Don’t Wing It: Why Onboarding Shouldn’t Be an Afterthought

Every business onboards. You onboard new employees. You onboard clients. You onboard vendors and partners. It's the first real experience someone has with your company after the deal is signed or the offer letter is accepted.

Yet, despite its universal importance, “Onboarding” isn't a priority. Instead, companies duct-tape spreadsheets, email chains, and generic project tools together, hoping the first impression they give will feel professional.

It rarely does.

Why Onboarding Deserves Priority

Think about it: the first 30 days of a new relationship are the most critical. Mess them up, and you set the tone for mistrust, frustration, or churn. Handle them well, and you win loyalty, referrals, and long-term retention.

Onboarding isn't just “project management” or “task tracking.” It's about:

• Building trust and establishing a raport with employees, vendors, companies, and partners.
• Set up for success. It should be a priority to set someone up for success using your services.
• Demonstrating your Machine: This is a chance to show off how well your company operates and coordinates internally. If you can't get this right, chances are prospects stick with you because there are no other options.
• Multi-department coordination: HR, IT, Facilities, Legal, and direct managers for employees. Sales, Success, and Ops for clients. Procurement, Finance, and Compliance for vendors. If you can't handle internal things that you can control, how are you expected to handle external things you can't control?
• Clear communication: New hires and clients don't want to guess where things stand -they want visibility.
• Structured repeatability: Each onboarding follows a familiar playbook, but also needs flexibility for unique situations.
• Brand reflection: A sloppy onboarding says, “We're disorganized.” A smooth one says, “We're a company that has it together.”

The Problem With Current Tools

Here's why today's categories don't cut it:

• Project Management tools (like ClickUp or Monday) treat onboarding as just another project. They don't capture repeatable, multi-team workflows.
• Task Lists (like Asana or Trello) are fine for to-dos, but they don't handle handoffs across HR, IT, and Ops without becoming a mess of boards and tags.
• SOP/Checklist apps (like Process Street) help document steps, but they don't adapt well when exceptions arise -and onboarding always has exceptions.
• HR-only tools silo employee onboarding from the rest of the organization, leaving IT or Facilities out of the loop.

In every case, onboarding becomes an afterthought and hacked into systems that weren't designed for it. And this hurts your business.

What Onboarding Workflows Should Look Like

If “Onboarding Workflows” were a real software category, here's what it would require:

• Cross-department workflows: One request or hire triggers tasks across HR, IT, Facilities, and Finance automatically.
• Client Tickets: Clients, vendors, or employees can see and complete their part of the process without digging through emails.
• Chat: To communicate across teams seamlessly.
• Repeatable templates: Each onboarding starts from a proven playbook but allows for customization.
• Clear visibility: Leaders see status at a glance -no guessing, no endless update meetings.
• Scalable simplicity: Works for 10 hires or 1,000. For one client or fifty new accounts.
• Email Templates to communicate vital information that's personalized
• Document Templates to capture required information, signatures, and compliance in one place

If your software can't provide this for you, you're on the wrong platform.

The Business Impact of Getting It Wrong

Poor onboarding doesn't just slow things down -it costs money:

• Employee turnover: According to Gallup, up to 20% of turnover happens within the first 45 days. Most of it is due to poor onboarding experiences.
• Client churn: A bad handoff from sales to success leads to immediate cancellations or buyer's remorse.
• Vendor compliance risks: Missed legal or financial steps during vendor onboarding can lead to audit nightmares.

In short: onboarding is not optional. It's one of the most important operational processes your business will ever run.

Why WorkWillow Leads the Way

WorkWillow was built on the principle that critical processes shouldn't be hidden in inboxes or locked inside one department. Onboarding is the perfect example:

• Employee Onboarding: HR starts the workflow, IT sets up accounts, Facilities issues badges, managers get alerts for day-one readiness.
• Client Onboarding: Sales triggers kickoff tasks for Success, Finance issues contracts and invoices, Ops assigns the first delivery team.
• Vendor Onboarding: Procurement kicks off Legal, Finance, and Compliance reviews automatically.

No more handoffs falling through the cracks. No more guessing if the laptop is ready or the invoice went out. Everything moves in sync.

The Bottom Line

Onboarding is too important to be treated as an afterthought. It deserves to be a priority: Onboarding Workflows.

Companies that embrace it will make stronger first impressions, reduce churn, and save countless hours of manual coordination. Those that ignore it will keep losing people and customers at the very moment they should be earning trust.

If you've ever felt the pain of a botched onboarding -whether for an employee, client, or vendor -you already know why this matters. The good news is you don't have to accept it anymore.

Onboarding Workflows is here. The only question is whether your company is ready to lead with it.

Ready to transform your onboarding from a cost center into a competitive advantage? See how professional onboarding works and discover why great companies invest in systematic processes from day one.