The Onboarding Opportunity: What Happens after the Hire?

Recruitment brings knowledge, experience and potential into an organization. How can onboarding help new employees apply those strengths sooner – and keep developing long after their first day?

A new employee has completed the required forms, watched the culture presentation, set up their accounts, and completed role-specific training. According to the onboarding dashboard, everything is on track. 

Yet the employee may still be unsure which priorities matter most or what good performance looks like. They may wonder which decisions they can make independently, or when to rely on their manager for feedback and guidance. 

Kristi Stepp, Managing Partner at Signium in Detroit, says,

“This is the gap modern onboarding needs to close. Organizations can’t leave new employees waiting for clarity or trying to assemble the role for themselves. It wastes time and makes it harder for good people to do the work they were hired to do.”  

“Take a new accountant, for example,” Stepp continues. “An accountant is recruited to an accounting role for their knowledge and experience, and it’s assumed they already know everything they need to fill the role. But they don’t yet know how things work in this particular company. What matters most? Who do they need to work with? Which decisions can they make themselves? And what does doing a really good job look like here? That’s where typical induction often falls short.” 

Onboarding is the first stage of helping someone perform well. It’s also one of the first places where employees experience what leadership in the organization actually means. 

Hiring capability is only the beginning 

Organizations invest considerable time and money in finding people with the right knowledge, experience, and potential. Hiring brings capability into the organization. Onboarding determines how quickly – and how fully – that capability can be put to work in a particular organization. 

A 2025 review published in the Journal of Management identifies four important early outcomes of organizational socialization: role clarity, task mastery, social acceptance, and perceived fit. Together, they offer a more useful measure of onboarding than ticking off activities. Does the employee understand the role? Are they learning to perform the work? Have they begun building the relationships they need? Can they see where and how they add value? 

These aren’t outcomes a welcome presentation or completed learning module can produce on its own. They develop as employees begin working inside the organization, testing their understanding, asking questions, and receiving feedback. 

Necessary learning curves vs. Unnecessary friction 

Organizations understandably want new employees to become effective quickly. However, accelerating performance shouldn’t mean expecting new employees to prove their value before they’ve been given the conditions to succeed.  

The more useful task is to distinguish between what genuinely takes time to learn and what the organization could make easier. Avoidable friction commonly takes three forms: 

• Operational friction 

The employee is ready to begin but is still waiting for systems, information, tools, or access. 

• Performance uncertainty 

Priorities conflict, standards remain vague, or the employee doesn’t know which decisions they may make independently. 

• Passive learning 

The employee receives large amounts of information but has little opportunity to apply it through meaningful work, supported practice, and timely feedback. 

“We’re never going to eliminate the learning curve,” says Stepp. “Every new role takes time to learn. But employees should be learning how to do the work – not struggling with unclear priorities, missing information, or a lack of support.” 

What does a new employee need – and when?  

What a new employee needs before day one differs from what they’ll need during their first assignment, or once they begin making decisions independently. A well-designed onboarding journey responds to that progression, providing the right kind of support as the role unfolds.  

1. Technology that supports onboarding without replacing it 

Digital tools can make essential information available when employees need it, tailor content to different roles, prompt key activities and conversations – and help HR see where people are getting stuck. They can also prevent every new hire from depending on whether an individual colleague remembered to share a document or explain a process. 

However, a digital platform is most useful when it frees people from having to administer routine information, not when it tries to remove people from onboarding altogether. Stepp elaborates: “Technology can explain a policy or show someone where to find a resource. But it can’t tell them which priority comes first when circumstances change, or help them understand why an experienced colleague would handle a situation in a particular way. People are still essential to onboarding.”  

2. A tailored journey that builds capability 

A structured journey should set out what the employee needs to understand and attempt, which relationships their work will depend on, and when their progress will be reviewed.  

That structure shouldn’t make onboarding identical for everyone. A graduate entering their first professional role, an experienced technical specialist, and a leader moving into a new industry will begin from different places. 

“Carefully chosen early assignments are particularly important,” says Stepp. “Give someone work that’s too easy, and they don’t learn much. Give them something too difficult and they may not have the context to succeed. The right assignment stretches them, with support and feedback close at hand. That’s what tailored onboarding does: it unlocks more capability and confidence one step at a time.”  

3. Leadership support that creates connection 

For all the attention paid to onboarding platforms and program design, much of the employee’s experience still comes down to what happens between them and their manager. Gallup found that employees were 3.4 times more likely to regard their onboarding as successful when their manager played an active role. 

This doesn’t mean managers must personally deliver every part of onboarding. HR and talent teams can provide the framework, tools and key milestones. Colleagues and mentors can share knowledge and help the employee build relationships. Managers connect those elements to the daily realities of the role. 

As onboarding progresses, a new employee should have increasingly clear answers to three questions: 

• What matters most right now? 

• What does good performance look like? 

• Where can I act independently, and where do I need support? 

“These early conversations do more than help someone perform,” explains Stepp. “They show the employee what the organization’s values and leadership expectations look like in practice.” 

If the organization values initiative, the manager needs to explain where the employee has room to act without approval. If it values collaboration, the employee needs to know which colleagues, teams and specialists their work will depend on. If it encourages open debate, they will notice how the manager responds when someone challenges a more senior colleague. If it claims to value learning, the response to a reasonable early mistake will carry more weight than anything said in a culture presentation. 

Managers also help keep onboarding relevant as the employee progresses. One person may need more support in a particular area; another may be ready to take on greater responsibility. Regular conversations allow the plan to change before uncertainty slows the employee down or undermines their confidence. 

That involvement can also support retention. Employees are more likely to see a future in an organization when they understand what is expected, can see that they are making progress and have begun building the relationships they need to succeed. 

This is why managers need a hand in both shaping and delivering onboarding. Their involvement keeps the process connected to the work, responsive to the individual and aligned with the leadership culture the organization wants employees to experience. 

How does GitLab make onboarding a shared responsibility? 

As an all-remote company, GitLab can’t rely on new employees learning simply by being present in the office. Its onboarding process deliberately combines digital structure with support from managers and colleagues. 

Before a new engineer begins, GitLab creates a central digital “onboarding issue.” This provides one place to track practical requirements such as accounts and paperwork, as well as company information, values and role-specific tasks. Responsibility is shared: the issue includes actions for the People Experience team, the hiring manager, the employee and an onboarding buddy. 

The manager selects a buddy who works in a similar technical area and adds tasks that reflect the new employee’s particular role. During the opening weeks, the new engineer pairs with experienced colleagues on real work, including their first requests to merge code into production. Weekly feedback conversations help them understand what they are doing well and where they need to adjust, while informal coffee chats help them build relationships across the distributed organization. 

GitLab aims for engineers to contribute production code within their first week and complete onboarding within three months. Its approach shows how the different parts of onboarding can reinforce one another: the digital system keeps the journey organized, managers connect it to the role, and colleagues provide the knowledge, feedback and relationships that help the employee become more independent. 

Onboarding ends. Development should not. 

Onboarding provides the first bridge between recruitment and longer-term development. Recruitment identifies the knowledge and experience someone already has; onboarding begins to show what they may need next. 

Early assignments and feedback begin to show where an employee is already strong, where they need more experience, how they approach unfamiliar problems and when they may be ready for greater responsibility.  

These observations can shape an initial development plan. Over time, the way someone learns, collaborates and exercises judgment may also contribute to a better understanding of their leadership potential.  

“People don’t all start from the same place,” explains Stepp. “One person may already know the industry or have worked in a similar culture. Another may need more time to build that context. A quick start doesn’t always mean greater potential, and a slower start doesn’t mean less. Tailored onboarding must provide fair opportunities to both.” 

The ROI for talent begins with onboarding 

“Organizations invest heavily in finding people with the knowledge, experience, and potential they need,” says Stepp. “But that investment doesn’t pay off when the contract is signed, or the induction checklist is completed. It begins to pay off when the employee can apply what they know, make sound decisions, and contribute with confidence. That is the real work of onboarding.”   

Although onboarding ends when the employee no longer needs to be treated as new, the development it sets in motion should continue far beyond the final onboarding milestone.