Preparing for successful preboarding: A checklist and HR framework

To craft an engaging employee experience, you’ll need to start well before day one. After all, the window between offer acceptance and an employee’s first day is fraught with risks.

Preboarding tasks are often scattered across channels, and one new hire learns what they need to while another is under-prepared. Worst of all, some people just quietly disappear. And this early turnover problem is widespread: According to Gartner, half of candidates have backed out of at least one accepted role before the start date.*

The answer to that problem is a structured preboarding process that aligns HR leaders and teams around concrete outcomes for new employees, like confidence and readiness. This guide explains the benefits of preboarding, what to include in your checklist, and how to make your plans a reality.

* Gartner, 2023

What’s preboarding, and why does it have such a big impact?

Also called pre-onboarding, preboarding means everything that happens between offer acceptance and a new employee’s first day on the job. That includes:

• Sending welcome emails and preboarding docs, like the employee handbook
• Setting up accounts for business software
• Filling out required paperwork, such as contracts and direct deposit forms

A strong preboarding experience is less about clearing the admin queue, and more about how the new hire should feel: informed, connected, and confident in their decision to join the organization.

What preboarding unlocks for employers

Here’s what employers stand to gain from a thoughtful preboarding program:

• Keep new hires from jumping ship: Preboarding keeps people engaged with and excited about your company. This avoids wasting all the time and expense that went into hiring them in the first place. That’s significant, since according to SHRM, many employers estimate total hiring costs at 3–4 times a position’s annual salary.

• Accelerate time to productivity: Preboarding provides basic resources that help new hires hit the ground running.

• Building trust quickly: Consistent, thoughtful communication throughout the preboarding process makes new hires feel valued before they’ve even made their first contributions, driving early engagement and loyalty.

Preboarding vs. onboarding: What sets them apart?

Employee preboarding and onboarding differ in a few key ways:

• Timing: Preboarding starts the moment a candidate accepts an offer. It ends on the first day of employment, when onboarding picks up the slack.

• Objectives: Preboarding is about getting new hires acquainted with the company and committed to their roles. The onboarding process can include similar elements, but the focus shifts to integration and performance through coaching and setting expectations.

• Activities: Preboarding covers the basic groundwork, such as welcome emails and compliance paperwork. Onboarding goes deeper, adding in development, team-building exercises, and performance benchmark setting.

A structured preboarding workflow that gets these elements right helps HR leaders reduce early turnover, by creating a consistent experience for every new hire. With Leapsome, you get dedicated preboarding and onboarding tools integrated with all your other HR systems, so you can create a strong process once and repeat it often.

“We’ve been able to optimize and automate a lot of the functions that were taking up our time — turning them into one streamlined workflow that connects departments like onboarding, offboarding, training, and hiring. The result is less hassle, more communication, and more time for value-add work.” 
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– Janelle Daugherty, Head of People and Culture at Notion Health

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🚊 Put employee preboarding on rails
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Design and execute custom preboarding workflows with document sharing, preparatory learning modules, and automatic reminders and task management tools.
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👉 Explore Preboarding and Onboarding

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The preboarding window: Building confidence, connection, and readiness

Preboarding creates a first impression that reverberates throughout the employee lifecycle. This early stage affects new hires’ attitudes about their decision to join and whether they’re being set up for success.

To ensure that this experience is positive, here’s a framework to evaluate your preboarding program.

Confidence

Does each new hire know what will happen next? When new employees don’t know what to expect or who to get in touch with if they have questions, they’re more likely to second-guess their offer acceptance.

Gallup reports that less than one in three employees say they feel fully prepared to excel after their preboarding and onboarding experiences. So supporting new-hire confidence can also give your organization a competitive advantage. 

Connection

Does the new hire feel like they already belong? McKinsey found that when employees see their workplaces as fair and inclusive, they’re more motivated and less likely to burn out or think about seeking employment elsewhere.

At the same time, just 39% of employees feel strongly that someone at work cares about them as a person, according to Gallup research. This means personalized, human-focused preboarding can make a real difference.

Readiness

Is the organization prepared for the employee’s arrival? Few things undermine a new hire’s early confidence more than finding they can’t access critical software, and worse, there’s no one around to ask for help. So make sure the employee has what they need to use important tools, and give them a plan that shows what the first few days or weeks will look like.

Fortunately, creating the conditions for readiness doesn’t have to be a time-consuming process. For instance, BEAT81 saved 10 hours of manual labor per month by standardizing their preboarding and onboarding workflows with Leapsome.

What should you include in your preboarding checklist?

A useful preboarding checklist focuses on these core areas.

Taking care of the paperwork: Admin and compliance

Take care of IT setup first, including a company email address and access to critical system tools. Then send over the employment contract, tax forms, and any compliance documents the new hire might need, such as non-disclosure agreements.

Managing docs and signatures can be a chore if you’re working with disconnected systems. That’s why Leapsome comes with centralized and automated document management.

“It’s one big lift to automate, but every cycle after that becomes faster and easier. Automating the invisible work gives HR leaders back time for culture, strategy, and meaningful connection.”
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– Emma Leeds, Founder, CEO, and Chief People Consultant at People Function

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✍️ Don’t spend more time managing paperwork than you have to
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Kick preboarding off with a firm administrative foundation by collecting, storing, and tracking new-hire paperwork in one place.
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👉 Explore Documents and E-Signatures

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Setting the right tone: Culture and communication

Send each new hire a warm, reassuring welcome email covering the first-day plan and key points of contact. Include an FAQ informed by the questions that often come up at this stage, like where to go on the first day and what the dress code is.

Also, share links to the handbook and organizational chart. This helps new employees understand company culture, and see how their individual roles fit into team structures.

Welcoming the employee: Connection and day-one readiness

Introducing new hires to leaders and peers early, even if it happens digitally, sets the stage for connection and belonging. Start by having the new employee’s team put together a welcome message.

Then assign the employee a peer buddy, so they have someone to turn to for questions and advice. It’s also a good idea to do a final HR check-in, and invite the new hire to ask last-minute questions.

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✅ Make sure your preboarding process is airtight
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There’s a lot to do before day one, so build a process that covers everything important with our preboarding checklist.
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👉 Download the checklist now

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Move from offer acceptance to first-day engagement with Leapsome

Putting effective preboarding into practice can be a challenge; tasks get scattered across emails, Slack channels, and spreadsheets, while ownership lives in team members’ heads. Without a connected system, even the most well-crafted preboarding programs tend to become inconsistent. What’s more, HR has little to no visibility into the program’s weak points.

Leapsome’s HRIS and people management platform combines everything you need into one system, including:

• Pre-boarding workflows that execute welcome messages and task reminders automatically

• Document management that connects contracts, compliance forms, and e-signatures in a centralized location

• Automated task assignment that makes ownership explicit across departments

“Now that we have the HRIS and the feedback and reviews module in one tool, it helps in terms of the automation we set up for different workflows, and also reminders. It's really nice to have that in one tool, and have one dashboard with your to-dos and your checklists.”  – Sonja Grabner, People and Culture Lead at BEAT81

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🤖 Replace manual workflows with standardized excellence
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Pair custom preboarding design with automated document management, reminders, and task lists, for a process that gets results without much manual overhead.
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👉 Request a demo