Onboarding a whole cohort at once
Six starters on one Monday breaks assumptions that a single joiner never tests. The paperwork scales fine. The hardware, the desks and the attention do not.
Batch intakes happen for a reason: a graduate round, a new delivery pod, a team that moved across together. They arrive on one date and compete for the same scarce things.
Two of those scarce things are physical. Six laptops have to be ready and verified, and six people have to be enrolled on the attendance device by hand.
The rest of it does scale. One template, started six times, gives six tracked processes with their own owners and dates.
Plan the physical half a week ahead. Enrolment on the fingerprint terminal happens per person, then each device user is mapped to a system user. The mapping screen counts unmapped users, which is the number worth watching on the first morning. Where an admin has switched on browser check-in, a starter with an assigned shift can check in from day one while enrolment catches up.
Why one record instead of two
Six new records appear in the directory and six new columns appear on the capacity plan at the same moment. That is the join doing its work: nobody exports a list of starters into a planning tool. The awkward parts of a cohort are the physical ones, and no amount of shared data fixes a laptop that has not arrived.
What is switched on
- SOPs and checklists
- One template, started once per person, so six parallel processes share a definition.
- Devices
- Availability and verification are visible before the date, not discovered on the morning.
- Attendance
- Each starter is mapped to the terminal, or checks in from the browser once a shift is assigned.
- Directory
- Six records, six reporting lines, six departments, entered before they arrive.
- Notifications
- A scheduled Slack reminder gives the owners of the physical steps a deadline.
- Resource allocation
- A cohort shows up as six new rows of capacity that nobody has planned work for yet.
What the week looks like
Two weeks out
Check the device register for availability. Six ready machines is a different question from six machines existing.
One week out
Create the six person records. Reporting lines and departments now, not on the day.
One week out
Start the joining process against each of the six. Same template, six live copies.
Day one, morning
Enrol each person on the terminal and map them to their system user. Browser check-in covers anyone not yet enrolled.
Day one, afternoon
Assign the six devices. Serials land on the records as they go out.
Week two
Leads begin allocating them to projects. Until then the capacity plan shows six mostly empty columns, which is accurate.
Questions people ask
Can starters check in before they are enrolled on the terminal?
Yes, if an admin has switched on browser check-in and each starter has a shift. The dashboard card opens around their shift window, so day one is recorded either way.
How long does attendance enrolment take per person?
The enrolment happens at the physical device, then you map that device user to the system user in the mapping screen. The mapping screen shows how many users are still unmapped.
Should a cohort get a different checklist from a single starter?
Usually not. Use the same template so the steps stay consistent. What changes with a cohort is scheduling the physical steps, not the list.