Why You Need an Onboarding Checklist for New Hires

Kyla Ball May 13, 2025

Welcoming a new employee should be an exciting time for any organization — but without a clear onboarding checklist, it can quickly become overwhelming for both the new employee, and the team members tasked with overseeing the process. An organized and effective onboarding process is therefore essential from day one, ensuring a successful onboarding experience, and ultimately increasing the chances of employee retention.

What Is an Onboarding Checklist?

An onboarding checklist is really a roadmap for the onboarding process, guiding new hires through everything they need to know about their new role, from company policies to workspace setup, training programs, and job responsibilities. It’s a way of ensuring that no critical step is missed, helping HR teams, hiring managers, and human resources departments to streamline workflows and deliver a consistent, high-quality employee onboarding process for every new team member, regardless of who their line manager is, or which area of the organization they work in.

Why an Onboarding Checklist is Essential

1. It creates a strong first impression
   The new hire’s first day is crucial. A well-structured onboarding plan provides a warm welcome, helping the new employee feel immediately connected to the company culture and their new job. This positive first impression lays the groundwork for building relationships and long-term engagement.
2. It ensures compliance and organization
   From background checks to tax forms, travel schemes and photocards – there’s a lot of new hire paperwork to handle during the first couple of weeks. A new hire onboarding checklist ensures nothing falls through the cracks, keeping both your new employee and your HR professionals organized.
3. It improves staff retention and performance
   A structured onboarding program that includes regular check-ins, clear expectations, and opportunities for feedback leads to better performance reviews and reduces turnover during the crucial first year.
4. It supports remote employees
   With more remote employees joining companies than ever before, having a digital employee onboarding checklist is vital. It helps ensure that virtual onboarding experiences are just as effective as in-person orientations, providing consistent access to important information like the employee handbook, any dress codes or uniform protocols, company policies, and key workflows.
5. It facilitates enrollment and training
   During the first week and first month, new hires need to complete enrollment for benefits, learn about training programs, and understand their new role in-depth. A checklist keeps everything on track and manageable.

How ThingLink Can Help You Create Dynamic Onboarding Materials

ThingLink makes it easy to create an interactive, engaging employee orientation experience that goes beyond static PDFs and emails. Here’s how ThingLink can elevate your new employee onboarding:

Interactive Onboarding Checklists

Use ThingLink to design an immersive onboarding checklist that links directly to resources like the employee handbook, welcome email, training programs, workspace setup instructions, and job responsibilities overviews. The example below shows how you could embed all the items in one place using ThingLink. Explore to see the potential:

Customizable Templates

Quickly build customized templates for different departments or roles, making it easy to customize the onboarding experience based on the new job and location (remote or in-person). With ThingLink Scenario Builder you can also create simple linear, or choice-based branched learning scenarios that teams can use as templates to explain any process in an immersive and interactive way. These can then be embedded into your interactive onboarding checklist. Check out the Health and Safety Training section in the board above to see this in action!

Virtual Tours

Show new hires around their worksite virtually! Create a 360° virtual tour that helps remote employees visualize the office layout, key team members, and important locations. This can also be valuable for global employees who work in other regions, to see the site layout and details of the company HQ. Check out this engaging and interactive example from scientific instrument manufacturer Vaisala below.

Preboarding Activities

Start engagement before the start date by providing a preboarding experience, introducing them to company culture, explaining the dress code, and preparing them for day one. This could include an interactive learning experience like the one below, created with ThingLink Scenario Builder. It can be completed at home or even during the commute to work.

Self-Paced Learning

Embed video introductions from hiring managers and team members, links to tax documents, guides for setting up direct deposit for monthly payment, and checklists for new hire paperwork — all available in one place, allowing new hires to explore at their own pace. All the examples provided in this blog can be accessed remotely. With ThingLink, content can easily be shared with a simple URL, and viewed in any device, meaning that employees don’t HAVE to be logged into your system, or on-site, to complete the onboarding checklist or any courses.

Regular Check-Ins and Updates

Keep new hires on track during their first week, first month, and beyond by scheduling regular check-ins and providing updated content as they move through their onboarding plan. Questions and polls are easy to embed in your ThingLink content, which give a quick and informal pulse-check, or an opportunity for more in-depth understanding of progress.

Help Your Employees Flourish

An organized onboarding checklist is essential for a successful onboarding and outstanding employee experience. Whether your new team members are starting in person or remotely, the right tools can make all the difference. ThingLink offers an easy way to build interactive, customized, and effective onboarding materials that HR teams and hiring managers can use to streamline the employee onboarding process, ensuring every new hire feels prepared, informed, and excited to start their journey.

Are you ready to transform your onboarding experience? Create a strong foundation in the first year for every new employee with interactive onboarding assets, and watch new hires at your organization flourish.

How else can you use ThingLink throughout your organization?

As well as onboarding assets, organizations across the world are incorporating ThingLink into every aspect of their operations. Use cases include:

• Interactive product guides for customers and sales teams, using 360 visuals and 3D objects, accessible on any screen or device

• Interactive maps and timelines to help visualise your customer journey, site locations

• XR training for skills development and safety protocols in high-risk situations

• On-site and in-the-field training and troubleshooting using the ThingLink AR Solution, accessible on any mobile device

• Team training using realistic scenario-based learning in shared immersive spaces

• Immersive escape rooms and other gamified content for team-building in specific, real-world environments

Read more: Training new employees with ThingLink