How to Use HubSpot Playbooks for Streamlined Employee Onboarding

A smooth and consistent onboarding process is key to setting new employees up for success. But for many businesses, onboarding can be a chaotic experience—tasks are missed, communication falls through the cracks, and there’s often no clear record of what has been completed. By using HubSpot Playbooks, I helped a client standardize their employee onboarding process, making it more efficient, consistent, and trackable.

In this post, I’ll walk you through how I set up a HubSpot Playbook for employee onboarding, including each step, best practices, and tips for maximizing efficiency.

Step 1: Add "Employee" to the Lifecycle Stages

By default, HubSpot’s lifecycle stages are designed for customer relationship management, including stages like Lead, Customer, and Evangelist. However, to use HubSpot for employee management, we need to customize it a bit.

Why add "Employee" as a lifecycle stage?

• It differentiates employee records from customers, leads, and prospects.
• It allows us to tailor workflows, emails, and playbooks specifically for onboarding.

How to add "Employee" to the lifecycle stages:

1. Go to Settings > Properties > Lifecycle Stage in HubSpot.
2. Click Edit, then add a new lifecycle stage called "Employee".
3. Save your changes.

With this new stage, you can easily filter and manage contacts who are part of your internal team, ensuring that they don’t get mixed up with external contacts.

Step 2: Create an Onboarding Playbook Using the Customer Onboarding Template

The next step is to set up a standardized playbook for the onboarding process. HubSpot’s Playbooks feature is a powerful tool that allows you to create step-by-step checklists, ensuring that your onboarding tasks are consistent for every new hire.

Why use a playbook for onboarding?

• It creates a consistent experience for every new employee.
• It provides a checklist of all required tasks, reducing the risk of missing steps.
• It logs completion in the contact record, providing visibility for the HR team.

How I set it up:

1. Go to Sales > Playbooks in HubSpot and click Create Playbook.
2. Use the Customer Onboarding template as a base. This template includes common onboarding tasks that can be adapted for employees.
3. Customize the playbook with questions that cover all necessary tasks (e.g., “Has the new hire completed all HR paperwork?” or “Has the IT equipment been set up?”). I made the answers mandatory, so no steps can be skipped.
4. Set the playbook settings to appear only when the contact’s lifecycle stage = Employee.
5. Enable the option to log the playbook as a note. This way, every time the playbook is used, it’s recorded in the contact’s activity feed, making it easy to see what has been completed.

Step 3: Create an Onboarding Email Template

A well-crafted email template helps kick off the onboarding process and sets the tone for the new employee’s experience. This email should provide a warm welcome, important information, and any next steps the new hire needs to take.

How to create the email template:

1. Go to Marketing > Email > Create Email Template.
2. Draft an onboarding email that includes:
   • A personalized welcome message.
   • Links to important documents (e.g., company handbook, HR forms).
   • A list of next steps for the new hire (e.g., scheduling a meeting with their manager, setting up their email account).
3. Save the template as “Onboarding Welcome Email”.

This template can be reused for every new hire, saving time and ensuring consistency.

Step 4: Automate the Onboarding Process with a Workflow

To make the onboarding process even smoother, I set up a HubSpot workflow that automates key steps. This ensures that nothing falls through the cracks and the HR team is notified as soon as a new employee needs to be onboarded.

How the workflow is set up:

1. Go to Automation > Workflows > Create Workflow and start from scratch.
2. Set the trigger to be Contact’s email domain. This is typically the company’s domain (e.g., @gigstreem.com) and helps identify internal employees.
3. Add an action to update the lifecycle stage to “Employee”.
4. Create a task for the HR contact to send the onboarding email template. This task ensures that the HR representative sends the welcome email as soon as a new employee is identified.
5. Set an additional action to send an internal notification email to the HR contact, alerting them that a new employee needs to be onboarded.

This automated process helps to eliminate manual steps, reducing delays and errors in the onboarding process.

Benefits of Using HubSpot for Employee Onboarding

By leveraging HubSpot Playbooks, email templates, and workflows, we created a robust and streamlined onboarding process for our client. Here’s what they gained:

1. Consistency: Every new hire goes through the same onboarding process, ensuring that nothing is missed.
2. Visibility: The playbook logs all completed tasks in the contact record, giving the HR team a clear view of what has been done and what still needs attention.
3. Efficiency: Automated workflows and email templates reduce manual work, freeing up time for the HR team to focus on more strategic tasks.
4. Scalability: As the company grows, the onboarding process can easily scale, handling increased volumes of new hires without sacrificing quality.

Conclusion

A structured and automated onboarding process is crucial for creating a great first impression and helping new employees feel supported from day one. By setting up a HubSpot playbook and integrating it with email templates and workflows, we helped our client achieve a standardized and scalable process that boosts efficiency and improves the employee experience.

If you’re interested in learning how HubSpot can help streamline your onboarding process, check out our HubSpot Services Page or contact us for a consultation.