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Your new hire has signed the offer letter, completed their pre-boarding administrative tasks, and they’re excited and ready to start. Awesome!
Your hiring manager, on the other hand, is a little lost on what they need to do to get this employee fully onboarded and ready to take on the world.
Managers play a huge role in how quickly new employees ramp up, how connected they feel to their team, and whether they stay past the first year. That’s why onboarding training for managers needs to be included in any leadership development program and your learning and development strategy. Expecting managers to just “figure it out” isn’t very fair to anyone involved.
An onboarding training program equips your managers with the structure, skills, and tools they need to create consistent, high-impact, and human onboarding experiences without reinventing the wheel every time someone new joins the team.
In this post, we’ll break down what onboarding training is, why managers need it, the critical components to include, how software can help you scale, and an onboarding checklist your managers can actually use.
What is onboarding training (and why do your managers need it)?
Simply put: you teach your managers how to welcome, support, and develop employees in the first days, weeks, and months on the job.
While employee onboarding focuses on what new hires need to learn, onboarding training for managers focuses on how managers should:
- Set clear expectations early
- Build trust and psychological safety
- Connect new hires to people, purpose, and processes
- Support skill development and early performance
- Reinforce culture and values in day-to-day work
Without this kind of training and guidance, onboarding experiences can be wildly inconsistent. Some managers naturally know how to do this while others may default to “here’s your laptop, have fun.”
Training managers on how to onboard creates consistency, reduces guesswork for everyone involved, and makes sure new hires aren’t dependent on whether they happened to land an awesome manager.
Critical components of onboarding training for managers
The right onboarding training program doesn’t overwhelm your managers with theory. The theory gives a great baseline, but they need clear guidance, practical tools, and support they can apply immediately.
Here are the core components you should include:
1. Clear ownership and expectations
Managers should understand exactly what they own during onboarding and what’s beyond their scope.
Training should clarify:
- The manager’s role vs. HR’s role
- What success looks like at 30, 60, and 90 days
- How onboarding connects to performance and retention
2. Relationship-building and connection
Obviously new hires need a lot of information from the get-go, but they also need to establish relationships with those they work with.
Onboarding training should help managers:
- Build rapport and trust early
- Facilitate introductions beyond the immediate team
- Encourage informal learning through social connection
This is where mentorship programs and buddy programs become especially powerful. Pairing new hires with peers or mentors reduces isolation, accelerates learning, and gives managers additional support during onboarding.
3. Coaching and feedback skills
Early feedback shapes confidence and performance and needs to be delivered in the right way, at the right times.
Managers should be trained how to:
- Run effective 1:1s during onboarding
- Provide timely, constructive feedback
- Spot early signs of confusion or disengagement
4. Structured learning and goal-setting
Structure prevents your new hires from feeling overwhelmed and makes sure their progress doesn’t stall.
Employee onboarding training should guide managers on how to:
- Break down role expectations into manageable milestones
- Align onboarding goals with team and business priorities
- Balance learning, doing, and reflecting
5. Cultural reinforcement
Culture is learned through experience, not slide decks.
Managers should be trained to model and reinforce culture by:
- Explaining the “why” behind how work gets done at your company
- Calling out values-aligned behaviors
- Sharing context and stories that help new hires make sense of the organization
Scaling with onboarding training software
Relying on ad hoc manager onboarding training doesn’t really fly if your company is large or fast-growing. Onboarding training software helps standardize manager enablement while still allowing some flexibility for different roles, teams, and a personalized human experience.
The right onboarding training software can:
- Centralize onboarding guides and resources for managers
- Automate reminders and milestones
- Support mentoring and onboarding buddy program matching
- Track onboarding completion and engagement
- Provide visibility into where managers or new hires may need a little extra help
For managers, this reduces a lot of the cognitive load. For HR and L&D teams, it creates consistency, measurability, and insights. Most importantly though, software enables onboarding to be an ongoing process rather than a one-week event—especially including mentorship software.
Sample onboarding checklist for managers
Let’s walk through an onboarding guide for managers to use to make sure they're properly preparing their employee to become part of the team. Start thinking about how you can adapt this to your organization, whether it’s company-specific knowledge bases and best practices, communication norms, etc.
Before day one
- Confirm role expectations and success criteria
- Prepare a 30-60-90 day outline
- Assign a mentor or onboarding buddy
- Schedule initial 1:1s and key introductions
Week one
- Hold a welcome 1:1 focused on goals and expectations
- Introduce the new hire to the team and key stakeholders
- Review priorities, workflows, and communication norms
- Encourage questions and normalize not knowing everything yet
First 30 days
- Conduct regular check-ins (through instant message and/or schedule 1:1s)
- Provide early feedback, recognition, and encouragement
- Connect learning to real work
- Encourage mentor or buddy meetings
60-90 days
- Review progress against goals
- Discuss strengths, gaps, and next development steps
- Reinforce long-term expectations and career pathways
- Gather feedback on the onboarding experience
This kind of onboarding checklist for managers helps make sure every new hire experiences a thorough, consistent onboarding while still allowing managers to personalize the experience.
Bringing it all together
Onboarding training for managers isn’t meant to be a heavy lift. Design your program so it’s succinct but also useful—giving your managers the clarity, tools, and support they need to onboard well every single time.
When managers learn how to onboard effectively, new hires ramp up faster, feel more connected, and are far more likely to stay. That’s a win-win-win in our books.
If you’re looking to strengthen your employee onboarding training program for managers or your overall new hire onboarding strategy with structured learning and mentorship programs, be sure to download our ebook: Onboarding Mentorship Programs: How to Plan, Launch, and Measure Your Buddy Program.
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