How is onboarding tracked?
Onboarding runs as a process created from a template against the new starter, with an assignee on the work, an initiator who began it, a running count of resolved steps and an age. An HR team reads the state of every joiner from one list rather than from memory or a chain of messages.
Onboarding goes wrong in a specific way. Not through anybody forgetting the whole thing, but through the fourth step of eleven belonging to nobody.
Equipment is IT. The payroll form is finance. The policy walkthrough is HR. Everyone assumes the sequence is moving because their own part is done.
A tracked process makes that assumption checkable. Each run shows its subject, its state and how many steps are resolved, so a joiner stuck at two of eleven in their second week is visible without anybody asking.
The age on each process is the quiet signal. A three-day-old onboarding at three steps is fine. A three-week-old one at the same three steps is not, and only the age separates them.
Filters make that readable across a group. The list narrows by employee, by template and by assignee, which turns a long list into the handful somebody actually owns.
Onboarding and offboarding are the same mechanism pointed in opposite directions. A live instance runs off-boarding and post-offboarding templates alongside the joining ones.
Each step is done by the person who owns it: accounts, a laptop from the register, paperwork. The process shows that it happened, and when.
A first run usually turns up two or three steps nobody had written down. Add them to the template, and every later joiner gets them automatically.
Start the process on the day the offer is accepted rather than the first morning. Most of what goes wrong in week one was meant to happen the week before.
Related questions
Can different roles have different onboarding?
Yes. Templates are reusable and grouped in categories, so an engineering joiner and a sales joiner can run different ones.
Who adds the new joiner to the directory?
Somebody holding the people permissions, usually HR. The joiner's reporting line then draws them into the org chart.
How do I see everyone currently onboarding?
The process list shows active runs with their progress, filterable by template and assignee. An active-process count sits above it.