Preboarding Checklist: Be Ready and Confident on Your First Day

A preboarding checklist is a tool that can help employers set up a comprehensive and well-structured process to get all new employees ready for your job start.

More and more employers are realising that ensuring long and successful employee life cycles is possible by starting off on the right foot with preboarding and onboarding processes. After all, companies with preboarding in place are 11% more likely to retain first-year employees than those without, according to the Aberdeen Group.

A pre-onboarding checklist will contain the essential steps of your preboarding journey, and will ensure that all the key stakeholders are involved in the relevant activities, so that no time or effort is wasted and any confusion and miscommunication is avoided.

Digital tools such as introdus, employee onboarding software, provide easy access to any employee journey checklists, as well as multimedia content that will make you feel engaged with your new organisation as soon as signing the employment contract.

We can see from the employees that have been pre & onboarded through our platform that 98.5% of everything we send is opened on the day it is received. This tells us that the new employee wants to prepare for the new job. Furthermore, we can see that over 90% of the employees open the material more than once.

This article will illustrate the utility of a preboarding checklist for HR and your employee lifecycle early stages. We are also including preboarding checklist templates that companies can download in word and excel formats. They can use them as they are, or modify them according to their and your needs. Download the preboarding programme template by clicking on the link below:

Get the Checklist

What is a Preboarding Checklist?

A preboarding checklist is a tool used to aid your preboarding process in a quest to reduce failure and miscommunication and ensuring consistency and completeness in the tasks specific to your preboarding programme.

You can regard the preboarding checklist as a to do list, both for yourself and your employer, providing the details for every step in a process, thereby keeping things organised.

Employees Take Advantage of Preboarding Activities

Our Pre & Onboarding Survey 2021 revealed that only 12% of employees agreed that their employer had a structured preboarding process to make them feel ready on their first day and only 16% strongly feel that their employer did everything possible to provide them with a great start.

Comparatively, 48% of employees strongly disagreed that their employer had a structured preboarding programme to make them feel ready on their first day.

So, the employees clearly indicate that their employers should put more effort in making you feel ready on your first day. And this is not surprising if we consider the fact that 43% of onboardees are without basic work tools for more than a week after they start. A pre-onboarding checklist makes sure that this will never occur. The preboarding checklist provides an overview of the entire preboarding stage of the employee journey.

Pre-onboarding Checklist Template

Since there is no predefined timeframe for the preboarding process, as each employee will negotiate the start date of the new employment and the end date of their previous employment, we cannot provide a day by day checklist.

Therefore, we have decided to structure our Pre-onboarding checklist by keeping in mind the strategic objectives of a good preboarding programme, so all the activities or steps on the pre-onboarding checklist will be grouped by theme and overall objective.

1. Reviewing the Job Role Description and Basics

• Solicit a short description from the employee: a few key facts about yourself – experience to date, hobbies, any funny random facts.
• Inform about the work schedule. Are there fixed office hours, or is the working arrangement flexible? – inform the employee of all available options.
• Submit the programme for the first 14 days in the company.
• Provide the employee with light product information.
• Optional: provide an outline of any specific programme for training of new employees.

2. New Hire Forms

• Compensation set-up: Collect tax forms and banking details
• Send benefits guide: what is part of the employment agreement and what other voluntary agreements are available for the employee.
• Pension and/or insurance set-up: Submit pension and/or insurance agreement for signing.
• Send the employee handbook and code of conduct. Request written confirmation and agreement (for example, via digital signature).
• Send holiday and sick-leave policies.

3. Equipment Set-up

• Provide the new hire with an equipment request form as soon as they accept the employment offer.
• Set up the new employee on the IT systems of the company and all software tools necessary for performing the job duties.
• Review the equipment request form and order the equipment.
• Ensure the ID card set-up.
• For on-site workers: ensure the workspace set-up prior to the first day of work.
• Optional: Send the employee a picture of the workstation: “Your desk is set up and ready for you.”
• For remote workers: ensure that the worktools are ordered and delivered in due time, so that everything has reached the employee prior to the first day of work. Provide additional instructions on how to handle the equipment prior to the job start.

For an extended IT Pre & Onboarding Checklist, consult our comprehensive article IT Onboarding Checklist.

4. Building Connections: Team Introductions

• Send an email informing current employees about the new hire employee profile. Mention their start date, their role and which office they are working from. Add a short description of the impact they are expected to have on specific projects and goals. Include also the short description that the employees themselves have provided.
• Optional: submit a “how to welcome a new employee to the team” email, to ensure that the team is ready to receive the new hire among them and ensure integration from day one.
• Send a new employee welcome email from the CEO and the team leader.
• Send access to communication tools, so that the employee can start building connections prior to the first day on the job.
• Submit the Buddy video presentation and customised welcome email to new employees.
• Invite the new hire to social media groups and communication tools.
• Offer the possibility of a call prior to the first day to ensure that all details are sorted out and the employee does not miss any information prior to starting work.
• Optional: Invite the new hire to a social event, such as a coffee break, a lunch, or a Friday bar.
• Alternatively, if meeting in person is not practical, or if the employee will be fully remote, you could schedule a video call instead, so a virtual coffee break to provide a socialisation opportunity prior to the first day on the job.

5. Organisational Culture

• Submit (multimedia) presentations on the company culture and company mission.
• Submit a presentation on the history of the organisation and its main values and objectives.
• Submit short interviews of future co-workers in which they introduce themselves and name one key thing that keeps them engaged with the company.
• Submit information on company Corporate Social Responsibility.
• Optional: use preboarding videos to present all crucial information on the company.

6. First Day Practicalities

• Confirm the office address, especially if the recruitment took place exclusively virtually.
• Inform the new hire about transportation options to reach the office.
• Inform the new hire about parking facilities.
• Provide the employee with contact information for the first day. For example, the buddy can be the point of contact that received the new employee in the reception.

7. Preboarding Evaluation

• Submit the preboarding evaluation survey: did the employee receive all the information needed prior to the first day on the job?
• Follow-up with the employee. If they mention any shortcomings of the preboarding programme, reach out and try to answer their requests.
• Thank the employee for providing feedback and reinstate that the whole team is looking forward to their first day on the job.
• Submit a “See you tomorrow!” message and attach the 1st day schedule.

You can also find a downloadable preboarding programme template by clicking on the link below:

Download now

The right pre-onboarding process can make a potentially stressful period of time much easier for new hires. And more importantly for you and your new employer, a well structured and effective preboarding process, will boost your engagement, loyalty, and productivity from the get-go.

In the long run, your pre-boarding process could even encourage you to stay with your new employer for longer.

So, without being biased, it is certainly worth investing time and energy into preboarding all employees.