Optimizing New Hire Onboarding Operations

A rapidly expanding fully remote company, experiencing significant growth in its marketing and communications team.

As the Project Manager for an in-house marketing team, I led the creation of a streamlined onboarding process designed for new team members.

The primary objective was to streamline the onboarding experience by establishing a process that provided all necessary information for new hires to seamlessly integrate into the team. This included essential details about the company, brand, marketing team, system/tools, procedural guidelines, introductory meetings, and a structured checklist for smooth onboarding.

The rapid growth of our marketing team created a challenge for our leaders. With so many new hires, training became a big task for managers, taking up time and resources. This repetitive cycle led to delays in effectively onboarding new employees, resulting in a lag in their assimilation to the company, brand, marketing workflows, team procedures, and systems/tools.

I developed a new onboarding program to address these challenges. This program featured a detailed document as a go-to resource for new hires. The document covered essential information such as company goals, brand and messaging, team procedures, marketing workflows, tools, and a plan for introductory 1:1 meetings with peers. Additionally, it included a checklist to ensure all onboarding tasks were completed.

When new marketing team members joined, I teamed up with the VP of marketing to welcome them aboard. My responsibilities included:

Scheduling individual Zoom meetings for new hires to meet 1:1 with each of their team members.

Planning a two-week schedule for their first days, outlining meetings, reading time, and breaks.

Providing checklists for brand materials and necessary tools/processes.

Arranging training sessions for tools/platforms if needed.

This approach not only ensured new employees had all the information they needed and a manageable schedule, thus preventing them from feeling overwhelmed during onboarding, but also facilitated effective and efficient integration into the team.