Onboarding Isn’t a Checklist
🚪 Onboarding isn't just technical. It's cultural.
It’s the first real conversation your company has with a human being.
You know the drill:
A new hire walks in, excited, curious, maybe a little nervous.
And what do they get?
A PDF.
A portal login.
A vague “Let us know if you have questions.” Then they’re left to sit there and figure it all out.
That’s not onboarding. That’s abandonment with a login screen. That’s something that induces stress, rather than creating a space where the new employee feels welcomed.
🧭 What Onboarding Should Be
Onboarding is your chance to say:
“We see you. We’ve prepared for you. You matter here.”
It’s not just about compliance or orientation—it’s about trust. And trust doesn’t come from a checklist buried in a Word doc. It comes from clarity, structure, tone—and most importantly, access to reliable resources. A new employee needs a well they can return to, again and again, whenever they need it. Because no one absorbs everything on day one. They need a dependable guide—an “assistant” of sorts—ready to help when they forget where to find that one critical link or document.
When I joined the J.R. Simplot Company, I faced the usual onboarding hurdles—learning how to access dozens of applications, orienting myself to unfamiliar systems. But what surprised me most was what wasn't included: a clear introduction to the business units I’d be supporting. As the person migrating and managing an intranet for over 15,000 employees—ultimately spanning 59 interconnected sites—I needed to understand not just tools, but people, contexts, and organizational nuance. That kind of institutional knowledge often takes years to build. And I believe we can—and should—make that journey smoother.
📉 The Cost of Getting It Wrong
Poor onboarding leads to:
Confusion and second-guessing
Slower productivity
Higher turnover
A lingering sense that no one really cares
Studies show that strategic onboarding can increase retention by over 200% and save thousands per employee. But most companies still treat it like a formality.
🛠 What I’ve Learned from Running Onboarding at Scale
At Simplot, I led intranet operations and onboarding strategy for 15,000+ employees. I rebuilt content systems, designed training modules, and supported ERGs like the Women’s Leadership Group and Military Alliance—groups whose microsites needed to feel usable, welcoming, and real.
Here’s what worked:
Narrative clarity: I created 20 video tutorials for our LMS, designed to speak like a peer, not a policy manual—each one paced and voiced to reflect how people actually learn
Visual structure: The tutorials lived within a dedicated intranet space I built, complete with a dashboard that guided—not overwhelmed—employees navigating their first steps
Emotional intelligence: Content anticipated confusion and met it with calm, clear tone and repeatable sequences that didn’t assume prior knowledge
Ongoing support: The training hub offered asynchronous access, so employees could return whenever they needed a refresher, not just during week one
While I had begun developing a more formal onboarding system to present to L&D, I left before it was fully implemented. What remains is that space I designed—and the tutorials still used today as a quiet but steady resource.
💡 Final Thought
If your onboarding doesn’t feel like a conversation, it’s not working.
If it doesn’t reflect your values, it’s not helping.
And if it doesn’t make someone feel seen, it’s not worth the PDF it’s printed on.
Let’s build onboarding that actually welcomes people—instead of just processing them.
