New Hire Onboarding (NHO) is an essential process that helps ensure new employees have a smooth transition into your business. A precursor to Role-Based training, effective NHO training helps you:
Accelerate time-to-productivity for new hires
Improve employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention
Ensure compliance with company policies and procedures
Foster a positive impression of your company's culture and values
Standardize the onboarding experience across the organization
💡 Why separate New Hire from Role-Based training?
New hire training focuses on providing a broad introduction to the company, its culture, and basic procedures for all new employees, regardless of their specific role. In contrast, role-based training is tailored to the specific skills, knowledge, and responsibilities required for a particular position within the business.
What to Include
Starting from scratch? A great NHO training typically covers:
Onboarding & Introduction to your Business | • Cover "need to know" information about the company, department, and role |
Company Overview | • Offer courses that give a high-level understanding of the company and the new hire's specific role(s) |
Brand & Culture | • Immerse new hires in your company's brand, values, and culture |
HR Policies | • Attach your Employee Handbook as a resource at the end of your NHO module |
Compliance | • Cover all necessary compliance training and paperwork |
Initial Validations | • Implement checkpoints to ensure new hires are progressing as expected |
👀 Want to see an example for yourself?
Check out Newk’s Newbies NHO training module here.
How to Build New Hire Onboarding in Opus
Step 1: Create your New Hire Onboarding module
New Hire Onboarding can be customized in Opus so that you have full control of the training experience. We recommend structuring your content in Opus to be a module so that you can re-use courses, check-ins, and resources across different modules. This also leaves the door open for reassigning specific courses down the road to reinforce your team.
Organize your NHO Module by Using Sections
Assign all of your new hire training in one module and configure what order the courses or sections must be completed. You can add time-based rules between sections so that users can only complete courses one step or section at a time or after a certain number of days have passed.
Get a step-by-step guide on how to build modules here.
Step 2: Set Up Assignment Automations
Once you’ve created your New Hire module, set up an assignment automation so that users can begin training once they log into Opus.
Create an automation for your NHO module to save yourself time from manual assignments. You can segment automations based on their Hire Date, role, location, and more. Learn more about how to assign modules here.
Step 3: Track Completion Reporting
Now that your training has been assigned, you can track completion reporting in a few ways:
User Completion Grid
Track all of your new hires on the user completion grid by selecting your New Hire module(s). Found in the Reporting page.
Module Reporting
Go to the Reporting tab of your module to get analytics on the module itself (accuracy, course feedback, completion time). Click into individual courses, resources, or check-ins to get even more data.
🚶♂️Set Up a Path for Role-Based Training Modules
Once team members have completed their NHO module, you can create a path to automatically assign role-based training modules. Set up the path to trigger based on the completion of the NHO module, then add the relevant role-based training modules as subsequent steps.
You can use time-based rules to space out the assignments and ensure a smooth transition from general onboarding to role-specific training.
Learn more about how to create a path and build Role-Based Training.
FAQs
How long should the new hire onboarding process take?
The duration can vary, but a comprehensive new hire onboarding program that also features role-based training typically spans 7-10 days. The goal is to provide new hires with the knowledge and support they need to become productive and engaged members of your team.
How do I measure the success of our NHO module?
Useful metrics to track include:
New hire ramp-up time (i.e. Completion over time)
New hire satisfaction survey responses (i.e. Open-ended quizzes)
Feedback from managers on new hire performance (i.e. Course feedback)
What if I need more than one module for my New Hire Onboarding?
Organizing your NHO training within a single module using multiple sections versus across multiple modules in a path will affect how completion data is reported in Opus, as modules and sections have different reporting capabilities.
While sections in a module use timed unlock rules to control content release and result in one assignment, paths allow you to assign modules sequentially and automatically, creating separate assignments that can be tracked individually.
What if my business has trainers who mentor new hires?
Having dedicated trainers or buddy systems is a great practice! With Opus, you can enhance this experience by using check-ins to:
Capture trainer observations and feedback throughout the onboarding period
Create structured evaluation forms for trainers to document progress consistently
Set up regular milestone check-ins to track new hire development
This combination of hands-on mentorship and digital documentation creates a more comprehensive and trackable onboarding experience.
Where can I find other examples of training?
You can find a collection of real training examples in Opus and posted them on our blog to showcase best practices and give you inspiration.