3 Keys to Achieve Successful New Employee Induction

The new employee induction or onboarding process is one of the most important aspects of a company when a new member is introduced to a new team and vice-versa; at that moment, it's critical to have the right tools and resources at hand to achieve it successfully.

Carrying this activity in remote could result in chaos, disorganization, and friction between different people and teams. Based on our experience, we will show you how to improve the remote new employee induction process and which tools are essential to achieve it successfully.

The onboarding process is about people, for the people, the heart and body from each company, and aside from what people believe, this is not an exclusive responsibility from HR, given in the induction process usually converges the following:

• HR: To deal with the legal aspects concerning the hiring and the emotional/human aspects of this process.
• The Head of an area or Manager: This is the person in charge of the team where the new employee will enter and who must become the central guidance for this new employee.

The profiles involved usually have a series of meetings before and after the candidate joins the company, and even an additional one, sometime after the new employee has landed, including this person, where the Heads of each area, together with HR:

a) Before: Make an inventory of the tasks that need to be ready for the day of incorporation (contract, administrative documentation, laptop, other devices, licenses, roadmap, checklist, etc.)
b) After: a final meeting after the new person entered the company, as a retrospective to identify all the possible improvements to incorporate into the next onboarding process.
c) Follow-Up: periodically, the same onboarding team meets with the new teammate to check on his evolution and adjustment.

No two people are the same, and therefore no two onboarding processes are the same. We base this process on the Deming Cycle (PDSA -below-), which allows us to adjust the process after each incorporation.

This process is necessary to get rid out of the uncertainty, as well as the following resources and software tools to support the newcomer induction during his/her first weeks within the company:

Roadmap: It’s a tailor-made sheet, adjusted to the needs of each role and persona. It displays the short goals to be met during the new weeks of the new employee. Here’s an example we make in a PowerPoint sheet:

Checklist: In Atlassian Confluence, we have created a dedicated space for the onboarding of new personas, divided by area and personas; there, on each person page is stored the following:

• Information with a picture of the teams involved in the process.
• Information with a picture of the new employee.
• A checklist with the tasks the new person is expected to do.
• A list with links of possible interest for the new persona in the company.

It looks like this:

Besides the personas, this page will become an invaluable asset for the new employee, and it will improve their adaptation process and ways to communicate. There have been cases when we have shared this file even before the employee's first day to reduce anxiety, expectations, and uncertainty.

Centralizing this information is vital to give the necessary freedom new employees need to adapt and know their surroundings. This will make them more independent and self-starters, especially when finding information such as product details, internal or client project services we’re working with.

In DEISER, we craft products and services over the Atlassian suite, such as Jira or Confluence; therefore, relying on these tools is the logical thing to do, specifically Jira.

We use Jira for procedures; for example, the Support team has a Jira project for each customer; there, we incorporate its service cases information to better track those projects (with extra add-ins); this way, the new employees will find this type of information needed in a matter of just a few seconds.

This software structure is beneficial for the new employee, our customers, and the whole team members. This can be achieved by implementing Projectrak for Jira. Here’s an example of how the information looks in this app for Jira:

On the other hand, we use Confluence to document everything else is not a Jira project (for projects, Jira and Projectrak are a whole); we even use Bitbucket READMEs for technical topics related to development, as you might see:

Another vital software tool to keep up our communications flowing, especially when remote working is Microsoft Teams; it helps us reinforcing our asynchronous communications through our daily communications, such as addressing eventualities, get to know a person’s availability, creating rooms per teams, and/or for specific topics, and everything non-planned.

Happy personas + adequate software tools = Successful new employees’ induction

An induction process should be a standard procedure to allow new employees to adapt better; this process also allows to create the right synergies with every aspect of the team and company, where the company culture should prevail.


Considering, creating these types of processes takes time, especially when remote working. It’s better to start from the basics and then expand incrementally after each new incorporation.

And of course, counting with the right personas, resources, and software tools, will make your and your team's life easier.