How to automate employee onboarding and offboarding
By Krystina Martinez · September 12, 2024
Too busy onboarding and offboarding employees to focus on other business-critical processes? Whether you're in HR or IT, it's your job to make sure new employees have the tools they need to kick-start their careers—and to wrap up when they leave.
But doing that (on top of your other priority work) can quickly become overwhelming if you're handling these processes manually.
With just a few Zaps—what we call our automated workflows—you can do everything from sending team notifications about new employees, assigning onboarding tasks, and scheduling exit interviews—automatically.
Check out the most popular ways to automate employee onboarding and offboarding.
You'll need a Zapier account to use the workflows in this piece. If you don't have an account yet, it's free to get started.
There's always an awkward settling-in period for new employees. It takes time to get used to new processes and team norms, plus all tools that keep the company running.
Whether you're looking to automate onboarding processes from the IT side or across your organization, here are a few ideas to help you create a smoother onboarding experience:
Create new employee profiles
Your human resources team likely uses a few platforms to manage job candidates and employees. You can connect these tools in a Zap and automatically create new employee profiles in your organization's HR software.
To get started with a Zap template—what we call our pre-made workflows—just click on the button. It only takes a few minutes to set up. You can read more about setting up Zaps here.
Create employees in BambooHR from Workable candidates in a stage
It takes time to move job candidates through the recruiting pipeline. This integration makes it easy to create employee profiles from hired candidates. Whenever Workable candidates reach a specific stage, this Zap will automatically create employees in BambooHR.
It takes time to move information about new hires from Google Sheets to BambooHR. This integration automates that work for you. You can now add new employees in BambooHR automatically everytime there are new rows created in a designated Google Sheet.
Adding employees from one HR tool to another can be a real pain and time suck. Use this integration to automatically create a user in When I Work for new employees in BambooHR. Stop wasting time on the manual things.
If you want Zapier to create employees closer to their start dates, you can add Delay to a Zap. Available on our paid plans, Delay allows you to control the timing of Zap actions. Check out our Delay by Zapier guide to learn how.
Send alerts
Onboarding a new colleague is often a multi-department experience. One team may need to focus on helping their new coworker get acquainted with their role. Meanwhile, IT needs to know who they need to create new accounts for or how many laptops they need to order.
Streamline communication with a simple Zap that sends an email or a team channel notification whenever new employees are about to start. That way, everyone knows to prepare the welcome wagon.
Post new employees added in BambooHR to a Slack channel
Your company is growing! What better way to welcome new hires than posting in Slack? With this easy-to-use integration, you can post details about your new employees added in BambooHR as Slack channel messages. This work will be automated for you as soon as you turn on this integration.
Alert your team about new hires with this integration. Whenever a new employee is created in BambooHR, Email by Zapier will automatically send an outbound email.
Alert your team about new hires with this integration. Whenever a new employee is created in BambooHR, this Zap will automatically send a message to a specific Microsoft Teams channel.
Often, employees spend the first few days of a new job trying to get access to various apps and testing logins before they can even get acquainted with their new role.
You can cut down some of this technical admin work by giving new colleagues automatic access to certain apps on their first day. These Zaps are a good place to start.
Invite new employees in BambooHR to join your Zapier team account
Automate onboarding tasks, including joining the Zapier team account, to help your teammate quickly get up to speed. Use this Zap to automatically send a Zapier team account invite when new employees are created in BambooHR.
Is your team growing rapidly? You may be spending a lot of time keeping track of new hires, but with this integration, you'll be free to work on other tasks. Create new employees in BambooHR to generate new users in Okta as well. Keep track of employees automatically in both programs, and keep your mind free for more important things.
Cross one task off your to-do list with this integration. Here's how it works: Someone enters a new hire's name and email as a new row in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. We use this information to add them as a user on LastPass. There, we've simplified onboarding for you!
You can create a multi-step Zap—available on our paid plans—so your workflows can perform multiple tasks at once. For example, instead of using separate Zaps to grant access to various apps, you can do it all in one Zap.
Send onboarding information
Every new employee comes with paperwork they need to receive, from employment agreements and benefits information to welcome documents and org charts.
Make sure the first priority—signing that employment agreement—is taken care of quickly. Try these Zaps, which will send signature requests to new employees:
Create a DocuSign signature request from new Microsoft Excel rows
This integration makes it simple to send signature requests in bulk. Whenever there's a new row in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, this Zap will automatically send a request for a DocuSign signature.
Request signatures in Dropbox Sign from your employees, clients and more just by adding their contact info to a new Google Sheets row. This integration will handle the rest, automatically sending your request to the recipient of your choice.
Manage your signature requests from your inbox with this integration. This Zap will automatically create Dropbox Sign signature requests from Gmail emails with a specific label.
Manage signature requests from your inbox with this integration. Whenever you add a specific label to an email in your Gmail inbox, this Zap will automatically create a DocuSign signature request.
Do you send welcome documents to new employees on their first day? Or maybe you want to set them up with their first official goals (like completing onboarding tasks)? You can automatically create these too. For example, if you use Google Doc templates for onboarding material, Zapier can automatically create new docs from a template. Or you can create new goals in Small Improvements so new employees can find their footing quickly.
Copy data from new Google Sheets rows to a Google Doc template
This integration will turn the details from each new row in your Google Sheets spreadsheet into a perfectly-formatted Google doc, based on a specified template. Skip the hassle of copy-and-paste and get on with your work!
It is a tedious process to sort and manage your company's files. You want to be able to access them from the right place, at the right time. Make this a reality with this Zap, which can automatically copy new Google Drive files right into your Zoho People's File Cabinet. Those files will then be accessible anywhere, anytime.
Managing new employee onboarding can be challenging, especially when aligning individual goals with company objectives. This Zap automates the process by creating a new goal in Small Improvements whenever a new employee is added in BambooHR. Streamline your onboarding process and ensure every new team member starts with clear, actionable goals from day one.
If your company uses a learning platform like GoTo Training for employee onboarding instead, you can automatically assign lessons for new colleagues to complete their onboarding cycle.
Create GoTo Training registrants from new employees in BambooHR
You can ensure you're assigning training to new employees with this integration. Whenever you create a new employee in BambooHR, Zapier will automatically create a registrant in GoTo Training.
Learning new systems is hard. If learners do not feel comfortable in those systems, they will not adopt them. Once a new employee gets set up in BambooHR, wouldn't it be great if they were delivered a lesson that walked them through the software? With this integration, once an employee is created in BambooHR they will be delivered a new Seismic Learning lesson automatically.
The path is the foundational block of learning in Seismic Learning. It is how we sequence learning across roles. With this Zap, a user can be invited to a channel upon a new path being assigned. This way your team can immediately and continuously iterate on their learning.
First impressions matter for new employees. While it can be nearly impossible to meet every new colleague, depending on the size of your company, you can roll out the welcome committee with a little automation.
Nothing says "warm and inviting" like a nice GIF on your first day. Or a fun email. You can automatically send those notifications when a new employee joins your team. Don't have time to write personalized messages? You could even use AI tools like ChatGPT to do it for you.
Start a GIPHY GIF party for new Slack team members
Welcome new members onto the team with a bit of fun! Once this automation is active, it will trigger with each new user you add to Slack, automatically searching for a "welcome" GIF on GIPHY and posting it to #general so they can start working with a bang!
Welcome new members onto the team with a bit of fun! This Zap will automatically search for a "welcome" GIF on GIPHY and post it in a Microsoft Teams channel.
Start welcoming new employees the moment they're created in BambooHR so they know what to expect on their first day. With this Zap, you can automatically send a Gmail email to new employees. That way, you can easily send important information for their new role and a welcome greeting with any extra steps.
Streamline your onboarding process by automatically sending personalized welcome emails to new employees. When a new employee starts in BambooHR, this Zap triggers ChatGPT to craft a tailored welcome message and then sends it via Gmail. This automation ensures every new hire receives a thoughtful, AI-generated email, enhancing their first day experience without additional effort.
If welcome meetings are part of your company's employee onboarding experience, you can automatically invite new coworkers to a welcome call from a spreadsheet. Or set up talking points for your entire team to welcome them:
Generate Google Calendar events from new Google Sheets rows
Ever need to create calendar events in bulk? Or let others easily add calendar events for you? Or perhaps you just find it easier to manage your calendar in a spreadsheet. If so, this integration makes it easy: it will create new Google Calendar events straight from new rows whenever they're added to a Google Sheet, so you don't have to worry about adding them twice.
When you have event info in you database, you'll want the details added to your calendar. This integration helps by automatically creating a Microsoft Outlook event with details from a new record in a specific Airtable view. It's never been easier to update events on your calendar from you database.
Set up this integration to keep your schedule up to date, effortlessly. As soon as you add an item to a specified Notion database, this Zap will automatically create a detailed event in your Google Calendar, making sure that you’re always on top of your projects and workflows.
Get a quick overview of new candidates as they are added to your recruitment channel. Anytime a new candidate is added to Workable, this integration adds new 1:1 talking points for your entire team to review.
There are a number of loose ends you need to tie up when an employee leaves the company, from revoking app access to scheduling exit interviews and collecting feedback. Here's how automation can keep you organized.
Send alerts
Just like in onboarding, multiple teams are involved in offboarding an employee—and you typically have about two weeks to get it done.
Since HR is usually the first team to know, you can set up a Zap to help streamline communication for the teams involved in the offboarding process.
For example, if you use a form (or a ticketing system) to submit offboarding requests, you can make sure the right teams are notified in an email or team chat message. These Zaps can help you get started:
Create messages in Microsoft Teams from new Google Forms responses
Once you've done all the work of building your forms and attracting responses, there's still the added workload of responding to all that feedback. This integration lightens that burden by automatically transmitting a new Microsoft Teams message as soon as a new response row is added to the bottom of a Google Forms spreadsheet. Stay responsive and support your teams simply and efficiently.
The best way to keep your team in the loop is to bring updates where they spend most time. Once active, this integration will automatically post messages to Slack whenever you get a new response on Typeform. Just choose what information you want to post from the response during setup, and we'll take care of the rest!
Zendesk makes it simple for your teams to track and respond to help desk tickets. If you want to respond ASAP, try this Zap, which automatically posts all new Zendesk tickets to Slack via a custom message.
Get notified for Jira Service Management requests without leaving Slack. This integration sends you a channel or directed message whenever a customer raises a new request.
While it may feel like auto-pilot to offboard an employee, every once in a while you'll forget to complete even the most routine tasks.
To make sure you (and everyone else) stays on top of offboarding tasks, you can use Zapier to automatically send employee offboarding checklists to the right team members.
For example, you can make sure your ticketing process includes a checklist of IT offboarding tasks each time an onboarding-specific request comes in. When configuring your action—the event your Zap performs once it's triggered—just remember to include a list of all the tasks you need to accomplish.
Create Jira Service Management requests from new Google Forms responses
Are you stuck with manually copying customer responses from Google Forms to Jira Service Management? This automation turns every new form customers fill out into a Jira Service Management request.
If you're collecting data via form software like Typeform, often you want to create follow-up items. This Typeform-Trello integration automatically creates new Trello cards when someone completes your Typeform form.
Need to automate creating Zendesk tickets from a form? This Zapier integration will automatically create Zendesk tickets when people submit an Airtable form.
Exit interviews and surveys are necessary feedback channels so your company can improve the way it operates. Once an employee is gone, you lose the chance to capture that helpful feedback.
If you use exit surveys, you can automatically send those out to departing employees. For example, if you use a spreadsheet to track departures, you can send the survey link in an email or a direct message in your team chat:
Send Gmail messages for new Airtable records in views
This integration allows you to set up an automation workflow that sends out a direct message in Slack whenever a new record in Airtable is added to a specific view of your choosing. You will need to set up a custom view that only displays records that meet the criteria of your condition.
If you use Google Sheets to collect and share data, you'll want to keep your team notified when new work comes in. With this Zap in place, every time a row is updated in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, Zapier will automatically send a custom notification in Slack.
Keep your stakeholders up to date about the latest developments in your project workflows, without having to slow down for manual messaging. This integration automatically triggers a custom email in your Outlook account to a specified recipient, as soon as you add an item to a database in Notion.
And once someone fills out the exit survey, you can collect that information in one spot, too. You could even use AI to help you analyze those surveys for positive or negative ratings, which can come in handy if you're analyzing responses at scale or need to create an overall report.
Collect new Typeform responses as rows on Google Sheets
Forms are great at capturing user information, but exporting their results takes time. Zapier can help you analyze those entries in a spreadsheet automatically with this integration. Once you set it up, it will catch every new entry you receive on a Typeform, saving the results to a new row on Google Sheets so you don't have to do it yourself.
Automate the process of categorizing and archiving responses from Typeform. With ChatGPT's text classification, each entry can be swiftly categorized into predefined segments or topics. These classified entries are then systematically stored in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, ensuring organized data storage and easy access for future analysis.
Google Forms, OpenAI (GPT-4, DALL-E, Whisper), Notion
Google Forms + OpenAI (GPT-4, DALL-E, Whisper) + Notion
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Want your own AI writing coach to give feedback on your writing? Create a simple form in Google Forms with copy and get OpenAI to generate feedback, then send the results to Notion.
Excel spreadsheets make a great repository for all those survey responses, and with this integration in place, you won't need to worry about any manual exporting. Simply set up this Zapier automation and it will trigger automatically whenever a new response is received on SurveyMonkey, adding every item to a new row on Excel for safekeeping and processing.
Want to schedule the exit interview as well? You can include that in your form so you can collect feedback and take care of scheduling at the same time.
Create Google Calendar events from new Google Forms submissions
Forms are a great way to capture information, including scheduling meetings and other kinds of events. Let this integration handle those tasks for you, automatically converting a new Google Forms response into an event directly on your Google Calendar. Get step-by-step directions in
Saying hello (and goodbye) is easy with automation
Onboarding and offboarding employees can be a time-consuming process that you want to get right from an IT perspective. Automation with Zapier can help you save time, ensure your coworkers have access to the tools they need, and revoke access when they leave.
