Blog › Workplace & Onboarding
Your First Week at a New Job
Shouldn’t Be a Scavenger Hunt
Starting a new role is exciting. The first week of passwords, intranet tabs, and “just ask someone” isn't. Here's what actually eats your first five days. And what to do about it.
The first week nobody talks about
The job was exciting in the interview. The offer letter was exciting. The first morning was exciting too. Coffee in hand, fresh notebook, genuine enthusiasm.
And then IT handed over a laptop with a temporary password that expires in four hours, pointed at a SharePoint site last updated in 2019, and told you to “just ask around” if you needed anything.
Within 48 hours, the average new starter has 23 open browser tabs, three systems they can't log into, and a creeping suspicion that nobody expected them to show up.
This isn't unusual. It's the norm. And it costs organisations more than they realise.
What a bad first week actually costs
Not productivity. Trust.
The cost of a chaotic onboarding isn't just the hours lost to hunting for links. It's the first impression the organisation makes. New starters form their opinion of a workplace in the first two weeks. An organisation that can't get someone set up on day one signals, whether it means to or not, that this is how things work here.
Research from SHRM puts the cost of replacing an employee at between 50% and 200% of their annual salary. Poor onboarding is consistently cited as a top reason people leave within the first 90 days. The first week isn't just an admin task. It's a retention strategy.
Days lost
Average time a new starter spends on system access and setup before doing any actual work.
Day window
Most voluntary early exits happen within the first 90 days. Onboarding sets the tone for all of them.
Chance at Day 1
First impressions in a new workplace form fast and are hard to reverse. There's no second first day.
Why it keeps happening
It isn't IT’s fault. It's a systems problem.
Onboarding chaos isn't caused by bad intentions. It's caused by institutional knowledge living in people’s heads instead of documented systems. The person who knows which SharePoint folder the style guide is in has been there for six years. They've forgotten what it felt like not to know.
The intranet is a black hole
Most intranets are built by committee and maintained by nobody. Finding the HR leave form takes four clicks and a prayer.
Onboarding docs live in email
The welcome email with 12 attached PDFs was sent before the starter had working email. They missed it.
Every team does it differently
HR has a checklist. IT has a checklist. The hiring manager has a different checklist. None of them talk to each other.
Institutional knowledge is tribal
The stuff that actually matters (which system to use for what, who to call when it breaks) lives entirely in people’s heads.
The common thread: no single place that a new starter can go on day one and get sorted. The information exists. It's just scattered across systems, people, and folders that make sense to everyone who already works there.
What actually helps
Four approaches. Different effort levels. All better than a PDF.
There's no shortage of advice on onboarding. The challenge is that most of it is written for HR teams with a budget, a dedicated L&D function, and six months of lead time. Here are the approaches that actually exist in the wild, from simplest to most involved.
The buddy system
Assign an experienced colleague to the new starter for the first two weeks. No technology required. The buddy answers questions, shows where things live, and provides a human anchor in an unfamiliar environment. Low cost, high impact. Breaks down when the buddy is busy, travelling, or simply forgets.
A documented onboarding checklist
A single document (Word, Confluence, Notion, SharePoint) that lists every system, link, and access request a new starter needs. Maintained by someone. Updated when things change. Simple in theory; surprisingly rare in practice. Requires someone to own it and care about keeping it current.
A formal LMS onboarding module
Large organisations with L&D teams build induction courses in platforms like Articulate Rise, Totara, or their HR system. Completion is tracked, content is versioned, and compliance is demonstrated. High setup cost, high maintenance overhead, and still doesn't solve the “where is the actual link for the leave system” problem on day one.
A browser-based setup tool
The newest approach: an interactive checklist the new starter opens in their browser on day one. Pre-populated with common platform links (M365, Google Workspace), fields to paste their org-specific URLs, and a one-click export that builds labelled bookmark folders in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Brave. No installation, no login, no IT ticket. The new starter owns their setup from the moment they open it.
Why the browser approach works for Day 1
No installation. No IT ticket. No waiting.
The problem with most onboarding tools is that they require setup before the new starter can use them. An LMS account needs to be provisioned. A Confluence page needs to be found. A SharePoint site needs permissions.
A browser-based tool sidesteps all of that. It's a URL. Anyone with a laptop and a browser can open it. Nothing is installed. Nothing is sent to a server. The new starter pastes in their org-specific links, works through the checklist, and at the end exports a bookmark file that drops everything into labelled folders in their browser.
The appeal for managers and HR teams is that there's nothing to procure and nothing to maintain. The appeal for new starters is that they leave day one with a browser already organised around how their new job works.
Currently in beta. No sign-up. No data collected.
If the organisation hasn’t sorted this for you
What to do when you’re the one starting on Monday.
Not every workplace has an onboarding system. If you're the one starting a new role and nobody has handed you anything useful, here's what to do before day one:
Ask ahead of time
Email your hiring manager or HR contact the week before. Ask what platform you'll be using (M365 or Google Workspace), what your email address will be, and whether there's an induction checklist. Most will send something.
Build your own bookmark system
Create browser bookmark folders before you start: HR, IT, Team, Finance, Communications. As you find links in your first week, drop them in. You will build the map your organisation failed to provide.
Write down what you learn
Every system, every login, every “just ask Sarah for that”. Write it down. Not for posterity. For next-week-you, who will have forgotten half of it by Thursday.
Use a setup tool
A browser-based onboarding checklist takes five minutes and gives you a structured starting point regardless of what the organisation provides. Open it, work through it, export your bookmarks. Done.
If you run onboarding for others
The lowest-effort thing with the highest return.
If you're in HR, L&D, or a manager who onboards new starters, the highest-return thing you can do is create one canonical list of every link a new starter needs and share it before they arrive. Not a PDF. A live document with working links.
If that feels like too much, start smaller. Before your next new starter joins, spend 20 minutes writing down every system you use and every URL you visit in a normal week. Send that list. That alone puts you ahead of most organisations.
The new starter who feels set up on day one is more engaged, more productive, and significantly more likely to still be there at six months. The investment is a list of links. The return is a person who stays.
Starting a new role on Monday?
The Day 1 Digital Kit is a free interactive onboarding checklist. Pre-loaded M365 and Google Workspace links, fields for your org’s URLs, and one-click bookmark export.
No sign-up. No data collected. Runs in your browser. Free during beta.
Open the Day 1 Kit →