboarding know that that's a missing piece of information they haven't provided yet. I know that helped me. If people keep asking the same question, that means I haven't answered it well enough in the provided learning materials yet. I haven't made the information clear and easy for them to find. Just know that asking questions is helpful for us. It's not annoying.
And if you do already have information that answers that question, just gently remind people where you find it. I know there's a lot going on. We don't expect you to remember everything the first time you hear it. It's a reminder about where you can find in the wiki, in the documentation, or in the Slack channel, or in the project management system, kind of directing people where they need to go besides just giving them the answer. So they kind of learn that habit of where to find the information. I think that could be helpful.
Erin said that's half of her job, reminding them where things are. "For future reference, go here."
Or, I'm happy to answer now, but here's where you go if I'm not available because I don't work 24 hours a day, so I can't always be here to answer...
Erin said a big part of People Ops is just empowering employees to be in charge of their careers and to pave the way for their future, but also answering their own questions. We're just there to support them.
I said, speaking of that, I mentioned that education was a big part of that first month. So it's complicated, but we had this time benefit that people could earn, called a 30-hour work week. One of the things that people could do to earn it was to earn all of the HubSpot certifications in their first months on the job, because we were a HubSpot agency. And so they had a lot of time set aside to do that in the first month, so they could earn that benefit sooner. And that also provided them a lot of education that they may not have had time to do before if past jobs didn't allow them the time to do all these certifications to keep their skills top-notch. So I wanted to mention that about empowering employees.
Erin agreed it's mutually beneficial to motivate them to do something that's meaningful, but also get more ROI for them learning and just being better at their jobs.
What is one thing that onboarding specialists, HR professionals, and hiring managers can do to wow their onboarding experience or their onboarding employees?
It might not be an immediate wow, but I think it'll be appreciated. We sort of talked about it before, and this could be an easy thing. Companies don't need to buy new tools or spend hours creating anything new. Documentation is one thing they could do right now. For something with a lower lift, making it easy to set up those 1-1 meetings with the new team member and other relevant people in the company. The new person needs to meet and greet to build relationships with people, or at least enable the new person to easily schedule those meetings quickly without a lot of back and forth, without a lot of people canceling, and ensuring the current team members know the importance of those meetings. Make sure the more tenured team members are prepared to talk to the new person about specific topics, even if it's just 15 minutes, that is all you really need for some people in that first touch for building relationships.
Erin agreed that it is very impactful. "I remember my first day at Process Street when I logged into my work email. My calendar already had a meeting with my hiring manager in the first hour of my first day. I had like four or five other meetings sprinkled throughout the first week to meet sort of key players that would impact my job directly. And, my team meeting was already on my calendar. So I already felt like a part of the team before I even started, which was really cool."
Additional questions from our prep conversations we didn't have time for
How has remote work shifted the way you approach onboarding?
The onboarding program I made was remote, and I haven’t made a hybrid or in-person program, but I think remote work ensures you are much more intentional with the onboarding experiences. Setting up shadowing opportunities on calls, for example, since new people aren’t absorbing information by just wandering around the office and hearing conversations. You need to have a good, transparent communication culture set up in a variety of ways, such as public channels on Slack preferred over private messages except for sensitive information, regular team meetings, scheduling 1-1 meetings, helping set up meetings or calls for the new person to shadow. The documentation component, learning from documented knowledge, also becomes more important when working across time zones, when there may not be a person to ask in the moment for a quick response.
What do you think is the next big thing we'll see for onboarding?
People are going to say AI, but I would say not by itself, and just saying AI is so vague. I hope to see more people crafting intentional human onboarding programs to balance out the AI hype. Maybe AI is used in some of the lessons, but the team interactions, team members meeting each other, and all the human interactions should not all be automated. New hires need to feel that a human is caring for them and invested in their success. Though having some kind of AI automated onboarding is better than no onboarding at all, I will say that. Maybe AI can help with collecting feedback and scoring the current experience to see if you’re onboarding process is successful at meeting its goals.
Also, for the AI to be useful, people or companies need to have updated, current, useful documentation/content for the AI to pull from and learn from, which is rare. Because that continuous improvement practice of maintaining documentation is rare, I started my educational content creation teaching documentation first, then once people have a good documentation practice, they can create a better onboarding process.
Thank you, Erin!
You can help shape the 2026 course on onboarding by filling out a few of the questions in this survey! Thanks in advance!
Topics: Event, Employee Onboarding