HR Confessional #05: Your onboarding process feels like joining a gym in January

Let’s be honest – most onboarding processes have the exact same energy as a New Year’s resolution.

There’s the initial burst of performative enthusiasm, the shiny new kit (the branded hoodie and the water bottle that definitely won't fit in your car cup holder) and a sudden, overwhelming influx of information that nobody is actually going to use.

On day one, the new hire is "the January joiner". They arrive with high hopes and a pristine notebook, ready to become a brand-new version of themselves. By day 14, they’re staring at a 47-page PDF on "internal stakeholder synergy" with the same glazed expression as someone wondering why they bought a 12-month membership to a place that smells like disinfectant and failure.

The problem: orientation vs integration

We’ve mistaken "orientation" for "onboarding". We treat new starters like empty hard drives that need to be formatted with every corporate policy, value deck and "meet the team" Zoom call before they’re allowed to actually touch any work.

It’s exhausting – and more importantly, it’s forgettable.

Nobody remembers your "core pillars" when they’re still trying to figure out which Slack channel is for actual work and which one is just for pictures of people's Labradors. We’re so busy showing them the "vision" that we forget to show them how to actually get a win in this environment.

The reframe

Your onboarding shouldn’t be a lecture – it should be a scaffolding.

Instead of drowning people in value decks before they’ve even sent an email, we need to design for momentum. We need to move away from "the big dump" of information and toward "first win architecture".

From what we’ve seen working with dozens of employer brands, the "firehose" approach actually delays productivity by about three weeks – humans just aren't built to download data that fast.

How to stop the burnout

If you want people to stay past February, you have to change the workout:

Ditch the "all-hands" introduction – stop dragging new hires into 60-minute meetings where they’re introduced to 40 people whose names they’ll instantly forget. Give them one "buddy" they can message "stupid" questions to without feeling like a burden.

The 72-hour rule – what’s the smallest, most meaningful thing they can contribute within three days? Not a learning objective, but a real task. Shipping something – even something tiny – creates more belonging than any branded lanyard ever could.

Values in the wild – instead of presenting your values, let them shadow a real client call or a difficult project meeting. Let them see how those values actually handle a bit of "good friction" in the real world.

The 9am verdict

Onboarding isn't a ceremony – it’s the beginning of a relationship. If the first two weeks feel like a frantic attempt to justify the hiring fee, your new talent will spend the third week updating their LinkedIn profile.

Stop trying to make them "fit" the gym – just help them pick up the weights and start moving.