IBM has a refined hiring process to ensure its employees are the best fit, well trained, and fully engaged. By getting the recruitment and employee onboarding processes right, IBM is happy and IBM’s employees are happy. Like IBM, we at Process Street believe it is critical to get your hiring process right. This will give you every new hire checklist you will ever need to perfect your recruitment and employee onboarding processes. Our new hire checklists are specifically adapted to cover recruitment and employee onboarding processes to ensure your team sings your praises. So get the choir ready.

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The Ultimate New Hire Checklist (Boost Retention with
a Great First Impression)
process.st/new-hire-checklist
“I am very happy tonight to be a member of this company and to feel that I have
had and will continue to have the support of such an able organization.”
– IBM, Quintessential Quotes.
Isn’t this something you want your team say?
IBM has a refined hiring process to ensure its employees are the best fit, well trained, and
fully engaged. By getting the recruitment and employee onboarding processes right, IBM
is happy and IBM’s employees are happy.
Like IBM, we at Process Street believe it is critical to get your hiring process right. This
will give you every new hire checklist you will ever need to perfect your recruitment and
employee onboarding processes.
Given that 46% of newly-hired employees quit within the first 18 months, there is no doubt
that a polished process is what you need to hire, train, and keep your best team.
Our new hire checklists are specifically adapted to cover recruitment and employee
onboarding processes to ensure your team sings your praises. So get the choir ready.
What is a new hire checklist?
A new hire checklist is a process with steps guiding you through all the necessary tasks
to recruit and fully onboard a new employee.
Only 1 in 5 new hires are considered to be successful, and the culprit for this is often poor
hiring and onboarding practices. New hire checklists strengthen those processes and
increase your chances of attracting and retaining top talent.
What should be on a new hire checklist?
New hire checklists should include every step of the hiring and onboarding processes.
But for our purposes today, we will be focusing on onboarding checklists for new hires.
When putting together a new hire onboarding checklist, everything from the pre-
onboarding documents to the monthly check-ins post-onboarding should be on there.
Each step must be clearly laid out so nothing is forgotten and every new hire receives the
same quality of onboarding.
New hire checklist steps

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Let’s get more specific with how to structure new hire checklists and what to put in them.
Here’s the breakdown:
Step 1: Before the first day
You have to do several things before your new hire’s first day and you need to include
them on the onboarding checklist.
These are tasks such as:
Gather the new hire’s basic information
Conduct the background check
Prepare and send the contract
Fill out any additional documents (insurance, direct deposit, etc.)
Missing any of the pre-onboarding steps can seriously derail the rest of the process.
Having them all laid out in a new hire checklist ensures you never miss an important step.
Step 2: First day
Your new hire’s first day is your only chance to make sure they don’t experience buyers
remorse by choosing to work for your company.
You need to take the time to make the new hire feel welcome and comfortable in their
orientation. Start by giving them a tour of the office or hopping on a Zoom call if they’re
remote. Introduce them to the team before showing them where they will be working.
From there, you need to set clear expectations with the new hire. Give them an overview
of how the onboarding process will go, explain the company culture, and assign them the
training materials.
Doing all of this shows the new hire that you’re organized and helps them feel more
relaxed as they know what to expect moving forward, at least in the first few weeks.
Step 3: First week
During the new hire’s first week, they should complete their training material. Once they
have done that, they are ready to receive their first project. The project should be
approved by the new hire’s manager within the checklist itself so everyone is on the same
page.
At the end of the first week, the new hire should have a solid understanding of what is
expected of them as an employee. They should also have an idea of what’s to come
based on the checklist.
Before the new hire leaves on that first Friday, make sure you sit down with them to go
through any extra paperwork and discuss how the first week went. It’s a great way to get
some early feedback on how the onboarding is going, and it makes the new hire feel

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seen.
Step 4: First 30 days
Throughout the first month, you should set up the new hire with anything they need to
settle in. This could come in the form of the following:
Extra training materials
Performance feedback
Check-in meetings
Additional reading material for personal growth
You are there as a source of support, and it’s important that the support you give is
included in the new hire checklist. Those personal touches go a long way in the
onboarding process, so add them to your checklists
Step 5: First 60 days
As the new employee gets into the groove of working at your organization, you can begin
to step back and set tasks on the new hire checklist that remind you to check in with
them.
You can set up weekly emails, bi-weekly meetings, whatever works. But making an effort
to see how the new hire is doing is crucial. Their feedback also helps you improve the
new hire onboarding checklist going forward.
Free new hire checklist template
A bit overwhelmed with it all? Don’t be! We have lots of new hire checklist templates to
help you get started. Here are a couple of the best ones:
New Hire Onboarding Process Template: This is the whole onboarding process already
laid out for you in an actionable checklist template. You can customize it however you
want but it covers all the basic steps without you needing to do anything at all.
The 30-60-90 Day Plan for New Hires: This template is for HR managers to reference.
It’s a place to jot down the company’s goals and the new hire’s goals at each phase of the
onboarding process.It’s useful for seeing how both sets of goals line up and change within
the first 90 days.

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Benefits of using a new hire checklist
Using a new hire checklist has a number of benefits. Of course, keeping things organized
is one of the bigger ones, but that’s not the only value it offers:
Sets clear expectations with the new hire
Makes hiring and onboarding documentation more centralized
Customizes the experience for each new hire
Assigns tasks for company leaders to get them involved
I really cannot think of a single reason to not use a checklist for employee onboarding. If
you’re not already doing it, you should start now!
Best practices for using new hire checklists
As you begin making your new hire checklist, keep these best practices in mind:
Make sure the new hire isn’t overwhelmed
This is really important. When your new hire starts, they will be hit with a lot of information
all at once. Checklists are a great way to lay it all out in a clear and concise way.
With each task, they learn a little more about the company and how it works. All of the
materials like the employee handbook can be stored in the checklists for the new hires to
go back and reference.
They will also be able to see exactly what to expect next, which removes a lot of pressure
from their shoulders.
Make sure the checklist is actionable

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The first word of each task should be a verb. Language matters and making each task
actionable makes it clear what needs to be accomplished. Doing this helps to avoid
confusion and ultimately saves time.
At Process Street, we are very intentional about how we write tasks when we create
checklists. You could even call us sticklers because any task that isn’t clearly actionable
can ruin a whole workflow.
So use those verbs when writing your tasks.
Make sure the checklist is personalized for each new hire
Personalization is key to making the new hire feel welcome and comfortable. What’s great
about checklist software like Process Street is that you don’t need to create a brand new
checklist for each new hire. You can build in the personalization using this beautiful little
thing called conditional logic.
For example, you could use a dropdown menu to select which department the new hire is
in. If you select marketing, the new hire only has to complete tasks related to the
marketing department. If they’re in sales, they only see sales-related tasks.
Easy as that!
Make sure you gather feedback from the new hire
Always get feedback from new hires. Always. You are never done making changes to
new hire checklists and you should never think that you are.
New hire feedback is invaluable because no one knows better than them how the hiring
and onboarding processes went. Encourage them to be open and honest with you about
how they feel and take any feedback they have for you into consideration. It will only
serve to help you improve and retain the best possible talent for your organization.
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