A new starter's first weeks
The new starter arrives. Their laptop is not ready, one system login has not been set up, and nobody told the person they are shadowing that they were starting today. They spend the first morning reading the staff handbook, which covers holidays and fire exits but not how the work is done.
For the next few weeks they sit next to someone experienced and ask questions. The experienced person answers patiently, but their own work slows. Different colleagues teach slightly different ways of doing the same thing. Some things only come up once a month, so they are missed entirely until they go wrong.
Why every new starter starts from zero
Onboarding is really two problems, and businesses often only notice one.
The first is setup: accounts in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, access to the CRM and accounts package, equipment, payroll details, contracts, mandatory training. It is a checklist, but it is usually held in one person's head or an old email, so steps get missed and nobody notices until the new starter needs something.
The second is know-how: how the work is actually done here. That knowledge was never written down, because the people who have it are busy and writing procedures from memory is hard. So each new starter learns it the only way available, by interrupting someone.
What informal onboarding costs
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Accounts and equipment not ready | Lost days, poor first impression |
| Learning by shadowing only | Experienced staff interrupted for weeks |
| Inconsistent teaching | Different habits and errors spread |
| Rare tasks never covered | Mistakes the first time they come up |
| Access not removed for leavers | A security gap nobody is watching |
The last row belongs here because it is the same checklist in reverse. If starting is informal, leaving usually is too.
How SpiderHunts builds onboarding that runs itself
- List every setup task for a new starter by role, with the people responsible, and turn it into an automated workflow triggered when HR adds the new starter in your HR system or a simple form.
- Create user accounts automatically where systems allow, through Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and other APIs, and assign tasks to people for the steps that cannot be automated, such as ordering equipment.
- Capture the key processes for each role from real work, using screen recordings and short interviews turned into draft procedures that the experienced staff then correct.
- Organise those procedures into a role-based onboarding path: what to learn in the first days, what later, with small checks along the way.
- Add an internal assistant built on a large language model that answers questions from your own procedures and documents only, shows which document the answer came from, and says so when it does not know.
- Run the same workflow in reverse for leavers, so access is removed across systems.
The assistant is not there to replace the colleague who shows the new starter the ropes. It takes the repeated, look-up-able questions off that colleague, so their time goes on the things that need a person.
A first week that is ready for them
New starters arrive to working accounts and a clear path. They can look things up before asking, and when they do ask, it is about judgement rather than 'where do I find the form'. Experienced staff get interrupted less, and everyone learns the same way of doing things.
Managers get a view they did not have before: every new starter's setup tasks, which are done and which are late, and which questions the assistant is being asked most often. Those questions are a useful map of where your documentation is thin.
Because the procedures now exist, they also help people who are not new: cover for holidays, a refresher before a rare task, or a check on how something should be done. And when a process changes, the procedure and the assistant's answers change with it.
Is this how people join your team?
- New starters regularly arrive before their accounts or equipment are ready.
- Training is mostly shadowing an experienced colleague.
- Your handbook covers policies but not how the work is done.
- Different people teach the same task differently.
- You are not certain leavers' access has been removed everywhere.