This article explains how to build onboarding and offboarding workflows. These workflows enable you to automate and streamline the onboarding and offboarding process for your employees.

 

Before you start

Permissions

To create onboarding and offboarding workflows, you need permissions to the settings via your employee role. Go to the employee role, then Permissions > Account Configuration > On/Off-boarding. You might need to ask your Personio Administrator to grant these permissions. Learn more about permissions for Account Configuration.  

 

Understand steps, groups, and templates

For both onboarding and offboarding workflows, you need to create steps, groups, and templates. See the table below for a description of these concepts.

 

Concept	Description
Onboarding and offboarding steps	Each step is an action or task that an employee or team must complete. You use these steps to build your onboarding or offboarding template. You can build a collection of steps and reuse them as required in your templates. An example of an onboarding step might be "set up workspace" or "send welcome email".
Onboarding and offboarding groups	You can use onboarding and offboarding groups to assign responsibility for a particular step to a group of employees. You can also set this group as recipients of an email action. An example of a group might be "HR team" or "IT team".
Onboarding and offboarding templates	You build onboarding or offboarding templates using the steps you have previously created. You can then assign templates to employees as part of their onboarding or offboarding process. You can also assign the templates directly when employees have been hired from Recruiting (when a candidate profile is converted to an employee profile). Employees then complete the steps that they are responsible for. You can create different templates for different employment types. For example, you might create a template for full-time permanent employees and another template for part-time working students.

 

Create onboarding and offboarding steps

To build an onboarding or offboarding workflow, you first need to create steps. To create onboarding and offboarding steps:

1. Go to Settings > Automations > Onboarding/Offboarding.
2. Click either the Onboarding Steps or Offboarding Steps tab.
3. In the column of steps on the left, enter the name of the new step in the blank field. You can create three types of steps: a general step, an email action, or an email invitation.
4. Click the plus icon to create the step.

 

General step

You can use the general step type for common onboarding and offboarding tasks, for example, "set up workspace" or "return hardware".

To create a general step, you must add an item and select the item type. See the table below for further details on item types. You can add many items to a step.

 

Item type	Details
Text information	Create a block of text to explain how to fill out the rest of the form. URLs are automatically converted to links.
Document for download	Upload a document that the employee can later download.
Employee attribute	Choose from the list of specific employee attributes to help fill in employee information during the onboarding or offboarding process.
Profile picture	Upload a profile picture for the employee.
Checkbox	Display a checkbox that the employee can check (or has to check).
Fill text field	Display a text field where the employee can enter a line of text or several lines of text.
Enter URL	Display a text field in which to enter a valid URL.
Upload document	The responsible employee uploads a document and links it with a certain section of the document module.

 

Email action

Note:
When selecting your email recipient(s), make sure that at least one recipient belonging to the Onboarding/Offboarding Team or Employee Team has an active login. One of the following criteria needs to be fulfilled: A valid email address, an active account, or their login status is either "joined" or "invited".

An email action is an email that you send at a specific point in a workflow. To create an email action, follow these steps:

1. Choose from the three different sending options, as shown below.
   ▶︎ Send manually: The responsible employee(s) get a reminder to send out the email. You will define the employee or group that is responsible for this step when creating the Onboarding or Offboarding template.
   ▶︎ On due date: The email automatically sends on a date that you define in the specific Onboarding template.
   ▶︎ When previous steps are completed: Personio generates the auto dispatch only after all the previous Onboarding or Offboarding steps are marked as completed.
2. Select the employee to appear as the sender of the email. The email displays the email signature set in Personio for the selected employee.
3. Select the email recipient(s). You can choose between the employee who has to complete the step, their supervisor, or all employees. You can also select employees who are part of the groups you create.
4. Fill in the subject field and write the content of the email in the email template. Optional: You can insert employee attributes into the email and also attach a document. The maximum file size is 8 MB.
5. Save your changes.

 

Email invitation

With this step, you can send new employees a welcome email. This includes key details like the office location, teammates, onboarding buddy, and more. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Select when new joiners should receive the email and click Create.
2. Review the email invitation template. Activate the toggle for any sections you want to appear in the email. A lock appears next to mandatory sections that can't be removed from the template.
3. Choose to customize each section:
   ▶︎ Create your account: welcome the new joiner and prompt them to create their Personio account. Include a header image, title, and message. Add attribute variables to the message to personalize it.
   ▶︎ Workplace location: include the workplace address and a map. Optionally, include a message with additional directions.
   ▶︎ Meet your team: provide an overview of the new joiners' manager and peers.
   ▶︎ Custom section: write your own guidance for new joiners when they receive the email invitation. Include a section and message, and add a contact person if necessary.
4. Click Preview to review how the email appears to new joiners. Once ready, save your changes. 

On the set date, new employees receive the email invite and can begin setting up their employee profile in Personio.

 

Create onboarding and offboarding groups

When a group is responsible for an onboarding or offboarding step, all employees in this group receive a task notification on their homepage. However, only one employee needs to complete the task.

Steps also override permissions. This means that employees can view or update data related to their assigned step even if their usual permissions don't allow it. Learn more about notifications in our article about assigning onboarding and offboarding templates.

To create an onboarding or offboarding group, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Automations > Onboarding/Offboarding.
2. Click the Groups tab.
3. In the column on the left, enter the name of the new group into the blank field and click the plus icon.
4. The name of your group appears on the right, along with a list of employees. Add employees by clicking their names. Only active employees are available to select.
5. Selected employees appear at the top of the list. To remove an employee from a group, click the X next to their name, or deactivate their checkbox in the list.
6. Save your changes.

 

Create onboarding and offboarding templates

To create an onboarding or offboarding template, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Automations > Onboarding/Offboarding.
2. Click Onboarding Templates or Offboarding Templates.
3. In the column on the left, enter the name of your new template and click the plus icon.
4. Click Add step. Select the step you want to add, the person, group, or team responsible and the deadline. The deadline triggers reminders and tasks.
5. Add further steps to the template as required. Click on the arrow icon to the left of each step to drag and change the order.
6. Save your changes.

Notes
▶︎ Offboarding steps are triggered based on the following deadlines: "Before termination or the last working day (if set)" or "After termination or the last working day (if set)".
▶︎ You can set the "last working day" when terminating the employee's employment in their profile. You can choose either the termination date or the contract end date as the last working day. If you don't set a “last working day”, then Personio issues the offboarding steps from the termination date.

 

Next steps

• For examples of commonly used onboarding templates and steps, refer to our best practices.
• Once you have created a template, the next step is to assign it to your employee(s). Visit the article Assign and manage onboarding and offboarding templates. This article also explains notifications relating to an onboarding or offboarding workflow.
• If you need to edit an existing step or template, refer to our dedicated article