How Internal Communicators Can Maximize Onboarding Opportunities

It’s no secret that effective onboarding puts new joiners in the best possible position to hit the ground running.

While it might be generally agreed – in theory – that everyone is responsible for onboarding, I’ve rarely seen that sort of shared responsibility come to life in organizations. In practice, the ownership of onboarding new employees commonly sits squarely with HR or recruitment teams. The process is often viewed as purely administrative, which means we’re missing out on huge opportunities to make it meaningful.

Onboarding is a new employee’s first chance to see how the values they heard about in the recruitment process are brought to life. It’s an opportunity to set the cultural tone, to show how the organization “walks the walk”, and to lay the foundations for effective internal communication.

As internal communicators, this all sounds right up our street – so why aren’t we more heavily involved? Let’s explore the different ways internal comms can turn this “onboarding gap” into an opportunity.

The “onboarding gap”

Traditionally, onboarding is managed between an organization’s HR department and the new employee’s hiring manager. And while the IC team might be asked to provide content or links to key resources every now and again, they’re rarely seen as co-owners of the process. The “company information” section of the onboarding pack is very often outdated, for example, or unaligned with wider internal campaigns or initiatives. To new joiners, this makes it seem like an afterthought rather than crucial content.

Ownership of onboarding is, more often than not, completely isolated. It can lead to outdated or inaccurate information being shared, and a missed opportunity for cultural alignment.

This is what I call the “onboarding gap”.

How to maximize the onboarding opportunity

Internal communicators can maximize the onboarding opportunity by positioning themselves as co-creators of the process and materials. Onboarding is one of the first official communication touchpoints for a new joiner, and their formal introduction to their new employer. So it makes total sense that we would have some level of ownership over the messaging and content.

Here are three practical ways you can help shape the content being shared with new joiners.

1. Set the cultural tone

Rather than thinking about onboarding as a purely administrative task or checklist, try seeing it as more of a cultural opportunity.

This is your chance to show new joiners that the organization they’ve joined is “walking the walk”, not just “talking the talk”. Remember the values that got so much airtime during the recruitment process? Now’s the time to show how they’re being brought to life across the business. Help new joiners attach practical behaviors and actions to each of your corporate values by sharing things like case studies, video snippets, and relevant team wins.

Setting the cultural tone means starting to convey the organization’s cultural norms – essentially, you’re showing the new joiner “the way we do things around here”.

In the short term, prioritizing culture and values during onboarding helps set clear expectations. In the longer term, it increases the likelihood of productivity, longer tenure, and higher job satisfaction.

2. Drive channel usage

There are two parts to this opportunity. Firstly, think about the different channels involved in the onboarding process. Are all onboarding resources and materials united on one central platform, like Workvivo? Or is the onboarding program spread between multiple different channels and sites that create confusion from the get-go?

Great onboarding should feel intentional, not improvised. Pulling everything together not only cuts the admin burden for HR and IC teams, it’s also a far more efficient way to make new joiners feel welcome, connected, and aligned from day one.

To maximize the second part of this opportunity, ensure you’re introducing your key IC channels as part of the onboarding process. All too often, a company’s intranet or employee experience platform is barely mentioned until new joiners are surprised when a welcome email lands in their inbox a week or so later with a registration link.

As part of the formal onboarding process, take the opportunity to introduce your company’s communication channels. Outline which channels are used for different purposes, and explain how and where new employees can find them.

3. Introduce key members of leadership

The positive correlation between leadership visibility and organizational trust is widely recognized. Time and time again, research has shown us that open and transparent communication from senior leadership contributes to higher levels of employee trust. And trust, as we know, is an essential requirement of an engaged and productive workforce.

Take the opportunity to introduce key members of the leadership team as part of the onboarding process. Think about sharing mini profiles of the C-suite in your onboarding materials. Perhaps video snippets, short biographies, or quick-fire “meet the leaders” interviews. It’s also a good idea to share org structures and leadership reporting lines to increase transparency and help new joiners get a good lay of the land.

Shaping employee experiences

In many organizations, onboarding involves a long checklist of tasks like mandatory training, must-read policies, and health and safety procedures. It’s a tick-box exercise. If we’re lucky, there’ll be a high-level introduction to the company: the values, vision and mission, and potentially a CEO welcome message or an introduction to the strategy.

But without close involvement and collaboration between IC and HR, updating this content falls by the wayside and it quickly becomes outdated.

Of course, it’s super important that every new team member knows their local fire evacuation procedure, the name of their well-being champion, and the cybersecurity policy. But we’re missing a trick if we’re not also using someone’s first few weeks to introduce key communication channels, start building leadership visibility, and focus on setting the “cultural tone”.

Internal communicators help shape the employee experience, and we should be getting in on the ground floor with onboarding opportunities.