Employee onboarding workflows

 

Overview

Create and edit workflows to design the exact new hire experience you want. Gather new employee information before their first day ensuring proper and smooth onboarding for your new hires. 

A default onboarding workflow will be ready for use in your account, but you can add more workflows as needed. To view and edit onboarding workflows:

1. Click your user icon in the upper right of Workable, and then click Settings
2. Navigate to Onboarding under the employee management settings 

 

Setting up onboarding workflows

Before onboarding workflow configuration, you will need to:

• Configure your default or custom profile templates under the Profile templates settings.❗To ensure that employees can complete specific profile fields during onboarding, adjust their Field settings to be 'Editable by' the employee.
• Create the document templates you will use under the Document Templates settings. 

A default onboarding workflow will pre-exist in your account, which requests all the employee editable fields. Make edits or create a new workflow. To do so, click Add a new workflow on the upper right and complete the two Workflow steps that will appear.

Step 1️⃣: Workflow setup 

Add the setup details for your onboarding workflow. 

• Add a name for your workflow (mandatory) 
• Add a short description for the workflow
• Select the department or entity to which this workflow will apply. If you leave this unfilled the workflow will be available for all departments.
• Choose when this workflow should begin. You can update this setting when you start an individual employee onboarding.
  • Immediately
  • Select days before the start date; in the below example, employees assigned to this workflow will be onboarded 3 days before they actually start working.

Click Next to move to the next step.

Step 2️⃣: Tasks & automation

• Welcome email
• Welcome page
• Complete profile
• Sign a document

This is where you set up your employee onboarding experience by adding tasks for the employee to complete during the onboarding. The below three tasks will be added to the workflow by default. 

Welcome email

A link to the onboarding website is included in this email, where employees can complete their onboarding tasks.

• The 'Start onboarding' placeholder is mandatory if Welcome page and/or Complete profile tasks have been added to the onboarding workflow.
• This is the only task that cannot be removed

Welcome page

The page on the onboarding website where you can configure what the employees will get to view once they click on the link included in the welcome email. HR Admins can configure:

• Heading (mandatory) 
• Welcome message
• Video URL, if you wish to include a video 
• Start button text (mandatory); this is what employees will click to proceed to the next steps

Complete profile

Request the employee to fill in selected profile fields in their profile. HR Admins can configure:

• Heading (mandatory)
• Description
• Field selection: select all fields that the employee needs to complete. Available for selection will be only fields that are set as 'Editable by' the employee under the Field settings.

You can edit all tasks or remove the ones you don't need; the Welcome email task cannot be removed. 

Sign a document

Add one or more documents for employees to sign e.g. contract, waiver, disclaimer, or view a document (security & privacy policy). Make sure you have created the relevant document template under the Document Templates settings. HR Admins can configure:

• Heading (mandatory)
• Description
• Document template (mandatory); if the workflow is assigned to a department, available for selection will be templates compatible with the department of the onboarding workflow

To add an additional document, click again Add new task > Sign a document and follow the same procedure for every document you wish to add. 

Note: An existing workflow assigned to new employees cannot be edited. 

 

Managing onboarding workflows

HR Admins have full control over onboarding workflows, and they can edit, duplicate, disable/enable, or delete them as needed (under the three dots menu ).

Action	Explanation
Edit	Editing an onboarding workflow is only possible if it's not currently assigned to new employees. The changes made will only apply to the onboarding workflows that are assigned to employees after the update.
Duplicate	A new copy of the selected workflow will be created with a [copy] mention added to the name. Edit the workflow to change the name or any other information if needed.
Disable	Disabling an onboarding workflow that has already been used at least once will make it unavailable for onboarding new employees. Any employees who have already been assigned to this onboarding workflow will keep it. Disabled workflows will appear at the bottom of the page.
Enable	Enabling a disabled onboarding workflow will make it available for assignments to employees.
Delete	Deleting an onboarding workflow that has not been used will remove it from the account.

 

What the employees see

Onboarding new employees will be guided by an exciting, friendly modal. The onboarding app is mobile-friendly so users will have the same experiences across their devices. 

When they receive the welcome email and click to start, they will be redirected to an onboarding dashboard where they can see:

• An 'Edit your information' button (based on the 'Complete profile' workflow step described earlier in this article)
• Start date and number of days left until then
• Welcome page video widget (if a video has been added to the 'Welcome page' workflow step)
• Any documents that need to be signed (if onboarding includes 'Sign a document' tasks)

Click Preview onboarding website to preview any of your onboarding workflows and see exactly what the employees will see. 

🔎 Want to view the full employee experience? Click here.

The dashboard link will expire on the employee start date and any remaining tasks will be moved to the employee profile. 

 

FAQs

How can I add additional documents for signature?

To add multiple documents for signature, simply create them as separate tasks and use the "Sign a document" task for each document that you want to include in the onboarding workflow.

Why aren't certain fields appearing when I try to add them in onboarding? 

All profile fields that the employee will be required to complete during onboarding should be set as 'Editable by' the Employee under the Field settings; otherwise, they won't appear in the onboarding flow. 

Why can't I delete an onboarding workflow?

If an onboarding workflow has been used at least once it cannot be deleted but only disabled. 

What happens if I edit a document template while the onboarding process is underway?

If you edit a document template (included as a "Sign a document" task in an onboarding workflow) and the onboarding process is underway, then the updated document won't be reflected automatically for the onboardee. In this case, you will need to:

1. Stop the onboarding for the employee(s).
2. Start onboarding again for the employee(s) to receive the updated document.

Both actions can be taken from the onboarding dashboard.