How to run onboarding in Notion

Employee onboarding becomes far easier to manage when it’s built as a structured Notion database—complete with standardized properties, reusable templates, and team-specific schedules. The core setup starts with an “employee onboarding” page inside a company-wide Talent (People/HR) area. From there, a new database entry is created as a Kanban board with three status columns—Not started, In progress, and Completed—so each onboarding task set lives as its own page while still rolling up into a clear progress view.

The workflow hinges on database properties that act like a consistent onboarding form across every new hire. Out of the box, the database includes a person property (to assign onboarding ownership) and a status property (to track progress). The transcript then adds practical custom fields: team (as a select list), start date (as a date property), photo (as a file/media property), hiring manager (renamed from the default person field), and both personal and work email addresses. These properties aren’t just for display—because they’re dynamic, they can later power filtering and views, and they ensure every onboarding page is filled out the same way.

Access control is treated as a privacy requirement, not an afterthought. The onboarding database page is initially limited to workspace members, with the ability to remove broader access and grant only specific editors. At the same time, others can still get a “10,000-foot view” of who’s joining and when, while sensitive details remain restricted. This balance lets teams coordinate without exposing personal information unnecessarily.

To avoid repetitive copy-paste work, the transcript recommends building a reusable onboarding template. Content blocks prepared elsewhere can be pasted into a database template, which includes a table of contents and sections like “Before you start” (laptop selection, work email entry, photo upload for the directory, and postal address), plus a “First day” section with tasks marked via checkable items. The template can also embed resources such as Google Maps for office location and link out to tools like a Google Form for company affinity groups.

Once a general onboarding template works, the process scales by duplicating it per department. A schedule database can be swapped in—for example, a product and engineering onboarding schedule—then duplicated again for marketing, customer experience, sales, finance, and legal. Each new hire gets the correct team template, their properties are filled in, and the onboarding page is renamed to match them (e.g., “Kate’s Product and Engineering Onboarding”). The new hire can then track progress in the Kanban board by dragging cards across status columns.

Finally, sharing is handled through Notion invitations: the onboarding page is shared with full access to the new hire’s personal email, letting them comment and edit. With standardized templates and properties, the transcript frames onboarding as something that can be set up in minutes per hire—while staying consistent as the company grows and new teams join the system.