Dry, recycled air is the first thing you notice when you’re being processed into a new corporate organism. It smells of ozone, industrial carpet cleaner, and the faint, lingering desperation of a hundred previous occupants who also sat at this exact desk, staring at the same ‘Access Denied’ screen. I’m currently sitting in a chair that hasn’t been adjusted since 2008, waiting for an IT specialist named Gary who supposedly went to lunch 58 minutes ago. My eyes are glazing over. There is a stack of 18 forms on my left-physical paper, in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-four-that require me to attest that I have read a handbook that doesn’t actually exist on the company intranet yet.
I’m a firm believer that the first week of a job should be a baptism by fire in the best possible way-a whirlwind of culture, faces, and purpose. Instead, most of us get a fever dream of bureaucracy. We are treated like a laptop that needs to be ‘provisioned’ rather than a human being who needs to be integrated. I recently had a bit of a crisis during a major presentation where I developed a violent case of the hiccups right as I was explaining the ‘human-centric’ approach to our new project. It was humiliating, yes, but it was also the most human moment of the entire month. People laughed. They offered water. We connected. Onboarding, by contrast, feels like a deliberate attempt to surgically remove that humanity.
The Categorical Failure of Imagination
Take my friend Finley C.-P., for example. Finley is an industrial hygienist, a person whose entire career is dedicated to measuring the toxicity of environments. She knows more about particulate matter and chemical vapor than anyone I’ve ever met. When she started her latest role at a massive manufacturing firm, she spent 48 hours-literally two full work days-sitting in a windowless room watching grainy compliance videos. One of those videos was a tutorial on how to safely use a ladder, despite the fact that her job is entirely desk-based. She sat there, a woman who has consulted on $88 million remediation projects, being told not to wear open-toed shoes on a rung. It was a categorical failure of imagination.
We treat the new hire as a liability to be mitigated. We focus on the W-4s, the NDAs, the direct deposit authorizations, and the 118-page employee manual that lists ‘no popcorn in the microwave’ as a Tier 1 infraction. We do this because it’s easy to track. You can check a box on a PDF. You can’t easily ‘check a box’ on whether a new hire feels like they belong. But that feeling of belonging is exactly what determines if that person is still going to be at their desk 38 weeks from now. When you spend Day 1 reading about the company’s history of fiscal responsibility instead of meeting the person you’ll be collaborating with on your first project, you’re being told that you are a bureaucratic asset. You are a gear. You are not a person.
Unique Vision
Frozen Burrito
There is a specific kind of cognitive dissonance that happens when you’re hired for your ‘unique vision’ and then immediately told to follow a standardized checklist that hasn’t been updated since the Bush administration. It’s like being invited to a five-star dinner and being handed a frozen burrito upon arrival. The contrast kills the appetite. I’ve seen 78% of new hires (this is a number I just made up to sound authoritative, though it feels spiritually accurate) lose their ‘Day One Spark’ by noon on Day Three. That spark is the most valuable resource a company has. It’s the energy that drives innovation. And we smother it with 28 different digital signatures.
Flipping the Script: Community Over Checkboxes
I’ll admit, I’ve been part of the problem. I once managed a team where I forgot a new hire was starting because I was so bogged down in a 108-page report. When they arrived, I just pointed them toward a stack of manuals and said, ‘Let me know if you have questions.’ I’m still embarrassed by that. It was a mistake born of the same systemic rot I’m criticizing now. We value the output over the person, even before the person has a chance to produce any output.
What if we flipped it? What if the first week was entirely about the ‘social and intellectual fabric’ of the company? What if, instead of Gary from IT being your only point of contact, you were swept into a project meeting where your opinion was actually asked for? Or better yet, what if the team-building started immediately? Imagine if, instead of a dry PowerPoint about the ‘Strategic Pillars of 2028,’ the entire department took the afternoon off for a segway tour koeln or a walk through the local park. It sounds trivial, but those are the moments where the real onboarding happens. You learn who has a weird sense of humor, who is a natural leader, and who is actually willing to help you when you’re struggling with the controls of a motorized vehicle. You build a memory that isn’t tied to a cubicle.
The Paperwork Chronology
Day 1: Paperwork
W-4s, NDAs, Manuals
Day 3: Spark Dies
Cognitive Dissonance Peak
The Hiccups
Real human connection moment
The Cost of Filing vs. Welcoming
Integration Success Rate vs. Turnover
158 Days Until Exit
Onboarding is a ghost ship. It’s an empty vessel that we fill with the heavy stones of paperwork until it sinks. It is a hollow shell of what a welcome should be. It is a missed opportunity that costs companies thousands of dollars in early turnover. If you aren’t integrating the soul of the person into the soul of the team, you aren’t onboarding; you’re just filing.
Finley C.-P. eventually quit that job after 158 days. She told me the ladder video was the moment she knew it wouldn’t work. It wasn’t just the boredom; it was the realization that the company didn’t actually know who she was. They didn’t need Finley, the expert industrial hygienist. They needed ‘Employee #7341468.’ When she left, they probably sent her an exit survey that was just as dry and automated as her entrance forms.
I keep thinking about those hiccups. They were loud, disruptive, and entirely unplanned. They broke the professional veneer of my presentation. But in that moment, everyone in the room saw me. Not the title, not the slides, but the person who couldn’t stop making a rhythmic clicking sound in their throat. We need more of that in the first week. We need the unplanned, the messy, and the social. We need to stop provisioning and start welcoming.
HUMANS > DATA
The Radical Act of Deferral
[We are people first, employees second, and data points never.]
If you’re a manager reading this, I want you to do something radical next Monday. If you have a new hire, take their paperwork and put it in a drawer. Tell them it can wait until Thursday. Spend the morning talking about why you love the work. Spend the afternoon taking them somewhere that has nothing to do with the office. Show them that they joined a group of humans, not a collection of workstations. Maybe that means a long lunch, or maybe it means something more active, but it must be something real.
The Purpose of Onboarding (Flipped Focus)
Belonging
Not a Gear
Challenge
Real Problems
Celebration
Ignite the Employee
We’ve become so obsessed with the ‘process’ that we’ve forgotten the purpose. The purpose of onboarding is to make someone feel like they made the right choice. No one has ever filled out an I-9 form and thought, ‘Yes, this is exactly where I belong.’ They think that when they’re laughing with a colleague or when they’re given a problem that actually challenges their brain.
The Final Echo
I’m still waiting for Gary. It’s been 78 minutes now. I’ve read the company history PDF for the third time, and I’ve discovered that the founder once won a local prize for his prize-winning marigolds in 1968. That’s a lovely fact, but it doesn’t help me understand how to do my job, nor does it make me feel like I’m part of the future of this firm. It just makes me wonder if I should have stayed in bed.
A poor onboarding experience is a signal. It’s a loud, clear broadcast that says, ‘We don’t have our act together, and we don’t really care that you’re here.’ It kills enthusiasm on Day One. It turns a ‘dream job’ into a ‘paycheck’ before the first coffee break. We can do better. We have to do better. Because somewhere out there, there’s another Finley C.-P. sitting in a windowless room, watching a video about ladders, and wondering if she should just walk out the door right now.
What would happen if we treated the first week as a celebration instead of a chore? What if the goal wasn’t to ‘complete’ the onboarding, but to ignite the employee? We might find that people stay longer. We might find that they work harder. We might even find that we enjoy our own jobs a little more when we’re not acting as unpaid administrative assistants for a broken HR system.
I think I hear Gary’s footsteps in the hall. Or maybe it’s just the phantom sound of another 48-page document being printed somewhere in the distance. Either way, the fluorescent lights are still humming, and I’m still just a name on a badge that hasn’t been printed yet.
The Ultimate Question
Is your company a place where people come to live, or just a place where they come to be processed?
CHOOSE WELCOME