Standardize Your Jira: How HR Teams Automate Jira Workflows with Issue Templates

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Jira isn't just a tool for developers anymore. As teams like HR, marketing and sales actively adopt it in their everyday work, there’s one challenge that becomes even more apparent: the manual work of creating issues for repetitive tasks. We know we’re not the only ones feeling frustration while duplicating milion items in our Jira board. That feeling is what inspired us to kick off this article series. Together, we’ll explore seven areas where issue templates work wonders and show you exactly how to do it, so stay tuned.

Part 1: HR Teams and Employee Onboarding

It’s not a lie to say that the HR teams are an invaluable part of any company. They coordinate internal processes, manage employees lifecycles - overall, they ensure that the company environment helps everyone grow in their roles. The responsibility of a great onboarding experience also weighs on the HR shoulders, as they’re also the first ever contact for new team members. For a deeper dive into creating the best onboarding experience with the help of Atlassian apps, take a look at our Employee Onboarding Handbook. We’ve packed it with tips, strategies and best practices. One of these practices is to standardize the process. Why? Every onboarding is a unique event, however without a clear structure it can quickly become chaotic.

What is the cost of unstandardized onboarding process?

• Teams waste 2-3 hours per new hire on task creation

• Higher risk of missed steps leading to poor first impressions

• Inconsistent onboarding experiences

• HR team burnout from repetitive administrative work

Teams manually create tasks, assign and track them across different spreadsheets, emails and chats. This leads to missed steps, inconsistent experiences for new hires and a major administrative burden on HR and other teams. Not to mention that crucial tasks, like setting up payroll or security clearances, can be overlooked, in the end leading to compliance risks.

Structuring Onboarding with Issue Templates

So, does managing the onboarding process in Jira mean failure from the start? Absolutely not - the key is to turn that chaotic process into a predictable, repeatable one. And the easiest way to do so is by using Jira work item templates.

Instead of recreating tasks from scratch, HR teams can create a perfect blueprint once and continue to reuse it. In this scenario, this blueprint is a complex Epic-Story-Subtask structure that automatically generates all the necessary tasks across multiple projects.

How It Works with Issue Templates Agent

There are many templating apps on the Atlassian Marketplace, but we'll focus on Issue Templates Agent. This add-on lets users create complex work items with a single template. This way, the HR team can generate entire onboarding epics with just one click. With Issue Templates Agent, users can apply templates at different stages: when creating new issues, transitioning between workflows and even auto-filling existing items. Plus, teams can use Jira Automation to trigger a template whenever a new hire issue is created. With one solution, the onboarding process doesn’t induce HR teams with anxiety. Instead, it brings relief, as every single step is already created and assigned.

With Issue Templates Agent, users can:

• Create a nested structure (e.g., Epic → User Stories → Subtasks)

• Pre-populate fields like assignee, due date and summary using variables, e.g.:

  • Onboarding for {{new_hire_name}}

• Schedule templates to run automatically with Jira Automation

Create an Employee Onboarding Epic Template to automatically generate all the key tasks, so that the HR team can focus on people, not paperwork.

Ready to Start? Outline the Process First

So, taking all of this information into consideration - where to begin?

First of all, take it step by step: start by mapping out the ideal onboarding process. Think about all the steps, who takes responsibility for each of them. With a solid base like this, you already have a great blueprint for your template. Remember that the most important part is to get it all out of your head and into a standardized, shareable format.

Transform Your Employee Onboarding

Moving your onboarding from a manual process to a template-driven one is about more than just saving time. It's about providing a professional, consistent experience for every new team member. From a long-term perspective, a great onboarding process helps new hires feel supported and more likely to stay - in fact, Glassdoor reports that new hire retention can improve by up to 82%! When the benefits are this clear, templating is the next logical step.

Free Webinar: 7 Issue Templates for Repetitive Tasks

Join us for a webinar on September 30th at 2:00 PM (CEST). We'll be demonstrating how to set up this exact template and more. Plus, we'll share ready-to-use templates with everyone who registers. Reserve your spot now to turn these tips into action!