20 awesome new hire onboarding ideas from top companies

Here are my favorite onboarding ideas I’ve seen in the wild (some of which I introduced myself at prior companies).  

🌴 Atlassian's Take-a-holiday-before-you-start

When I was at Atlassian, we introduced a program that gave every new hire an Airbnb voucher to take a holiday before they started.

It worked incredibly well. People arrived energised, with a clear head and a sense of momentum. Their friends and family also got to share in the celebration, which made the new-job moment feel even bigger.

And the cultural signal was powerful; from day zero, we showed we value wellbeing and want people to start at their best.

🎧 Experience the product like a customer

A hotel chain offered new hires two free nights as part of their onboarding journey. The catch? They were asked to write a full review of the experience!

What would the equivalent be in your environment?

Are your retail company? Maybe offer the new hire a gift card and turn it into a mystery shopping experience.

At a SaaS business? Give them customer-tier access, ask them to log a support ticket, and ask for a product teardown.

It helps new hires think more like an owner early on, and earn the right to give product feedback.

🖼️ “A picture says a thousand words” - quick and memorable intro

Skip the long Slack intro post. It can be nerve wrecking to introduce yourself .

An easy alternative is asking new hires to share three personal photos instead, maybe of your family, hobby, trip, pet.

Faster, it's incredibly human, and instantly memorable.

🎤 "Podcast" for long onboarding reads - AI/NotebookLM hack!

Have you ever played with NotebookLM?

I was talking to to a HR leader who, besides written instructions, added a quick audio podcast of longer form reads using NotebookLM. It's clever, and easy for any team to create!

On the train? Walking the dog? New hires can listen to information you need to relay instead!

🧪 AI powered Interactive training simulations

AI can now simulate customer tickets, sales calls, and stakeholder chats, with instant feedback. And you don't need to buy an expensive tool to set this up and test this. Just ask what your approved AI apps are, add instructions and set up a simulation.

Learning accelerates dramatically when it's realistic + safe to fail.

🎥 Typeform’s video introductions

A simple, cost-effective, and beautifully human way to spark early connection.

At Typeform, new hires record a short video introducing themselves before their first day, who they are, what they love, what they’re excited about. The team then shares it internally so everyone feels like they’ve already met.

You can easily recreate this using Typeform’s VideoAsk; just send a quick prompt and let new hires reply with a video response. It’s personal, lightweight, and builds warmth before day one even begins.

🎨 Notion's Hand-drawn avatars - what's your equivalent?

I love how Notion gave every new hire a custom hand-drawn avatar in that typical Notion style.

It was a small investment, but a massive emotional payoff; after they got their Notion Avatar they really belonged, and were part of the team/brand!

Ask yourself: What can you offer that is unique to your brand, to make new hires feel part of your team?

🚀 Be sure to include a “quick win” project

Give every new hire a small, high-impact project they can complete in their first 1–2 weeks. The project should be meaningful, visible, and can be completed end-to-end relatively quickly.

It builds confidence fast and creates real value early. It also gives managers a reason to coach early and helps introduce the new to key stakeholders early and naturally.

Examples:

• Support rep drafts a new macro for a recurring customer question
• SDR creates 5 new outreach templates
• Engineer ships a small bug fix or “quality of life” improvement
• People Ops reviews onboarding comms & suggests improvements
• Designer creates a mini brand asset for internal use
  

🏄‍♂️ Squarespace beach house (and an "Initial Commit")

For special intakes, like graduates or interns, you may choose to do something more memorable. Squarespace hires were invited to a beach house for a week; beach mornings, and ship product by Friday. (The program was called "Initial Commit")

It builds bonds, confidence, & creativity fast. And it instilled an important cultural focus on things like shipping product early on.

Not a beach house company? Try a local co-working retreat or maker week.

🧠 Arianna Huffington's Entry interviews

Arianna Huffington popularized these. Instead of waiting for exit interviews… ask new hires early:

• What helps you thrive?
• How do you like feedback?
• What do you need to do your best work?

Not only does it show care, it surfaces friction before it becomes attrition.

🙌 Stack Overflow's automated(!) buddy program

Buddy programs reduce first-year attrition by up to 36% (HBR), but ony work if they don't falter under admin involvement.

Companies like Stack Overflow, Arctic Wolf, and Dataiku use Pyn to ensure that hiring managers automatically receive a request to select a buddies for their new hire right inside Slack .

After selection, more messages are automatically sequenced to inform the buddy that was selected - and to ensure introductions are made.

This ease of assigning buddies, nudge them at key moments, give them light scripts makes the whole process scalable.

🤝 Interactive cohort Q&As

Group Q&A sessions for new joiners each month with leaders across the org. These group sessions put less pressure on new hires compared to a than 1:1 meeting and scales better.

To avoid the administrative burden of having to remember to add new hires to a calendar invitation, this only scales when you automate the process.

Companies use tools like Pyn to identify which hires were added within a certain time period and add them to the relevant sessions without human involvement.

🎁 Better welcome kits: role-based

Generic mugs are out. Context is in.

Instead of offering the same onboarding kit for new hires, some companies make the kits different for each role.

Some items my be the same for everyone, but perhaps for an engineer it includes a mechanical keyboard cap, cable kit, focus headphones. And for an account exec in sales it includes a handwritten notecard kit, a great mic or a ring light.

Alternatively, some companies let new hires pick their own goodies after they sign their offer which is sent to their home promptly.

🤫 Carta's DMs in Slack (instead of generic notifications)

Do you want to feel you are being onboarded by a machine or by a human?

Companies like Carta or Lucid avoid sending system notifications to notify new hires and managers of onboarding tasks or information instead their onboarding coordinators DM them in Slack - at scale and automated!

Automated HRIS tasks → sent as human DMs from the right person.

It feels more personal. Also, such messages see higher engagement and action rates.

💬 Ethena's User manuals (for humans)

Ask new hires (and managers!) to share a short working style manual.

I've used them in the past also and I found these user manual (or “How I Work” guide) a fun and effective way to get new hires to share how they like to communicate, make decisions, and work best - and to speed to the integration in the team and establishing trust with their manager.

It's especially useful in hybrid/remote teams. What's gerenally included:

• How I like feedback
• My quirks & preferences
• Best ways to collaborate

Link to template: https://www.pynhq.com/guide/user-manual/

📅 90-day plan

In fast-moving organisations, it’s crucial to keep momentum.

In many great companies new hires are provided with a structured 30/60-90 day plan with weekly check-ins and clear milestones.

• 30 days: Learn the culture, tools, key relationships, basic deliverables.
• 60 days: Take ownership of tasks, start delivering value, deepen stakeholder engagement.
• 90 days: Lead initiatives, shape longer-term plans, evaluate early wins.

For a detailed guide: https://www.pynhq.com/library/pyn/how-to-create-a-30-60-90-day-plan-for-your-new-hire/

👫 Culture Amp's ERG selection prior to starting

Culture Amp invites new hires to select Employee Resource Groups pre-start so invites are ready week one.

They land already connected.

🧾 Pyn to identify and celebrate early wins

For many roles there are predictable milestones that can be celebrated:

• First 100 support tickets
• First booked meeting
• First merged PR

With a system like Pyn, you can connect a system like Zendesk or Salesforce to track milestones and send a nudge to celebrate to their manager if they reach it!

⭐ Truecar's gentle ask for a Glassdoor review (at 60 days)

Around the two-month mark, Truecar sends new hires a friendly Slack message inviting them (totally optional) to share their experience on Glassdoor. By then they’ve seen enough to have a real perspective, but they still remember what the first weeks felt like.

It’s a confidence move (“we trust what you’ll say”), it shows their voice matters, and it helps future candidates get an authentic look at your culture. Keep it light and human; a warm DM from a leader works much better than an automated form or mass email.

👩🏻‍🎨 Samantha Gadd on designing onboarding around connection first

When designing onboarding programs, most companies focus heavily on the first two; Compliance and Ramp Speed.

Samantha Gadd explains how the most successful organizations prioritize Assimilation and Connection first, because it has the greatest long-term impact on engagement, retention, and performance.

Traditional onboarding (compliance-first) week 1 agenda:

✅ Complete paperwork
✅ Security + HRIS setup
✅ Policies & compliance training
✅ Tools & systems orientation
✅ Intro to projects & goals

👇👇

Connection-first (assimilation-first) week 1 agenda:

👋 Welcome breakfast / virtual coffee with manager + team
🤝 Introductions to key cross-functional partners they'll work with
🧭 “How we work here” culture & communication norms session
👫 Buddy kickoff conversation
🎯 Guided conversation to understand their strengths, working style, and expectations
✌️ Day 3 “early win” project intro (small, doable, visible)
📋 Paperwork, systems access, security training… delivered asynchronously, in-flow, not dominating the schedule

Same compliance tasks, just surfaced smartly and spread over time so they don't crowd out relationships.

Build onboarding that runs, and feels, like this

Most teams want to run onboarding like this.

What blocks them? Spreadsheets, manual emails, forgotten tasks, no system integrations, and lack of personalization.

This is exactly why we built Pyn; to help companies automate onboarding moments, personalize messages by role or location, and scale the human touch.

Want to see how? Sign into Pyn and play in the Playground.

Or book a demo and we’ll walk you through a modern onboarding journey!