Create an onboarding manual with Guided Pathways
Ensure your new employees have a smooth and successful transition into your company by creating a comprehensive and effective onboarding manual using Guided Pathways for Confluence.
Are you looking to onboard new team members efficiently and consistently?
Onboarding guides are the perfect way to create tailored yet consistent training scenarios that can be used repeatedly, helping your new hires get up to speed quickly. And if you're already using Confluence, it's the ideal hub for all your onboarding materials.
Discover why Guided Pathways for Confluence is perfect for onboarding guides—and how to create your own.
What is an Onboarding Manual?
An onboarding manual is a comprehensive guide designed to help new employees understand your company's culture, policies, procedures, and specific roles and responsibilities. It serves as a roadmap for new hires, guiding them through their first days, weeks, and months at the company.
Why is an onboarding manual important?
Smooth Transition: Helps new employees acclimate to their new environment quickly and efficiently.
Consistency: Ensures all new hires receive the same information and training, promoting consistency across the organisation.
Engagement: Engages new hires from day one, making them feel welcomed and valued.
Productivity: Provides the necessary tools and knowledge to help new employees become productive team members faster.
Why use Guided Pathways?
Easy to Create: Use your existing Confluence content to develop a detailed onboarding manual without fuss.
Always on Brand: Customise the manual to match your company's branding, ensuring a cohesive look and feel.
Accessible Anytime, Anywhere: You can share the onboarding manual as a standalone document or embed it in your company's intranet or HR portal.
Interactive and Engaging: Organise the manual with an interactive steps structure, allowing new hires to quickly find the information they need.
Direct Support Access: Include contact forms or support links so new hires can quickly request assistance.
How to Create Your Onboarding Manual
Step 1: Plan your guide
Audience
Before you start creating your onboarding manual, it's important to define your audience. Defining your audience allows you to identify your new hires' specific needs and characteristics, enabling you to tailor the content to address their unique requirements and expectations.
Structure
Organise the onboarding guide by structuring it to cater to different stages of the onboarding process, and think about which steps should link together. Begin with the basics and gradually introduce more detailed information, ensuring a smooth and logical progression for new hires. Planning your onboarding manual will save time and prevent complications later on.
Key elements of an onboarding manual:
Welcome Message: A warm welcome from the CEO or HR manager to make new hires feel appreciated.
Company Overview: Information about the company's history, mission, vision, and values.
Organisational Structure: An overview of the company's departments and key personnel.
Role-Specific Information: Detailed descriptions of the new hire's role, responsibilities, and performance expectations.
Policies and Procedures: Important company policies, including attendance, dress code, and code of conduct.
Benefits and Compensation: Information on employee benefits, compensation structure, and payroll procedures.
Training and Development: Details about training programs, development opportunities, and career progression paths.
Tools and Resources: Information on the tools, software, and resources new hires will need to perform their job.
FAQ Section: Answers to common questions new hires may have.
Contact Information: Key contacts for HR, IT support, and other essential departments.
Step 2: Create your pages
Now you've planned it out, you need to create pages for each step of your manual.
Navigate to the space where you want to house your onboarding pages. You can use an already created space or create a new space just for this guide.
Click + Create > Page in the confluence header.
Create the first page of your manual, then click Publish when it's ready.
Create a new page for every step of your onboarding manual.
Hints and tips for creating engaging pages:
Use Clear and Concise Language:
Avoid jargon and use simple language that is easy to understand.
Include a glossary of terms if necessary, particularly if they are unique to your company.
Incorporate Multiple Formats:
Explain concepts using a mix of text, images, diagrams, and videos. Content formatting macros are a great tool for designing engaging Confluence pages.
Provide step-by-step instructions and visual aids to enhance understanding.
Make It Interactive:
Include different steps and user journeys for easy navigation.
Add Confluence smartlinks as standalone steps (like Figma files, Whiteboards, etc.) or add resources on-page like videos, gifs, and contact forms.
Customise and Brand:
Personalise the manual with your company's branding elements.
Ensure the design and tone align with your company's culture and values.
Include a Feedback Mechanism:
Allow new hires to provide feedback on the onboarding process.
Use this feedback to improve the onboarding experience continuously.
Provide Support Information:
Include contact details for HR, IT, and other support departments.
Ensure new hires know where to go for help and additional information.
Step 3: Use Guided Pathways to pull it all together
Now you've got all your Confluence pages ready, it's time to create your multi-step onboarding manual from them.
Install Guided Pathways for Confluence. Guided Pathways lets you pull together pages into a branching onboarding guide with multiple outcomes. Try Guided Pathways for free.
Navigate to the Confluence instance containing the pages created in Step 2, and select Apps > Guided Pathways to go to the app homepage.
Click Create a Guide.
Enter your onboarding manual's title, category, and description, then click Create.
Create your first step.
Enter a step name in Step Title.
Link to your first onboarding Confluence page by clicking Link a Confluence Page.
Press + > A blank step in the left sidebar to create a new child page (this links the pages together).
Give your child page a name in Step Title, choose what will show on the previous page's button in Button Text and link to the Confluence page associated with the next step in your guide.
Repeat this for all the pages in your onboarding manual, adding extra child steps to create a new branching choice.
When finished, click Publish in the top-right corner to make your guide available to other users.
Congratulations! You have now created your first onboarding manual in Confluence. This manual and any other guides you create are easily accessible from the Guided Pathways homepage (Apps > Guided Pathways).
By following this guide, you can create an effective onboarding manual to help new employees feel welcomed, informed, and ready to contribute to your company's success. Use Guided Pathways to ensure a smooth and engaging onboarding experience for every new hire.