Employee Onboarding Checklist: Free 30-60-90-Day Template (2026)
A good employee onboarding checklist does more than remind HR to collect forms. It coordinates the people, access, training, relationships, and performance conversations a new hire needs from offer acceptance through the first 90 days.
The checklist below is designed for HR teams and hiring managers. You can copy it directly into your project-management system or download the editable Excel template, assign every task to an owner, add deadlines, and adapt the role-specific items for each employee.
If you need help designing the wider journey around these tasks, start with our guide to the employee onboarding process.
Free onboarding checklist template
Download the free employee onboarding checklist template
The downloadable onboarding checklist template includes:
- A master checklist with tasks, owners, timing, status, and notes
- Separate phases for before day one, day one, week one, and days 30, 60, and 90
- Status dropdowns and automatic progress tracking
- A customizable 30-60-90-day onboarding plan
- Space for employee, role, manager, and start-date information
New employee onboarding checklist
Use the following new employee onboarding checklist as a starting point. Some tasks apply to every new hire; others should change according to the employee’s role, location, seniority, and access requirements. If you are building an onboarding checklist for new hires from scratch, keep the standard company items in one place and the role-specific items in another.
Before day one
HR and operations
- Confirm the signed offer and required employment documents
- Collect payroll, tax, benefits, and emergency-contact information
- Confirm the employee’s preferred name, pronunciation, pronouns, location, and working hours
- Send a welcome email with the start time, location or meeting link, dress guidance, and first-day contact
- Share a simple first-week schedule without assigning compulsory work before employment begins
Manager and team
- Define the role’s first 30, 60, and 90-day outcomes
- Prepare a role-specific onboarding plan and initial assignments
- Assign an onboarding buddy
- Schedule manager check-ins, team introductions, and essential stakeholder meetings
- Tell the team when the new hire is joining and explain how they can help
IT and workplace
- Order and configure the required equipment
- Create email, communication, HR, and job-specific accounts
- Grant only the permissions the role needs
- Test the laptop, logins, security tools, and remote-access setup
- Prepare the employee’s desk or confirm equipment delivery
Day one checklist
- Welcome the employee personally and introduce their main point of contact
- Confirm that equipment, accounts, and essential access work
- Complete the most urgent employment, payroll, security, and safety requirements
- Explain the company mission, customers, products, and organizational structure
- Introduce the immediate team and onboarding buddy
- Review the role, current priorities, and what a successful first month looks like
- Show where policies, training, team documentation, and help resources live
- Review the first-week schedule and communication norms
- Give the employee time to configure their workspace and process new information
- Hold a short end-of-day check-in and resolve immediate blockers
First week checklist
- Complete mandatory security, privacy, compliance, and workplace training
- Introduce the tools and workflows used most often in the role
- Arrange meetings with close collaborators and key cross-functional partners
- Explain how the team plans work, makes decisions, shares feedback, and escalates problems
- Let the employee observe a real meeting, workflow, or customer interaction
- Assign one small, useful task with a clear outcome and available support
- Review the job description and clarify responsibilities or unanswered questions
- Confirm the recurring one-to-one and feedback schedule
- Agree on priorities for the first 30 days
- Ask what felt clear, confusing, missing, or overwhelming during week one
First 30 days
- Complete the core company and role-specific learning modules
- Build a working understanding of the product, customers, team goals, and success measures
- Practice the most important workflows with guidance
- Complete an initial deliverable or contribute to active work
- Meet the people who influence or depend on the role
- Review progress and roadblocks during weekly manager check-ins
- Confirm expectations for quality, speed, communication, and ownership
- Record documentation gaps or questions that future new hires may also have
- Hold a formal 30-day review and agree on the next phase
Days 31 to 60
- Transfer ownership of recurring responsibilities gradually
- Complete deeper training for complex tools, processes, or customer situations
- Contribute independently to a team goal or project
- Ask for feedback from the manager and relevant collaborators
- Review early work against agreed quality and performance expectations
- Address skill, access, or context gaps identified during the first month
- Encourage the employee to suggest one practical process or documentation improvement
- Hold a 60-day progress review and adjust the onboarding plan
Days 61 to 90
- Confirm that the employee can handle core responsibilities with appropriate independence
- Complete a meaningful role-specific deliverable or milestone
- Review performance, working relationships, confidence, and remaining development needs
- Set goals for the next quarter or performance cycle
- Decide which training or coaching should continue after formal onboarding
- Ask the employee for detailed feedback on the onboarding experience
- Update inaccurate or unclear onboarding materials
- Recognize completion of the first 90 days
How to use an onboarding checklist effectively
Give every task an owner
An item such as “set up access” is still ambiguous unless one person is accountable for completing it. Assign each task to HR, the hiring manager, IT, a buddy, another team member, or the new hire. Shared work still needs a named owner.
Add deadlines, not just phases
“Before day one” is a useful category, but equipment should have a specific delivery date and a failed login should have an escalation path. Put actual deadlines on tasks that could prevent the employee from working.
Separate standard and role-specific work
Policies, payroll, security, and company context can follow a common new hire onboarding checklist. Training, relationships, early deliverables, and performance milestones should be customized for the role.
Turn repeatable explanations into reusable content
A checklist can confirm that training was assigned, but it cannot teach the material itself. For recurring topics, combine the task with a clear guide or employee onboarding video that the employee can revisit.
If the source material already lives in a handbook, SOP, or slide deck, Velo’s document-to-video workflow can turn it into a narrated video, and even produce multilingual versions for a global team. This keeps the core explanation consistent while managers spend their time answering questions and applying it to the employee’s role. For the wider set of formats, see our guide to corporate training videos.
Review the checklist after every hire
Ask the employee and manager what arrived late, what was unclear, and what was unnecessary. Add missing tasks, remove busywork, and update linked resources before the next person starts.
Make the checklist part of the experience
A new hire checklist creates consistency, but completing boxes is not the final goal. Use it to coordinate timely access, useful learning, human connection, early contribution, and honest feedback throughout the employee’s first 90 days.
Download the editable template, tailor it to the role, and connect every learning task to a resource people can actually use. For repeatable training, Velo creates narrated employee onboarding videos from the documents and recordings your team already has.