How to create tasks for employee onboarding?

[Melissa Perez]

I'm currently using the New Employee Onboarding template in an attempt to migrate our Excel checklist into Jira. However, I'm having a difficult time.

In our current state, we have an Excel checklist of 36 tasks we need to complete for each new hire we bring on board. These tasks are categorized under the headings:

1. 1. Offer and Initial Pre-Employment steps
2. 2. Pre-boarding
3. Week before Pre-boarding
4. Week One
5. Ongoing Check-in's 

I've attached an image of what that looks like:

I'm not able to replicate this in Jira without creating 36 statuses. I also don't seem to have the option to link sub-tasks to the main "Employee" issue that the template provides.

Any guidance here is appreciated! 

[Lukas Nicolai_Seibert]

Hey @Melissa Perez 

I would recommend Templating.app for employee onboarding tasks as well:

• Create a hierarchy of onboarding tasks (epic, issue, subtask, checklist)
• Link issue to an original employee issue
• Insert already existing issues

You can see how this works in this walkthrough: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0I0dS2y4w0

[Olga Cheban _TitanApps_]

Hi, @Melissa Perez ! From what you describe, it seems that the default Jira's template might be not the best solution in this case. Here's an example of how we do it in the company I work for, TitanApps. The example shows the recruitment process, not onboarding, but you can get the idea. It's done with the help of a template app + checklist app.

In your case, you could create an epic "Onboarding for {{Position}} {{Name}}", then, your five sections would be five issues/tasks inside that epic, and each issue would contain a checklist of steps to complete (a checklist app is required for this). Then, you will need to use Smart Templates for Jira by Titan Apps to save this structure as a reusable template (epic + 5 issues + checklists inside). Then, for each new employee, you can create such an epic from this template in a few clicks, you'll just need to fill in the variables for a specific person (their name and position). 



Alternatively, you can pack all your onboarding process inside one Jira task. Then, you can make your five sections -> five headers + a checklist of steps under each header. You can use Smart Checklist for Jira by Titan Apps to do so. Then, you can save this structure as a reusable checklist template. As a result, you'll have something like this:




It's pretty convenient as the checklist items can contain deadlines, links, expandable details, mention people, etc.

Either way, using a checklist app looks like the most reasonable way to take for you case, so it's better not to limit yourself to the default template. I hope this helps!

[Angela Thomas_Seibert Group]

Hey Community,

For the original workflow question, I, as an Atlassian Marketplace Vendor, would recommend using the 5 stages listed as statuses, and then adding a checklist app to your issue for all the specific tasks.

As for the sub-task, it looks like it's not included automatically, but you can add them.

[Anna Mitina (Stiltsoft)]

Hi @Melissa Perez ,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community 🤗

A new employee onboarding is indeed a lengthy and sometimes complicated process. If part of your onboarding process is sharing key points from the company's knowledge base I would suggest you to have a look at our app called izi LMS for Confluence. 

You would be able to build onboarding courses using your existing Confluence pages and add quizzes as a knowledge check.

Watch a 2-minute video

Let me know if you have any questions :)

[John Funk]

Hi Melissa - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

If you are wanting to just check off items on a list, then one of the Check list apps is probably the route to go. Or even just create a Checklist custom issue type field. 

If you want to actually create tasks for different people to do, assign them, set due date, track progress, etc., then you can do that with an automation rule. I did something similar at my last employer. 

You could have an Employee Issue Type, and then trigger the rule when a new Employee issue is created. You could also create Components for each Headings.

The rule would then create all of the tasks necessary adding the Component/Heading as applicable. Then you could use those for reporting. 

[Melissa Perez]

Thank you, John! I'm using one Jira's default project template for New Employee Onboarding, and there's no option to create Components anywhere. 

I am the project admin, so I'm assuming I should have access. Could this be a result of the template or something else?

[John Funk]

Ah, you are probably using a Team-managed project and not a Company-managed project. Components are not available for Team-managed.

[Prabhu Palanisamy _Onward_]

HI @Melissa Perez - I request you to try OnRamp. We have an option to load tasks from excel/csv. This app simplifies employee onboarding and offboarding.

Disclosure: I'm part of Onward team who built OnRamp.

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Melissa Perez,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

The way we do onboarding is that we have the main request with all the details, and when are then using either tasks or subtasks (tasks are created in other projects so that those teams do not have to access multiple projects). Another option since you have a lot of steps that you want to track would be to use one of the apps in the Marketplace that allow you to create a checklist for all you tasks. We use Issue Checklist for Jira in one of the onboarding tasks.