Onboarding Rituals

Onboarding Rituals: Setting the Foundation for Success

Introduction

Onboarding rituals are critical to ensuring new hires integrate seamlessly into an organization’s culture, processes, and mission. These rituals go beyond administrative tasks to create an environment where new team members feel welcomed, valued, and equipped to contribute meaningfully from day one. Thoughtful onboarding not only accelerates productivity but also strengthens long-term engagement and retention.

One of the key lessons I’ve learned about onboarding on my journey is the value of making it clear to both the new hire and their mentor that one of their key onboarding assignments is to improve the documented (create one if it doesn’t already exist) onboarding process to make the onboarding experience of the next new hire better. This includes adding missing steps, creating distinction by role for certain things, correcting error, adding what’s missing, clarifying things that may be confusing, updating things that have changed etc.

The value of having a new hire improve the onboarding system goes far beyond having a constantly improving and current onboarding system. It establishes a great mindset:

If you see something that could be better, improve it, even if just incrementally.
Systems and processes exist with good intent
Improving things collaboratively is a good approach.
Adding value to the business, its systems and other employees is how we like to operate from day 1.

Why Onboarding Rituals Matter

Cultural Alignment:
- Effective onboarding ensures that new hires understand and align with the company’s values, vision, and mission.
Accelerated Productivity:
- Structured rituals help new employees quickly gain clarity on their roles, responsibilities, and team dynamics.
Employee Retention:
- A positive onboarding experience fosters loyalty and reduces turnover, with studies showing that strong onboarding increases retention by up to 50%.
Building Trust and Relationships:
- By fostering early connections, onboarding rituals establish trust and camaraderie within teams.
Validating the Hire:
- The onboarding period offers a critical opportunity to assess whether the new hire is the right fit for the role and the team, while addressing any red flags with empathy and fairness.

Key Elements of Onboarding Rituals

Preboarding:
- Ensure all necessary tools, systems, and documentation are prepared before the new hire’s first day.
- Send a welcome email outlining the onboarding schedule and providing helpful resources.
The First Day Experience:
- Design a warm and engaging welcome, such as a team introduction, a personalized welcome kit, and a tour of the workspace (virtual or physical).
Structured Onboarding Plan:
- Develop a clear plan that outlines milestones for the first week, month, and quarter, including:
  - Orientation sessions.
  - Training on tools and processes.
  - Meetings with key team members and stakeholders.
Cultural Integration:
- Introduce rituals that reflect the company’s culture, such as:
  - Lunch with the team.
  - A storytelling session where leaders share the company’s origin and mission.
Buddy System:
- Pair new hires with experienced team members to provide guidance, answer questions, and facilitate connections.
- Highlight the value of mentors and spin-up buddies in fostering new hire success and improving team cohesion.
Continuous Improvement Mindset:
- Following the example from IMVU and other organizations, make improving the onboarding process part of the new hire’s tasks, fostering a culture of continuous improvement from the outset.
- Encourage new hires to leave the onboarding process in a better state than they found it by documenting gaps and suggesting improvements.
Engaging the New Hire’s Team:
- Emphasize the team’s role in onboarding by encouraging collaboration and shared responsibility for the new hire’s success.
Regular Check-Ins:
- Schedule one-on-one meetings with managers and HR to review progress, address challenges, and gather feedback.
Feedback Loops:
- Collect feedback on the onboarding process to identify areas for improvement and ensure a continuous cycle of refinement.
Vetting the Hire:

Use the onboarding period to assess alignment with role expectations and cultural fit. Identify any red flags early and determine whether they can be addressed through training or role adjustments.

Empowering New Hires:

Help new hires recognize their ability to impact their own success and fulfillment, fostering a growth mindset and a sense of ownership over their roles.

Atomic Steps for Onboarding Rituals

Prepare in Advance:
- Ensure access to systems, tools, and resources is ready before the first day. The new hire may discover something was missing or incomplete – this creates an opportunity for them to help ensure it gets improved for the next hire.
Underscore the Importance of People
- Every new hire should be given a list on day one of people they should meet that would be good to know or learn from as they spin up or in their role. This can be furthered (for on-site positions) by giving them a stack of StarBucks/Peet’s/Philz coffee coupons that allows them to invite people from their list to coffee.
Tailored Onboarding Experience:
- Customize onboarding to align with the new hire’s role and department:
  - Key Contacts to Meet: Ensure they have a list of critical contacts for their role, including cross-functional collaborators, department heads, and team leads. See #2 above.
  - Lunch with CEO/Execs: It can be good to have the CEO and/or other execs have a dedicated, scheduled lunch with new hires on a recurring basis including the new hires since the last such lunch.
  - Key Processes: Introduce them to essential workflows and approval processes relevant to their role.
  - Learning Resources: Provide access to training materials, company knowledge bases, and industry-specific learning platforms.
  - Company Culture Overview: Schedule a session to explain company traditions, values, and mission.
  - Performance Expectations: Define clear goals and milestones for the first 30, 60, and 90 days.
  - Shadowing Opportunities: Arrange shadowing sessions with experienced team members to understand role-specific responsibilities.
  - Social Integration: Include team-building activities or informal meet-and-greets to foster relationships.
  - Safety and Compliance: Cover workplace safety protocols and any compliance training specific to their role.
  - Documentation / Literature: Which documents, files, folders directories should they be aware of and have access to?
  - Glossary: Does the company have a glossary of industry and company terms and TLAs commonly used? If not, a new-hire could start one, if so, a new-hire could benefit from and improve on such a glossary.
  - Communications:
    - What email/slack groups/channels should they be in?
    - What meetings should they be in?
  - Systems: What systems do they need what kind of access to?
    - Systems and Tools for engineers and sales people differ greatly
  - Equipment: What equipment do they need – what kind of computer, an external monitor (“), …?
  - Do they need a company credit card?
  - Etc.
Introduce Atomic Rituals Early:
- Incorporate small, meaningful rituals that emphasize collaboration and alignment, such as daily stand-ups or weekly retrospectives. Here it is vital that they understand the purpose of these rituals and appreciate that if they don’t understand a purpose or “why” behind a ritual, they should ask.
Focus on Early Wins / Include First-Day Impact Tasks:
- Identify opportunities for new hires to achieve quick, impactful contributions, building confidence and momentum. At IMVU and Twitch we ensured that a mentor had a simple task a new hire could complete on day 1. For example, for an engineer, fix a typo in production. This involved understanding and being able to execute various steps in a change process. The would then send out a company wide email saying ~”I changed this in production, I added local tests and ran regression tests to ensure everything works. The intent of the change was: xxx, the change is now live.” This was the invitation for everyone in the company to say “Welcome to IMVU!” after they had not only started but become a contributing member.
Empathetically Address Misalignment:
- If red flags emerge during onboarding, address them promptly and empathetically. Use the opportunity to improve hiring processes for future candidates.
Incorporate Peer Learning:
- Encourage recently onboarded employees to mentor the next wave of hires, reinforcing a culture of continuous learning and improvement. At Twitch, I brought the team to a point where the onboarding process had become so smooth that an employee hire two weeks ago could be the mentor for a new hire simply because they were two weeks ahead. This also meant it didn’t always have to be the senior or lead engineers that got tied up in onboarding.

Real-World Example: Netflix’s Freedom and Responsibility Onboarding

Netflix’s onboarding process emphasizes its unique culture of freedom and responsibility. New hires are immersed in a culture deck that outlines the company’s values, encouraging autonomy and decision-making while aligning with its broader mission. Early onboarding includes:

Direct access to leaders for Q&A sessions.
Immediate immersion in live projects to foster a sense of ownership and contribution.

Real-World Example: IMVU’s Iterative Spin-Up Process

At IMVU, we expected new hires to make a meaningful production change on their first day, supported by a mentor. This process ensures tools, systems, and access are properly configured while instilling a mindset of immediate contribution and continuous improvement. Feedback from new hires is used to refine the onboarding process, fostering a culture of iteration and growth. This is where I also first introduced a defined process of having new hires and their mentors always improve the spin-up/on-boarding process for the next hire.

Other Salient Points for Onboarding

Remote Onboarding Considerations: If onboarding remote employees, pay special attention to creating a sense of connection and belonging. This could involve virtual team-building activities, regular video calls, and providing opportunities for social interaction.

Clarity of Role and Expectations: Ensure new hires have a crystal-clear understanding of their roles, responsibilities, and performance expectations from day one. This includes providing a detailed job description, outlining key performance indicators (KPIs), and setting clear goals for the onboarding period.

Cultural Immersion: Go beyond simply stating company values. Create opportunities for new hires to experience the culture firsthand through interactions with colleagues, participation in team events, and exposure to company traditions and rituals.

Personalized Onboarding: Recognize that each new hire is unique and tailor the onboarding experience to their individual needs and learning styles. This could involve providing different types of training materials, offering flexible scheduling, or assigning mentors with relevant expertise.

Early and Frequent Feedback: Provide regular feedback during the onboarding period, both formal and informal. This helps new hires understand their progress, identify areas for improvement, and feel supported in their development.

Measurement and Iteration: Track key metrics related to onboarding, such as time-to-productivity, retention rates, and employee satisfaction. Use this data to continuously evaluate and improve the onboarding process.

Technology Enablement: Leverage technology to streamline onboarding tasks, provide access to resources, and facilitate communication. This could include using onboarding software, online learning platforms, or collaboration tools.

Ideally the IT / Operations organization has configurations and run books to provision and setup equipment and systems for each role or role category within each organization. These can be developed and branched off over time perhaps sharing some root processes and documentation that is applicable across the board. For example, the type of machine options and access to systems will likely be quite different for a new hire software engineer that it might be for a new hire sales person.

Conclusion

Thoughtful onboarding rituals are more than just an HR responsibility—they are a strategic investment in the company’s future. By emphasizing cultural alignment, structured planning, and early engagement, organizations can create a seamless transition for new hires, fostering long-term success for individuals and teams alike. At the same time, the onboarding period provides an opportunity to validate the hire, identify areas for process improvement, and reinforce a culture of continuous growth and alignment.

Atomic Rituals