From Day One to Productivity: Onboarding New Team Members to Atlassian

[#1]

Imagine you just wrapped up an interview with the best sales rep you've ever met and are excited about the possibility of welcoming them into the company.

What would their first work day be like?

Well, you have two possible choices:

1. Commit to handholding them through their days, spending hours in meetings, and training them about your particular ways of work.
2. Be prepared with an onboarding experience to help your new team member gain knowledge and understanding in their comfortable speed and emotional state.

I've been on both sides of this coin, and speaking from experience, I can say, "Investing in your employee onboarding process as early as possible is worth every second of your time."

Also, having a clean educational process would help you find great people who are not necessarily trained in your area of expertise.

If you work in the Atlassian space (as I am), you would often find yourself introducing this ecosystem's specifics.

Atlassian's tools are designed to support collaboration, project management, and software development, but their flexibility means every organization configures them differently. For new employees, the challenge isn't just learning the tools themselves but understanding how your team has tailored them, whether it's custom workflows, permissions, automation rules, or integrations. A structured onboarding process ensures they gain both technical proficiency and a clear understanding of how these tools support team collaboration and efficiency.

So, how do we do this the right way?

To me, the right approach has always been to give newcomers the freedom to explore at their own pace while following certain guidelines or a plan. For example, let's say we have Kalina joining the company (if you don't know how to read the person's name, don't worry; it's Bulgarian :)) as a Documentation Writer. She will be responsible for writing release notes, technical blogs, and app documentation, which means she should get into the Atlassian world quickly.

Kalina's first task would be to explore the Atlassian products by herself, following a 4-week plan. Each week, she will focus on a different product related to her job, starting with creating her own Atlassian instance, enabling the product, and following product-specific training.

Thanks to all the Atlassian learning and certification resources, she can enroll in free learning paths and product courses tailored to her needs. The learning paths in the Get Started Quickly section are a great place to start.

The Atlassian Learning platform accelerates onboarding by providing structured training, reducing reliance on internal resources, and minimizing time-consuming meetings and endless questions popping up on sticky notes and Slack threads.

In addition, assembling a Jira, Confluence, or JSM instance from scratch has never been easier. Setting up a free cloud instance (up to 10 users) takes less than 10 minutes and gives you and your new hires the optimal playground for their onboarding.

So Kalina will be free to try things and break things and not worry that she failed or ruined "something important" on the company instance.

What are my top tips for success when you onboard a great person to your team?

Give them time, but give them structure

Write an onboarding plan that covers even the smallest details. Starting a new job is stressful enough, so your new teammate will thank you for writing it as a kids' book.

- Go to Atlassian.com and get familiar with the space

- Create an Atlassian ID

- Use your Atlassian ID to log into the Atlassian Community

- From there, navigate to the Atlassian Learning site

It may seem "a tad too much" to you, but that's the best way to support an already confused mind.

Don't put pressure, but listen actively

Does your new person seem a bit stuck? Offer them support. Hold a little retrospective at the end of each onboarding week, highlighting successes and answering their burning questions.

Demonstrate your processes and your product usage wisely

Organize internal learning and demo sessions for your new employees to give them the context and reasoning behind your processes and product usage. Avoid dropping them into existing calls or meetings where they might struggle to keep up with unfamiliar topics and team dynamics.

If you're unsure where to start with onboarding, go through the process yourself and document the experience. You may learn a lot by returning in time and laying this foundation for future success.

[Jimmy Seddon]

I feel like I learned a lot from this and there is so much more I could do to improve our own onboarding.

Thank you @Teodora V _Fun Inc_!

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

I am glad you liked it @Jimmy Seddon! 

[Andy Gladstone]

@Teodora V _Fun Inc_ great article and recommendations for providing an onboarding experience which is not only more beneficial for the individual, but scalable for the company. We struggle with this in my organization, and I'll be pulling some of your advice to be put in to action!

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

Thank you @Andy Gladstone! I am happy you found something that answers your needs.