New hire onboarding
When new hires start, it can be challenging (and require a pileup of emails) to get these employees all the information they need, make sure they complete required paperwork, and ensure a smooth transition. Generally, it takes eight months for a newly hired employee to reach full productivity. By using a project template in Asana, you can track the onboarding process from start to finish. Employees will know what they need to do and where to find information, so they can get up and running quickly.
Follow along with the article to build your own onboarding project, and take a look at other resources directly below.
| Resources for new employee onboarding | Link |
|---|---|
| Asana-created template | Use template |
| Case study | See how Dow Jones marketing, The Education Trust-West, and POMT scale at speed by onboarding new employees with Asana |
How to create an onboarding project
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Create a project to use as your onboarding template. Name the project “[Name] HR Onboarding Template." For every new employee, you will make a duplicate of this project and update the project name with their name.
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Organize the project by adding sections such as “Benefits,” “401k,” “IT,” “Reference.”
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Add tasks to each section like “Register for benefits,” “Enroll in our 401k plan,” “Connect company printers to your computer.” Provide clear instructions in the task description, attach any necessary files, and use @mentions to reference other tasks or projects. Assign tasks such as “Order computer” to someone in the right department.
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Save your project as a template. Click the project header dropdown and select Convert to Template. That way, anytime a new hire starts, you can just copy the template. As new hires have onboarding feedback, you can update the template to make sure everyone has the best onboarding experience possible.
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Invite any teammates involved in the onboarding process to the project and assign tasks to your new teammate.
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When the new hire starts, they will know what paperwork and other tasks they need to do to complete their onboarding. New employees can also ask questions directly in any task and be empowered to take the next step.
Tips for managing your onboarding project
Have lots of new hires to keep track of? Track their onboarding progress in a Portfolio
Whether you’re a hiring manager or someone working closely with new hires to onboard them, it can be hard to see how everyone is progressing—especially if you have a lot of people starting at once. Instead of following up with them in one-off chats or hoping they’ll come to you with any questions, you can keep tabs on everyone by adding their onboarding project to a portfolio. This makes it easier to see updates in one place, and jump in when you spot issues.
Create team-specific onboarding templates, too
In addition to having an HR project for paperwork and benefits, each individual team or manager can create a team-specific onboarding template project. Create a task in the template for new hires to review company and team goals to help them get up to speed faster. Team onboarding can include tasks unique to that function but not the entire company. If some of the tasks are the same from each template, you can add tasks to multiple projects so work isn't duplicated or confusing to the candidate.
For example, Sales might have a document about the sales pipeline and lead scoring—create a task in the template to review these and attach the documents. Other tasks might include “Have coffee with John” or “Review strategic plan.” Assign tasks to the appropriate team members and ensure a smooth transition for your new teammate.
Use custom fields to categorize onboarding tasks by priority or type
Custom fields make important information clear and easily skimmable in a task. Field names and values are customizable, and you can create drop-down, number, or text fields to capture specific information. For onboarding, you could use a drop-down priority to indicate how important the onboarding task is, so your new hire knows what to tackle first.
You could also categorize tasks as "actionable" or "reference," so new hires can easily find information like office maps, or hold on to certain information even after they've completed the task, as you can search and sort by custom fields later.
Add custom fields to your project by clicking the blue Add Custom Fields link at the top of the project. From here you can create and manage your custom fields for cost or whatever other data you need to track.
