Employee Onboarding Template for Jira: Streamline New Hire Integration

Effective onboarding is essential for employee retention and productivity. Did you know that a well-structured onboarding process can boost new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%?

Poor onboarding doesn’t just affect those early days; it can impact retention, productivity, and even your bottom line. Missed tasks, security risks, or delays in system access can quickly turn a smooth start into a rocky experience.

But what if there were a way to simplify this process and minimize those risks? A streamlined onboarding template in Jira could be the answer.

What is an Employee Onboarding Template?

An employee onboarding template is a structured checklist designed to guide new hires through the initial steps of joining a company. 

Why Use an Employee Onboarding Template in Jira?

A structured onboarding template in Jira offers many advantages for teams.

• A consistent onboarding process ensures new hires feel welcomed and supported, positively impacting retention and productivity. 
• With structured Jira onboarding templates HR and IT teams can manage all steps in one place, from paperwork to role-specific training, minimizing the risk of missing essential tasks. 
• Jira’s tracking capabilities also allow managers to monitor progress easily and identify any bottlenecks that could impact the new hire’s experience. 
• Ultimately, onboarding templates in Jira save time, document the workflow, reduce repetitive work, and help each new employee start strong.

How to Create a Customizable Employee Onboarding Template in Jira

A structured onboarding template in Jira provides a streamlined way to manage essential tasks for new hires, from initial setup to performance reviews. With a consistent onboarding process, you can enhance employee experience, track progress, and ensure nothing is missed.

For optimal management of your company’s onboarding workflow, you can use Smart Tools by TitanApps, which simplify onboarding by allowing you to replicate the same structure for every new hire with one click. 

The first step in this process is the creation of a Smart Template that will reflect both pre-onboarding activities for the HR team required to help new hires smoothly enter the company’s environment and onboarding activities for the new hires and their coordinators.

In order to create such a template from scratch you can follow this guide and copy paste the issue names below to repeat this hierarchy for your purposes. Use variables to manage dynamic values in your templates like in the presented example. You can easily edit this template later if required. 

{{employee_name}} onboarding for {{position}} at {{project}}

• Pre-onboarding preparation for {{position}} {{employee_name}}
• Provide newcomer with welcome pack {{employee_name}}
• Sign up the service agreement, NDA, DPA for  {{employee_name}}
• Grant access to tools for  {{employee_name}}
• Hardware setup for {{employee_name}}
• Onboarding Data check for {{employee_name}}
• Company onboarding for {{employee_name}}  {{position}}
• Onboarding checklist for Coordinator  {{position}} {{employee_name}}

Once your work on your Smart template keep in mind these three simple steps:

Step 1: Design the Template structure:

• Create template for individual issues or entire issue hierarchies.
• Pre-fill dynamic variables (e.g., name, role, and start date) that will change for each onboarding process and more standardised fields like – issue summary, description labels..

Step 2: Manage dynamic values with variables:

• Add variables to make the template adaptable to different employees or scenarios, such as due dates, responsible team members, or task descriptions, using Smart Variables.

Step 3: Automate Workflow:

• Use Jira Automation to automatically create onboarding tasks from the template.

The next step is to further structure all the activities in the onboarding process. You can add Smart Checklist for each of the issues inside your onboarding template to break down issues to smaller steps and make sure nothing is overlooked.

It means that you can create separate checklists for the People, Legal, IT, Procurement, Security, and other teams involved in the onboarding process. At the same time, you can also create a separate Smart Checklist template for the new employee, outlining tasks for the trial period, along with links to onboarding materials. 

The onboarding Smart Checklist for the new employee should outline tasks for the trial period, along with links to onboarding materials.

Preview Markdown view

Company onboarding for Maria Smith | Developer
# During the 1st week
– Use your *full name* in your Slack profile
– Add your picture to _all company profiles_
> List of company profiles: Slack, Google account, Jira/Confluence, etc.
– Fill out [the form](http://rw.rw/vimeo.com) to get company merch
> Please state your current address
– Install required software
>VPN setup
>Antivirus installation
– Complete Orientation day
– Complete Product Training – Day 3
– Complete Compliance Workshop – Day 5
– Join team introduction meeting
# During the 1st month
– Read [company-wide policies](https://vimeo.com)
– Watch [Slack usage video](https://vimeo.com)
– Learn [working with sensitive information](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence)
– Prepare for the first feedback session
>Purpose: Assess your training progress and role adaptation.
– Schedule Bi-weekly meetings with your coordinator
>Purpose: Review progress on tasks, ask questions

Copy Copied

Copy and paste this example into your Jira issue during creation or add to the specific Jira issue as a checklist within the onboarding Smart Template you’ve created at the first step, then save it as a Jira employee onboarding template to streamline your process. Follow the Markdown editor instructions and adjust as needed.

Add Smart Checklists for onboarding in different departments

Smart Checklists allow you to further break down onboarding tasks into actionable steps, ensuring every detail is accounted for without creating excess subtasks. For instance, in the IT setup stage, you can use a Smart Checklist to guide IT teams step-by-step. Below are examples of how this might look for a typical IT setup, legal setup and mentor assignment checklist:

IT Setup checklist

Legal team checklist

Onboarding checklist for coordinator | Team Lead – Martin Perez

Pro-tip:

Mandatory checklist items will block issue transition to “Done” unless all mandatory items are completed. Check the detailed instructions here Smart Checklist Cloud – Confluence

You can further customize your Smart Checklist Template for various departments or roles, ensuring it aligns with unique team needs.

Streamline onboarding process with Smart Checklist for Jira

Smart Checklist is a handy app that allows you to add well-structured ToDo’s to your Jira issues. You can use Smart Checklist as a personal to-do list to organize your daily work. However, there is much more to it than just a checklist. Our Smart Tool removes frustration from your team, saves time, streamlines recurring tasks and maximizes the team’s efficiency.

Try for free

Department-Specific Checklists for the new hire onboarding

You can add more checklist items with specific onboarding tasks based on the position. For example, when the newcomer is joining the development team, you can add the following checklist.

Engineering Department Onboarding Checklist

Sales Department Onboarding Checklist

Marketing Department Onboarding Checklist

Pro-tip

You can also assign these checklists automatically based on the position. Please check out the detailed instruction here Codifying Processes with Smart Tools for Jira | HR Team Onboarding

Using Smart Checklists within each task not only helps track progress but also keeps everyone aligned, making it easier to complete each step efficiently.

Conclusion

A structured onboarding template in Jira, enhanced by Smart Checklists, offers HR and managers a powerful tool to streamline the onboarding process, reduce errors, and improve employee satisfaction. Adapting this template ensures it remains relevant across departments and regions, making it an essential component of any effective onboarding strategy.

Structure onboarding process with Smart Templates

• Spend less time on recreating or cloning recurring tasks
• Optimize your workflow with flexible templates and reduce human error
• Enforce company standards

Try for free

FAQ Questions

Why do companies need an Employee Onboarding Template?

Employee Onboarding Template helps organize tasks and milestones crucial for integrating employees smoothly into their roles and the company culture. It also streamlines task assignments and simplifies tracking, developing a consistent and efficient onboarding process across departments.

What are the key elements of an effective Employee Onboarding Template?

A comprehensive onboarding template should cover the essentials to give new hires a seamless start. Here’s what to include:

1. Employee Information: Record basics like the new hire’s name, department, position, and start date.
2. Administrative Tasks: Track essential paperwork and benefits setup, like signing contracts, enrolling in health insurance, and providing access to company tools.
3. IT Setup: Ensure timely email creation and grant access to necessary systems, like CRM or Slack.
4. Training and Orientation Schedule: Outline orientation events and training sessions, such as product training and compliance workshops.
5. Performance Goals and First Review: Set achievable goals for the first month and schedule an initial review to support progress and adaptation.
6. Assigning a Buddy or Mentor: Pair the new hire with a buddy or mentor to answer questions and ease their transition.
7. First Week and Month Checklist: Detail specific tasks or meetings for the first week and month to provide a clear roadmap.

These elements, organized in Jira, keep the process transparent and manageable, ensuring every critical onboarding step is covered.

Article by Viktoriia Golovtseva

Content Writer at TitanApps. Experienced Content Writer & Marketer, passionate about crafting strategic content that drives results and exploring the intersections of content and product marketing to create impactful campaigns. Dedicated to helping companies achieve their marketing goals through engaging storytelling and data-driven optimization.