Onboarding employees in Confluence

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Bringing new team members on board can be a challenge, especially when you want to ensure a smooth and consistent process. Enter onboarding guides: a flexible but standardised way to organise onboarding documents and get new hires up to speed.

What is an employee onboarding guide?

An employee onboarding guide is a detailed resource that familiarises new employees with your company’s culture, policies, procedures, and their individual roles and responsibilities. It acts as a roadmap, leading new hires through their initial days, weeks, and months in the organisation.

An employee onboarding guide helps to engage employees from day one, gives them the tools to learn their roles quicker, and ensures all new hires receive the same high standard of training.

How to create an employee onboarding guide in Confluence Cloud

Step 1: Plan your onboarding guide

Before you dive in, take time to plan your guide. This will help you link sections effectively and save time later.

1. Define your audience: Tailor your content to meet the specific needs and expectations of your new hires.

2. Structure your guide: Organise the guide according to the stages of onboarding. Start with the basics and gradually add more detailed information for a smooth, logical flow.

Here’s a basic example layout for an onboarding guide:

Step 2: Install Guided Pathways

With your planning done, it’s time to move into Confluence. Guided Pathways for Confluence allows you to pull these individual pages into a branching, multi-step guide. You’ll use this app in Step 4.

Step 3: Create your pages in Confluence

With your planning complete, it’s time to create individual pages for each section of your onboarding guide.

1. Go to the space where you’d like to store your onboarding pages. You can either use an existing space or create a Confluence space specifically for this guide.

2. In the Confluence header, select "+ Create" and then choose "Page".

3. Draft the first page of your guide, and once it's ready, click "Publish".

4. Repeat this process, creating a separate page for each step of your onboarding guide.

Here’s an example page we created using Content Formatting Macros:

Step 4: Pull your pages together with Guided Pathways

1. Find the Confluence space where your previously created pages are stored, and select "Apps > Guided Pathways" to access the app homepage.

2. Click on "Create a Guide".

3. Input the title, category, and description for your onboarding guide, then click "Create".

4. Start by creating your first step.

5. In "Step Title", enter the name of the step.

6. Link this step to your first onboarding Confluence page by selecting "Link a Confluence Page".

7. To add a child page and link your steps, click "+ >" in the left sidebar.

8. Name your child page in "Step Title", decide what text will appear on the button from the previous page in "Button Text", and link it to the Confluence page for the next step of your guide.

Follow the steps with our gif below: 

9. Repeat this process for each page in your onboarding guide, adding additional child steps as needed to introduce branching choices.

10. Once complete, click "Publish" in the top-right corner to make your guide accessible to other users.

Step 5: Share your onboarding guide with new employees

Your onboarding guide won’t be useful if nobody can find it. You can share a guide in-app or by grabbing the URL:

From the Guided Pathways app

1. On the Published Guides page, click the “Share” icon beside your guide.

2. Enter the names of the user(s) with whom you'd like to share your guide, add a message (optional), and click “Share”.

                                   

Via URL

Copy the URL of your guide from your browser and share it across your preferred channels, or embed it within your employee handbook.

What elements do you find most essential in an onboarding guide? Join the conversation below! 👇