Designing the Ultimate Onboarding Journey for Your Team

Great onboarding doesn't happen by accident. The first 60 days shape how a new hire feels about their role, their team, and whether they see a future at your company. Get it right and you'll see faster ramp-up, stronger retention, and people who actually want to be there.

The problem? Most onboarding is a fire-hose of documents on day one, a few awkward introductions, and then silence. New hires are left to figure things out on their own.

This guide lays out a practical, day-by-day framework for building onboarding that's structured, human, and runs almost entirely inside Slack — where your team already works.

Why Slack-first onboarding works

Slack is where your team communicates, collaborates, and builds culture. Running onboarding inside Slack means new hires don't need to learn yet another platform. Content arrives where they already are, introductions happen naturally, and nothing gets buried in an inbox.

With a tool like Doozy, you can automate the entire journey — drip-feeding content, scheduling introductions, running quizzes, and collecting feedback — without anyone on your team needing to remember to send a message.

Week 1: First impressions and foundations

Day 1: Welcome and orientation

The goal on day one isn't productivity — it's belonging. New hires should feel expected, welcomed, and clear on what happens next.

• Post a welcome message in a team channel. Tag their manager and buddy. Keep it warm and specific — mention what excited the team about hiring them.
• Set up a dedicated onboarding channel (e.g. #onboarding-[name] or #new-hires-q1) where they can ask questions without feeling like they're interrupting.
• Drip-feed essentials with Tracks: Use Doozy Tracks to send a structured sequence of messages covering company mission, values, key tools, and who's who. Space it out — don't dump everything at 9am.
• Share a "first week" checklist so they know exactly what's expected and can track their own progress.

Day 2–3: Role-specific learning

Once the basics are covered, shift to role-specific content. This should be tailored by department and delivered in digestible chunks.

• Create role-specific Tracks with tutorials, walkthroughs, and links to key resources. A new engineer needs different content than a new account manager.
• Introduce their onboarding buddy — someone who's been in the role for a while and can answer the questions people are afraid to ask their manager.
• Schedule a 30-minute coffee chat with their direct manager to talk about expectations, communication preferences, and how the team works.

Day 5: First connections

Relationships built in the first week have an outsized impact on long-term engagement. Don't leave networking to chance.

• Automate cross-team introductions with Doozy Introductions. Pair new hires with people outside their immediate team for casual 15-minute chats.
• Run an icebreaker in the onboarding channel. Doozy's built-in icebreakers give people a low-pressure way to share something about themselves — favourite travel destination, hot take on pineapple pizza, whatever breaks the ice.

Week 2: Building confidence

Day 7–8: Knowledge check

By now, new hires have absorbed a lot of information. A lightweight knowledge check helps reinforce what matters and surfaces any gaps early.

• Send a quiz via Doozy covering company values, key processes, or product fundamentals. Keep it short (5–8 questions), make it feel like a game, not a test.
• Review results with their manager — not as a pass/fail, but as a conversation starter. "I noticed you weren't sure about X — let's walk through that."

Day 10: Mentor check-in

If you've assigned a mentor (and you should), this is a good time for a structured check-in.

• Use a simple agenda: What's going well? What's confusing? What do you wish you'd known on day one?
• Share the feedback with HR/People Ops so you can spot patterns across new hires.

Day 12–14: Culture deep dive

Understanding how a company actually works — not just what it says on the careers page — takes time. This is where you make it intentional.

• Host a virtual session with a senior leader to talk about company history, values in practice, and where the company is headed. Keep it conversational, not a lecture.
• Share stories, not policies: Real examples of how values show up in decision-making resonate far more than a slide deck.

Week 3–4: Getting real

Day 15–17: First real project

New hires need to do real work to feel like real team members. Assign a meaningful (but manageable) first project.

• Pick something with clear scope that can be completed within a week. It should be real work that the team actually needs — not busy work.
• Pair them with a teammate who can answer questions and review their work. This isn't about testing them — it's about building confidence.

Day 18–20: Team bonding

Social integration matters as much as professional onboarding. People who have a friend at work are significantly more engaged.

• Run a team activity in Slack — trivia, a quiz about the team, or a virtual game session. Doozy makes this easy to set up and run without leaving Slack.
• Keep introductions going: By now, Doozy's automated pairings should be connecting your new hire with people across the company on a regular cadence.

Day 21: Product deep dive

Even if they're not in a product role, every new hire should understand what the company builds and why customers care.

• Arrange a session with a product manager or senior team member to walk through the product, customer personas, and how different teams contribute.
• Follow up with a quiz to reinforce key concepts — product knowledge is one of the biggest gaps in most onboarding programs.

Month 2: Integration and growth

Day 25–30: Mid-onboarding feedback

Don't wait until the end to find out what's working. Gather feedback early so you can course-correct.

• Send a short survey via Slack asking about their experience so far. What's been helpful? What's been missing? What would they change?
• Use Doozy Polls to make feedback collection effortless — it happens right in Slack and takes under two minutes.
• Act on the feedback visibly. If multiple new hires say the same thing, fix it and tell them you did. Nothing builds trust faster.

Day 31–35: Manager check-in

Schedule a proper sit-down (or video call) to discuss how things are going beyond the surface level.

• Review their onboarding goals: Are they on track? Do they need more support in any area?
• Discuss team dynamics: How are they feeling about their relationships with teammates? Any friction or confusion about how decisions get made?
• Start talking about what's next: What skills do they want to develop? What projects interest them?

Day 40–45: Expanding ownership

By week six, new hires should be taking on more responsibility and operating with increasing independence.

• Involve them in a team retrospective so they can see how the team reflects on and improves its work.
• Give them a slightly larger project with more autonomy. Let them own it end-to-end.
• Celebrate milestones automatically with Doozy's celebrations feature — their first month, completion of their onboarding Track, or their first shipped project.

Day 50–55: Career development conversation

Onboarding isn't just about getting someone up to speed — it's about showing them a future.

• Hold a one-on-one focused entirely on growth: What are their career goals? What skills do they want to build? What kind of work energises them?
• Connect them with learning resources: internal docs, courses, or a Doozy learning Track tailored to their development area.
• Introduce them to someone in a role they aspire to — another great use case for Doozy's introduction pairings.

Day 60: Final review and reflection

The formal onboarding period wraps up, but the relationship is just getting started.

• Run a final knowledge assessment to measure how far they've come since day one. Compare it with their week-two quiz to show growth.
• Collect comprehensive feedback on the full onboarding experience. What should you keep, change, or add for the next cohort?
• Transition from onboarding to ongoing engagement: Make sure they're enrolled in your regular team activities — introductions, trivia, celebrations, polls — so the connection doesn't stop when onboarding ends.

Building your onboarding playbook

The best onboarding programs share a few things in common:

1. They're structured but not rigid — a clear timeline with room for the new hire's pace and personality.
2. They're social, not just informational — relationships matter as much as resources.
3. They're automated where possible — so your People team isn't manually sending messages and booking meetings for every new hire.
4. They collect feedback and evolve — every cohort should have a better experience than the last.

Slack gives you the perfect channel. Doozy gives you the automation, structure, and engagement tools to make it all happen without burning out your People team.

Start building your onboarding journey today — your future hires will thank you.