Onboarding New Hires

Prepare an onboarding path

Open Hiring → New-hire onboarding → Onboarding paths. Name the path and add tasks for HR, the onboarding lead, IT or the new hire. Set instructions, whether each task is required, and its due date relative to the employment start date: negative days mean before the start; zero means the first day.

For an equipment task, choose predefined options, a freeform request, or both. Enter one company option per line. Set an optional question-email date, or send the question manually later.

Save and publish the path. Existing cases keep their original task content and options when you edit, copy or retire a path.

Start a new hire

Start from New-hire onboarding or the onboarding link on a hired application. Manual entry is also available.

1. Enter the employee’s name, email, employment start date, language and time zone.
2. Choose a published path and assign its People owner, onboarding lead and IT owner. The lead may be the hiring manager. Required staff work needs an owner before starting.
3. Set the contact name and email the employee should use for questions, then start onboarding.

Starting queues a welcome email. The employment start date is separate from the date you marked the recruitment as hired.

Starting or resuming onboarding and sending employee emails require an active Hiring subscription or trial. Existing tasks and employee responses remain available if it expires.

Use the IT Support or Onboarding Lead account role for colleagues who need assigned onboarding work without general product access. Assign them to the relevant case; the role alone does not expose employee records.

Existing colleagues can keep their account role and receive a case assignment instead.

• People owner: manages private HR tasks, employee contact, invitations and HR exports.
• Onboarding lead: sees overall required progress, changes dates, pauses/resumes emails and completes the case once every required task is done. Only their assigned task details are visible; other tasks stay restricted.
• IT owner: handles assigned IT work, equipment preferences, company confirmation and handover.

These assignments do not grant candidate, offer or salary access. Existing separate grants still apply; review the member’s access page when changing roles. Creating cases and editing paths require Hiring access. When removing a People owner, choose a replacement or explicitly leave their cases for an administrator to reassign.

Collect and confirm equipment preferences

The employee can open an option directly from their email, review it and confirm on the page that opens. Opening a link alone never saves an answer. More context opens their full onboarding plan.

An employee can correct a preference until the company confirms it. The IT owner opens the equipment task and uses Confirm company availability, then Record handover when the equipment is delivered. The People owner can also perform these steps. Choosing or confirming an option does not reserve stock or order equipment. Internal confirmation notes stay private.

The employee portal shows their tasks, due dates, first-day instructions and company preparation progress. It keeps internal HR/IT instructions and recruiting records private. Links expire after 14 days; send a new welcome email if a link expires. Revoked access stays disabled.

Adjust the plan

• Change start date or time zone: edit either setting on this screen, then preview and confirm changes to unfinished tasks and queued question emails. Completed task dates stay unchanged.
• Pause emails: hold outbound messages while tasks and existing links remain usable. Resume to continue outstanding messages.
• Revoke employee access: disable employee links and queued messages while keeping staff work.
• Cancel onboarding: stop employee responses and queued messages while retaining the record. An email already being delivered cannot be recalled.

The lead can complete the case once all required tasks are finished, including private HR work and equipment handover; they cannot mark another team’s work done. Revoking links, cancelling and permanently erasing a completed or cancelled case require the People owner or an administrator.

Check emails and hand off to HR

Check Employee emails for delivery status. “Sent” means accepted by the mail transport, not read by the employee. Retry a safely failed message. Check an uncertain delivery before sending again: the earlier message may have arrived.

The People owner opens HR system handoff, reviews the snapshot, then downloads JSON or CSV for the HR system’s import process. Record an external reference after checking the result there. This is a manual handoff; it does not create an employee in Rippling or another provider, complete onboarding, or record equipment handover.

Authorized AI assistants can read onboarding, change a start date, complete permitted staff checklist tasks and prepare a handoff for review. Normal Hiring and OAuth permissions are required; an onboarding-only assignment does not enable these tools. Employee answers and external-reference confirmation remain human actions. See the MCP tools reference.