PreOnboarding

PreOnboarding refers to activities undertaken prior to the official start of an employment relationship or customer relationship to prepare for a smooth transition. It encompasses both employee and customer contexts, and is sometimes called pre-boarding. It focuses on gathering information, configuring systems, and orienting the participant to expectations.

In employee pre-onboarding, typical steps include completion of paperwork (tax forms, benefits enrollment), background checks, IT provisioning (accounts, device), access to systems, scheduling of first-day activities, provision of role-specific resources, and introductory communications about company culture, values, and policies. It may also involve collecting personal preferences, training prerequisites, and setting up a welcome plan.

In customer pre-onboarding, organizations often use milestones like account setup, data migration planning, product configuration, user roles, access provisioning, and a pre-implementation workshop. The aim is to define success criteria, gather requirements, and ensure readiness for implementation or service delivery.

Benefits include faster time-to-productivity, higher engagement, reduced first-day chaos, improved data accuracy, and stronger alignment. Challenges may include maintaining data privacy, coordinating multiple teams, and avoiding information overload.

Best practices: establish a standardized pre-onboarding workflow, use automation and templates, provide a dedicated point of contact, maintain secure data handling, tailor content to role or customer segment, and measure outcomes with metrics such as time-to-productivity, completion rates, and first-week satisfaction.