Employee onboarding template

A new hire’s first day is decided weeks earlier, in the dozen small handoffs between IT, People, Finance and the hiring manager. Miss the laptop order and someone sits idle on day one. Forget the building access and they wait in a lobby. An employee onboarding template turns that scramble into a single Epic you create once and reuse for every new hire, so nothing slips through the gaps between teams. Copy the template above straight into a Jira issue, or read on for a new hire onboarding checklist, a 30-60-90 day plan, a remote variant, and how to turn the structure into a reusable onboarding template in Jira with Issue Templates for Jira Cloud.

What an employee onboarding template captures

Employee onboarding is the process of integrating new employees into an organisation and helping them become productive members of the team. In Jira, that process maps cleanly onto an Epic: the new hire is the Epic, and every provisioning, paperwork and welcome task is a sub-task underneath it. This template captures the whole picture in one place, the new employee’s details, the tasks each team owns, the materials to hand over, who is mentoring them, and the date by which everything must be ready.

Because it is a template rather than a one-off issue, the structure is identical for the tenth hire as it was for the first. This page is about employee onboarding, a new hire joining the company. If you onboard external customers instead, that is a different workflow with its own customer onboarding template.

Field-by-field breakdown

• New employee name, job title, department, contact details. The identity block. Department is a dropdown so reporting stays clean and you can route tasks by team.
• Start date and due date. Start date is the first working day. Due date is when provisioning must be finished, usually the day before, so the new hire walks into a desk that already works.
• Tasks to be completed. A checklist of the concrete work: order the laptop, provision email / Slack / Jira / Google accounts, ship the welcome kit, book the first-week 1:1s. Each line becomes a sub-task with its own assignee.
• Onboarding materials. Guides, training videos and checklists to hand over, the employee handbook, a security awareness video, the 30-60-90 day plan.
• Mentor / peer and reporting manager. Names and contacts for the two people the new hire leans on most in week one. Capturing them on the Epic means nobody has to ask “who is showing them around?”
• Location. Remote or a specific office, which changes the equipment, access and shipping tasks that follow.

When you save this Epic as a template with Issue Templates for Jira Cloud, each of these becomes a variable you fill in at create time. Text fields prompt for the name and manager, the dropdowns offer your real departments and offices, and the date pickers set start and due dates. Smart values can then carry the new hire’s name into every sub-task summary automatically.

New hire onboarding checklist

The fastest way to use this template is as a new hire onboarding checklist. The “Tasks to be completed” field is the checklist itself, and each line becomes an owned sub-task. Split it across the first day and the first week so nothing is left to memory.

Before the start date (provisioning):

• Order the laptop and peripherals, allowing a week of lead time.
• Provision email, Slack, Jira and Google Workspace accounts.
• Grant building access or VPN credentials.
• Prepare and ship the welcome kit.
• Send the contract and collect signed paperwork.
• Set up payroll and benefits in Finance.

First day:

• Manager sends the day-one calendar invite with the schedule.
• Hand over the laptop and confirm every account logs in.
• Run the welcome and orientation session.
• Introduce the mentor and the immediate team.
• Walk through the employee handbook and security training.

First week:

• Book recurring 1:1s with the manager and the mentor.
• Complete required compliance and security training.
• Share the 30-60-90 day plan and team glossary.
• Assign a small, real first task so the new hire ships something early.
• Collect first-week feedback to fix gaps before the next hire.

Saving this checklist as a template means the same complete list runs for every department, with a Department dropdown deciding which team owns each line.

The 30-60-90 day plan

The checklist gets a new hire set up; a 30-60-90 day plan gets them productive. Attach it as an onboarding material so the new starter and their manager share one definition of ramping up.

• First 30 days (learn and set up). Complete provisioning and training, meet the team and key stakeholders, understand the product and the codebase or process, and ship one small, supervised task. The goal is orientation, not output.
• Days 31 to 60 (contribute with support). Take on real work with a safety net, own a feature or a recurring responsibility, and start contributing in reviews and planning. Velocity matters less than building confidence.
• Days 61 to 90 (own independently). Deliver work end to end without hand-holding, give feedback to peers, and set goals for the next quarter. By day 90 the new hire should be a fully contributing member of the team.

Keep the plan in the onboarding materials list and revisit it at the 30, 60 and 90 day 1:1s.

Remote onboarding variant

Remote onboarding uses the same Epic with the Location dropdown set to Remote, which changes the equipment, access and welcome tasks underneath it. The risk shifts from “did the laptop arrive on time” to “does the new hire feel connected,” so the variant adds a few sub-tasks the in-office version takes for granted.

• Ship hardware early. Courier the laptop, monitor and peripherals to the home address with extra lead time, and confirm delivery before day one.
• Lead with access, not a desk. VPN, SSO and tool accounts replace building access. Test that every login works the day before.
• Schedule the human side deliberately. Book a video welcome, virtual team introductions and a daily mentor check-in for the first week, because hallway conversations will not happen by accident.
• Front-load documentation. Remote hires lean on written guides more, so make sure the handbook, the 30-60-90 day plan and a team glossary are linked, not assumed.

One template with a Location dropdown covers remote, hybrid and office hires; the variables decide which sub-tasks apply rather than forcing you to maintain three separate templates.

Best practices

• Make IT, People and Finance each own sub-tasks. Onboarding fails at the seams between teams. Assign the laptop to IT, the contract to People, payroll setup to Finance, and the day-one calendar to the hiring manager.
• Back-date from the start date, not from today. Set the Epic’s due date to the day before the start date and work the sub-task deadlines backwards. Hardware ordering and access requests often need a week of lead time.
• Keep the materials list living. Update the onboarding materials whenever a policy or tool changes, then re-save the template so the next hire gets the current version.
• Use the same template for every department, vary the variables. One Epic template with a Department dropdown beats ten near-identical templates you have to maintain separately.

A strong onboarding Epic vs a weak one

A weak onboarding issue is a single ticket that says “Onboard Maya, starts June 15” with no sub-tasks. Everything lives in someone’s head, the laptop order depends on a Slack message, and the first sign that orientation was never booked is the new hire asking where to go.

A strong onboarding Epic names the hire, sets the start and due dates, and breaks the work into owned sub-tasks: IT provisions accounts by June 12, Finance completes payroll by June 13, the manager sends the day-one calendar invite, and the mentor is assigned before the first 1:1. The materials are attached, the location drives the equipment list, and anyone can open the Epic and see exactly what is done and what is outstanding.

How to use this template in Jira

Capturing this whole structure by hand for every new hire is exactly the busywork a template removes.

1. Install Issue Templates for Jira Cloud from the Atlassian Marketplace. It is free for up to 10 users.
2. Build the onboarding Epic with its sub-tasks once, then save it as a template. The whole hierarchy, Epic plus sub-tasks, is preserved together.
3. Add variables for the parts that change per hire such as the name, start date, department, manager and mentor, so the People team fills only the blanks. See template variables.
4. Create from the template for every new hire, filling in the variables so the full Epic appears with every sub-task assigned and dated. For a whole cohort, launch the template once per hire, each launch building the complete onboarding Epic.

A dashboard gadget then gives HR a live view of who is onboarding this month. Save the version your team trusts once, and every future new hire walks into a first day that simply works.

Frequently asked questions

What is an employee onboarding template? An employee onboarding template is a reusable, predefined structure that captures every step of bringing a new hire into the company: equipment, accounts, paperwork, training and welcome. In Jira it lives as an Epic with one sub-task per task, so the tenth hire gets the same complete experience as the first.

What should a new hire onboarding checklist include? A new hire onboarding checklist covers the first day and first week: order and ship the laptop, provision email, Slack, Jira and Google accounts, grant building or VPN access, complete contract and payroll paperwork, assign a mentor, book the day-one calendar, and hand over the handbook and required training.

What is a 30-60-90 day plan in onboarding? A 30-60-90 day plan sets clear goals for a new hire’s first three months: learning and setup by day 30, contributing with support by day 60, and owning work independently by day 90. Attaching it as an onboarding material gives the new starter and their manager a shared definition of ramping up.

How do I create a reusable onboarding template in Jira? Install Issue Templates for Jira Cloud, build the onboarding Epic once with its sub-tasks, save the whole hierarchy as a template, then add variables for the name, start date, department, manager and mentor so the People team launches a complete onboarding in one click.

Related templates

Pair the onboarding template with the rest of your People workflow: the Employee offboarding template for when someone leaves, the Recruitment template for the hiring that comes before, and the Customer onboarding template for onboarding external customers rather than staff. Or browse the full template library for matching formats across HR, software and support work.