A new hire's first week at most companies looks something like this: four hours of HR paperwork, a 90-minute "culture" presentation, a dozen tool invitations to accept, and a Slack message from their manager that says "take your time getting settled, no pressure!" Which translates to: "I'm too busy to onboard you properly, so figure it out."
Then they spend two weeks not knowing who to ask questions, what's actually expected of them, or where anything lives. By week three, they're either frustrated or disengaged. By month two, 20% of them are already thinking about leaving.
According to SHRM research, one in five new hires leaves within the first 45 days. And the cost of replacing them? Roughly 50-200% of their annual salary, depending on the role.
Bad onboarding isn't just an inconvenience. It's expensive. But fast onboarding doesn't mean rushing people through a checklist. It means removing the friction that keeps new hires from being productive.
What "faster" actually means
Let's be specific. When we talk about onboarding new employees faster, we're not talking about cramming three weeks of information into three days. That doesn't work. People can't absorb that much, and they'll forget most of it.
Faster onboarding means reducing the time to first contribution -- how long it takes before a new hire does something meaningful. Not busy work. Not completing training modules. Actual work that moves a project forward.
For most roles, this should happen by the end of week one. Not week four. Not "after the probation period." Week one. Maybe it's a small pull request. Maybe it's their first client call with a buddy. Maybe it's a research task that feeds into a real project. The point is that they contribute early, which builds confidence and connection faster than any orientation deck.
Step 1: Build a self-serve onboarding hub
The number one thing that slows new hires down is not knowing where to find information. And the default answer -- "just ask on Slack" -- is terrible. New people don't want to ask basic questions publicly. They feel like they're bothering people. So they stay stuck silently.
Build a single place where new hires can answer their own questions. If you haven't already, our guide on how to build a team knowledge base walks through the full process. This isn't a 50-page handbook. It's a focused, well-organized hub that covers:
The basics (day one)
- How to set up your laptop, email, and core tools
- How to access the codebase / design files / shared drives
- Who to contact for IT issues, HR questions, and expense reports
The team (week one)
- Org chart or team map -- who does what and how to reach them
- Team norms -- working hours, communication preferences, meeting cadence
- Current projects and priorities -- what the team is working on right now
The context (weeks two through four)
- How decisions get made (who has authority over what)
- Key processes: how code gets deployed, how designs get approved, how client feedback flows
- Past decisions and why they were made (a decision log is gold for new hires)
Where to put this: Notion, Confluence, your company wiki, or a dedicated internal documentation platform. Trilo works well here because new hires can search across docs, past conversations, and task history in plain language -- so they're not limited to browsing a folder structure someone organized six months ago.
The test: can a new hire answer 80% of their first-week questions without messaging anyone? If yes, your hub is working.
Step 2: Create a structured first-week plan
"Take your time getting settled" is not onboarding. A structured first week gives new hires direction and reduces the anxiety of not knowing what they should be doing.
A good first-week plan is specific, day-by-day:
Day 1: Setup and orientation. Get tools working. Meet your manager 1:1 (30 min). Meet your onboarding buddy. Read the team overview doc.
Day 2: Shadow a teammate. Sit in on a meeting or pair on a task. See how work actually flows, not just how the handbook describes it.
Day 3: First small task. Something real but low-stakes. A bug fix. A content update. A research question. This is their first contribution.
Day 4: Deep-dive on the codebase / product / client base. This is the "learn the business" day. Pair with someone who can explain the architecture, the product strategy, or the client relationship.
Day 5: Retro. 30-minute chat with their manager: What's clear? What's confusing? What do you need? Adjust the plan for week two based on their answers.
Write this plan down. Put it in their onboarding hub before their first day. When someone knows exactly what's expected of them on day one, the anxiety drops dramatically.
Step 3: Assign an onboarding buddy (who isn't the manager)
This is one of the highest-impact, lowest-effort onboarding improvements you can make.
An onboarding buddy is a peer -- not a manager, not HR, a peer -- who's available for the "dumb" questions. Where's the coffee machine? How do I submit a PR? Is it okay to message people directly or should I use channels? Who actually makes decisions around here?
New hires won't ask their manager these questions. They don't want to look incompetent. But they'll ask a buddy because the dynamic is peer-to-peer, not hierarchical.
What makes a good buddy:
- They've been at the company 6+ months (long enough to know the ropes, recent enough to remember what it's like to be new)
- They're on the same or adjacent team (relevant context)
- They actually want to do it (don't voluntell someone; find someone who genuinely enjoys helping)
- They have capacity (don't pair a new hire with the person pulling 60-hour weeks on a deadline)
The buddy commitment is light: be available for questions, have a 15-minute daily check-in for the first two weeks, and proactively share the unwritten stuff that doesn't make it into any handbook.
Step 4: Front-load context, not information
There's a difference between information and context. Information is "here's how our deployment pipeline works." Context is "we chose this deployment approach because we had three outages last year from the old system, and our CTO prioritizes reliability over speed."
New hires drown in information. What they're starving for is context. Context helps them understand why things work the way they do, which means they can make better decisions independently and faster.
Ways to front-load context:
- Decision logs: A running record of key decisions and their reasoning. New hires read these like a history book and come up to speed on institutional knowledge in hours instead of months.
- Project retrospectives: Past retros show what the team has learned. They're a shortcut to understanding the team's values and working style.
- Recorded walkthroughs: A 10-minute Loom video where a senior team member explains "here's our product, here's what we're building, here's why" is worth more than any number of documentation pages.
- Searchable conversation history: This is an underrated onboarding asset. When new hires can search past team conversations, they find the context behind decisions that nobody thought to write down. Tools with integrated chat and team knowledge base software (like Trilo) make this especially effective.
The goal: within two weeks, a new hire should understand not just what the team does, but why.
Step 5: Set clear 30/60/90 day milestones
New hires need to know what "good" looks like. Without milestones, they can't tell if they're on track, and their manager can't either. This ambiguity breeds anxiety on both sides.
Define concrete milestones:
30 days: The new hire can complete standard tasks independently. They understand the core product/service. They've built relationships with key teammates. They're contributing to sprint goals or project deliverables.
60 days: They're taking ownership of small projects or features. They're participating meaningfully in planning discussions. They're starting to identify improvements, not just execute existing processes.
90 days: They're fully autonomous in their role. They've completed at least one significant deliverable. They're onboarding the next new hire (half-kidding, but new hires who recently went through onboarding are excellent at improving it).
Share these milestones on day one. Review progress at each checkpoint. Adjust if needed -- some roles ramp faster, some slower. The milestones aren't a test. They're a shared map that keeps everyone oriented.
Step 6: Iterate based on feedback
Your onboarding process should improve with every new hire. The people who just went through it are your best source of feedback.
After each new hire's first 30 days, ask:
- What was most helpful during your first week?
- What was confusing or missing?
- When did you first feel productive?
- What would you change about the process?
Take their answers seriously. If three consecutive new hires say the dev environment setup instructions are wrong, fix the instructions. If everyone says the first week was overwhelming, spread things out.
The best onboarding processes aren't designed once and frozen. They evolve continuously based on real feedback from real people who actually went through them.
The payoff
Companies with strong onboarding processes improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%, according to Glassdoor research. Those aren't marginal improvements. That's the difference between a team that grows smoothly and one that churns through new hires every quarter.
The investment isn't huge. A well-organized onboarding hub, a structured first-week plan, a buddy system, clear milestones, and a feedback loop. Most of this is a one-time setup with light ongoing maintenance.
Your next new hire deserves better than "take your time getting settled." Give them a real onboarding, and they'll give you months of ramp-up time back.
Your next new hire is going to have questions. The question is whether they'll find answers in 10 seconds or wait 2 hours for a Slack reply. Trilo puts your docs, tasks, and conversation history in one searchable workspace so onboarding feels like a guided tour, not a scavenger hunt.
