Top 10 New Hire Onboarding Templates for Human Resources Managers

New Hire Onboarding is a significant phase in ensuring that new employees are integrated effectively into an organization. It equips them with the necessary tools, information, and connections to start their journey on a positive note. A New Hire Onboarding template in Notion can simplify this process by streamlining tasks, providing a centralized resource for all important documents, and ensuring that both the HR team and the new hires are on the same page from day one.

Before you start creating your own New Hire Onboarding template, it's beneficial to explore these New Hire Onboarding below to facilitate the process.

What Should New Hire Onboarding Templates Include?

Choosing the right New Hire Onboarding Template is crucial for streamlining the integration process of new employees into your organization. Here are key components to look for:

  1. Welcome Message: A personalized greeting can set a positive tone. Look for templates that allow customization to make new hires feel truly welcomed.

  2. Role-Specific Training Plans: Ensure the template includes a structured outline for training that's tailored to the specific roles and responsibilities of the new hire.

  3. Important Contacts List: Having a list of key contacts such as team members, HR, and IT support can help new hires feel supported and connected from day one.

  4. Company Policies and Culture Overview: A section dedicated to company policies, culture, and values is essential for acclimating new employees to your corporate environment.

Ultimately, the best template is one that not only informs but also engages new employees, making their transition smooth and building a foundation for long-term success.

What Should New Hire Onboarding Templates Avoid?

Choosing the right New Hire Onboarding Template is crucial for setting the stage for new employee success. However, certain elements can hinder rather than help this process. Here are three key components to steer clear of:

  1. Overloaded Information: Templates crammed with too much information can overwhelm new hires. It's important to keep the content digestible and focused on essentials.

  2. Fixed, Non-Customizable Sections: Avoid templates that don't allow customization. Different roles may require different onboarding processes, and flexibility is key.

  3. Lack of Interactive Elements: Templates that do not engage new hires or encourage interaction can lead to a passive onboarding experience. Include elements that prompt action and involvement.

Ultimately, the best templates are those that provide a clear, concise, and engaging pathway for new employees to start their journey at your company effectively.

1New hire onboarding

Onboarding checklists help new hires get settled at your company. Click any card to see onboarding tasks and notes for that person.

A template preview for New hire onboarding

2New Hire Onboarding

Keep track of new joiners, assign them a buddy and make sure they have a smooth transition into their role. You can even share this with the rest of the company to celebrate new joiners!

A template preview for New Hire Onboarding

3Visual onboarding with diagrams

A good onboarding process makes new hires fit in with existing teams and productively contribute faster. Instead of overwhelming new colleagues with pages of text, diagrams clarify complex topics at a glance.

A template preview for Visual onboarding with diagrams

4New Hire Onboarding

A template preview for New Hire Onboarding

5Discovery report

📦 What's included?

A simple, generic and duplicable page with pre-filled topics and identical questions for each topic. There are also an introduction to the report and resources to help understand the mindset behind the tools.

🤔 For whom ?

Freshly new employees, managers, companies, HR team…

🧐 What is a discovery report ?

A discovery report is a strategic HR management tool that newcomers complete during their first month in a new context (company, team…).

Long story short, it’s a tool that will help the collaborators and the company because a fresh pair of eyes will take the time to analyze and give feedback on a lot of subjects.

The template here is quit generic so you should try to adapt it to your context, let’s say you’re working in a IT team: you should then try and list topics that make the day-to-day of any engineer.

It was made to allow your collaborators or yourself to write down your thoughts during this oh-so important period that is your onboarding. ”Onboarding” is too broad a word, you can actually use this template whenever your become a newcomer. Here are a few examples, a member of your team or yourself can be:

newly hired in a company,

changing team within the same company,

choosing a new career in your current company and now have a new context, new team mates, a new hierarchy…

You get it, this template is made to help in the process of writing first impressions on many topics.

🤑 What is the value of a report ?

To a newcomer 👶

It’s a chance to have their opinion heard, an opportunity to have a critical look at existing processes/habits and to level their expectations.

To a manager 💼

The hiring process generally does not give you a clear understanding of the person that stands in front of you. Listening to the report of someone can help you better grasp their priorities, their strengths and even areas of improvements.

Apart from that, it will help you create a bond with this person, his or her voice has been heard, which is always positive.

Once the report has been presented to you, you can also encourage its author to present it to your team, it probably can be tweaked a bit in case of there being a bit of finger pointing, but generally speaking, allowing your new managees to express his or her opinion to your team could drive your entire team to have an epiphany and even overcome bottlenecks

To a company 🏢

It’s a beautiful continuous improvement tool. Collaborators tend to get used to their working environment and will have a hard time taking a step back sometime. Since they have been doing it for a long time, they can no longer objectively assess processes and sometimes situations even.

Hiring a new employee is a great opportunity to collect new and fresh impressions. This allow the company to highlight its strength and to reveal what is in need of an improvement.

🙋‍♀️ What are the topics ?

Topics are very generic:

the company,

the onboarding,

the department,

the team,

your job,

and your manager.

But feel free to add anything that make sense. At the end of the page a button is here to create new topics.

🙋‍♂️ What are the questions ?

Those are the same for each topic and keep in mind that you can add or remove topics depending on your context:

😀 What fits your expectations perfectly

🤩 What surprised you in a good way or exceeded your expectations

😔 What you were disappointed about or didn’t reach your expectations

😵‍💫 What you were confused about

🤓 Your suggestions

A template preview for Discovery report

6New Hire Welcome

It can be overwhelming joining a new company, but Loom’s New Hire Welcome template makes it much easier. Build in resources, documentation, and a plan for the first 90 days.

A template preview for New Hire Welcome

7Pitch’s onboarding checklist

Set new hires, contractors, and recently promoted colleagues up for success with proper onboarding. Update this page and share it with the recipient so they can hit the ground running.

A template preview for Pitch’s onboarding checklist

8Rapid Onboarding Guide

I created this template when starting a contract role at a major tech organization. I needed to onboard fast and this template was a life saver. It utilizes structured learning to help individuals absorb information quickly and is tailored onboarding on a high performing team.

A template preview for Rapid Onboarding Guide

9Manager README

- Effectively convey your leadership style to prevent misunderstandings and foster early alignment
- Share your README when on-boarding direct reports and use it for expectation setting in a new work environment
- Reflect on your personality and leadership style to promote transparency and collaboration among your colleagues

A template preview for Manager README

10Employee Onboarding OS

This Notion kit is for managers who want to gain time and build an efficient team.
🌟 You found a rising star to join your team? 🌟

Get ready for their first day in your team with the Employee Onboarding template. Set their objectives, give them confidence, and follow-up progress week by week, month by month.

-> Use the 30-60-90 methods to set clear objectives and key results

-> The connected databases & custom views provide clarity and ensure understanding

-> The collection of templates makes knowledge transfer quick and impactful

You can also adapt the kit if you have just started a new job and want to organise what is most important and nail your new mission in only a few weeks 💪🏼

What you will find inside the Employee Onboarding Kit:

4 databases:

-> Objectives based on the 30-60-90 plan with visual progress bars

-> Key Results linked to the objectives database with status and progress

-> Tools checklist

-> Manager 1-to-1 template for weekly meetings


8 pages with templates:

-> Portal page to share with your employee

-> Team presentation

-> Mission page

-> Tools page with checklist

-> Getting around the office

-> Manager 1-to-1area

-> Key colleagues by team

-> First month impression report with template


ℹ️ I linked the key results and objectives databases based on the KRs status, not on a quantitative value. I found with time that during onboarding qualitative resutls are more impactful than quantitve measures. Depending on the progress (Not started / To do next / In progress / Done), each KR gets an estimated % completion, which then calculates the overall objective completion. The completion transfers from the KR database to the objective database so your and your new team member can see with a glance how they are progressing in their new job.

How I built the Onboarding kit

I built this kit based on my experience with new hires. Each employee I hired and got in my team loved having all useful information in one place.

With time, I noticed that the new joiners in my team got on board quickly and managed to navigate in the company after a couple of weeks.

This kit asumes that you already shared basic company information about the strategy, org structure etc. You can add the links to the most important documents on the top of the dashboard.

How to use the Notion kit with templates?

This is a Notion template. Get Notion (this template works on both Free and Premium accounts).*

Duplicate the template to your Notion space.

Start by filling in the templates with general information on the top of the dashboard, inside each page.

Then modify the objectives by changing the names or adding new ones. Or keep them as they are, it's a tested method :)

Third, modify the key results with what you expect your new hire to achieve in the coming weeks.

Share the page with your new hire and check their onboarding progress every week and help them be successful in their new job.

A template preview for Employee Onboarding OS

Closing Thoughts

Utilizing these templates streamlines the onboarding process, ensuring consistency and covering all necessary steps. This efficiency saves time and reduces errors, making the transition smoother for everyone involved.

Implementing these templates can significantly enhance your onboarding strategy. They are designed to be adaptable, allowing for customization to fit your company's specific needs. Start using them today to see immediate improvements in your onboarding process.

What is Onboarding Automation?

Onboarding automation refers to the use of software tools to streamline and manage the process of integrating new employees into an organization, reducing manual tasks and improving efficiency.

What is a Buddy System?

A buddy system in onboarding pairs a new hire with a more experienced employee who can provide guidance, support, and insights about the company culture and work processes.

What is a 90-Day Plan?

A 90-Day Plan is a structured outline of expected goals, tasks, and assessments that a new employee should aim to achieve within their first three months of employment.

Keep reading