4 Guru Automations That Can Help You Efficiently Onboard Employees

We have some must-see templates and Workato automations for people who want to up their new hire onboarding game.
Table of Contents

Your new hire’s onboarding experience plays an outsized role in their satisfaction at work.

According to research by Gallup, new hires who say they’ve had an exceptional onboarding experience are 2.6 times more likely to be extremely satisfied with their jobs. This satisfaction translates to a variety of business benefits, from improvements in employee retention to higher productivity.

While there are a variety of ways to improve the onboarding experiences of your employees, you can adopt several impactful and sustainable tactics by leveraging automations with Guru and Workato, the leader in integration-led automation.

We’ll give you an idea of how these onboarding automations can work by breaking down a few examples!

1. Automatically pre-populate "life story" bio Cards for new employees

A life story bio Card delivers all kinds of benefits.

It enables distributed teams to get to know new hires before meeting them on calls. It also initiates friendly conversations between new hires and colleagues on the things they have in common. And on top of everything else, it allows new hires to become acquainted with Guru and learn how to capture information in their Cards.

To help a new hire complete their life story Card quickly, you can build a Guru automation that takes their information in your HRIS and uses it to pre-populate your life story bio Card template.

For example, in the screenshot below (which captures part of Guru’s very own life story bio Card), you can pre-populate fields like name, role, hometown, home-now, Twitter, and Linkedin.

Once it’s prepopulated, you can share the Card with the new hire via your business communications platform, whether that’s Slack or MS Teams. This gives the new team member an easy means of accessing the Card, and since it’s prepopulated, they can focus on personalizing their fun facts so that everyone can start getting to know them better!

2. Answer any lingering questions

Once a new hire has worked at your company for a certain length of time, say a week, they still likely have some questions about company policies and operations.

You can proactively answer them by implementing the following HR automation: Once the new hire has worked at your company for a week, you can instantly share a Guru Card via your business comms platform that walks them through the answers to questions they might still have.

Here are some items you can include in this week one follow-up Card:

  • Reminder of payroll dates
  • A list of productivity programs used in your workplace
  • Info on your office’s dog policy
  • Recommendations on where to grab lunch when visiting HQ
  • Tips on email signature formatting

Within the Card, you can also let new hires know that they can leave a comment if they have any additional questions. This will help you create an FAQ for new people that’s tailored to the things they actually need to know.

It’s worth noting that you and your team can continually update this Card as you get a better handle on the knowledge gaps that exist after the new hire’s first week (or whenever you’d like to deliver the Card).

3. Assign new hires with certain Cards to read

As your new hires get onboarded, they’ll need to learn various items at specific points in time.

For example, they’ll likely need to understand how your organization uses your business communications platform as soon as they join, but they can afford to learn how to use more niche apps once they’re a few weeks in.

To ensure that your new hires learn specific information at the appropriate points in time, you can automatically assign them Cards to read with an onboarding project, via your project management platform. The project can include specific Guru collections, boards, and Cards to read, in a specific timeline, so that they can get oriented at their own speed.

To help you ideate and put together these Guru Cards, here are a few templates worth checking out:

How to use Slack: This customizable Card helps your new hires learn the basics of setting and up and using the business communications platform. It can also cover more specific topics, like employee etiquette on the platform.

30-60-90 day plan: This Card allows the new hire and their hiring manager to align on key onboarding activities. It also gives the new hire a clear understanding of what they need to focus on at a given point in time.

Accessing and using Asana: How, exactly, does your organization use the project management platform? You can prevent any confusion and provide clear guidance on using it by leveraging this customizable Card.

4. Educate new hires on next steps once they complete their first Card

There are features within Guru that can help new team members create highly-visible and widely-useful Cards, but they need to be taught how your organization deploys these features.

You can help educate them on what goes into making their Cards successful from the get-go by implementing the following automation: Once they publish their first Card, they receive a message via your business communications platform with a how-to Card that tells them about more advanced features. This includes activities like adding tags, putting the Card on a board, and utilizing announcements.

Your new hire’s onboarding experience plays an outsized role in their satisfaction at work.

According to research by Gallup, new hires who say they’ve had an exceptional onboarding experience are 2.6 times more likely to be extremely satisfied with their jobs. This satisfaction translates to a variety of business benefits, from improvements in employee retention to higher productivity.

While there are a variety of ways to improve the onboarding experiences of your employees, you can adopt several impactful and sustainable tactics by leveraging automations with Guru and Workato, the leader in integration-led automation.

We’ll give you an idea of how these onboarding automations can work by breaking down a few examples!

1. Automatically pre-populate "life story" bio Cards for new employees

A life story bio Card delivers all kinds of benefits.

It enables distributed teams to get to know new hires before meeting them on calls. It also initiates friendly conversations between new hires and colleagues on the things they have in common. And on top of everything else, it allows new hires to become acquainted with Guru and learn how to capture information in their Cards.

To help a new hire complete their life story Card quickly, you can build a Guru automation that takes their information in your HRIS and uses it to pre-populate your life story bio Card template.

For example, in the screenshot below (which captures part of Guru’s very own life story bio Card), you can pre-populate fields like name, role, hometown, home-now, Twitter, and Linkedin.

Once it’s prepopulated, you can share the Card with the new hire via your business communications platform, whether that’s Slack or MS Teams. This gives the new team member an easy means of accessing the Card, and since it’s prepopulated, they can focus on personalizing their fun facts so that everyone can start getting to know them better!

2. Answer any lingering questions

Once a new hire has worked at your company for a certain length of time, say a week, they still likely have some questions about company policies and operations.

You can proactively answer them by implementing the following HR automation: Once the new hire has worked at your company for a week, you can instantly share a Guru Card via your business comms platform that walks them through the answers to questions they might still have.

Here are some items you can include in this week one follow-up Card:

  • Reminder of payroll dates
  • A list of productivity programs used in your workplace
  • Info on your office’s dog policy
  • Recommendations on where to grab lunch when visiting HQ
  • Tips on email signature formatting

Within the Card, you can also let new hires know that they can leave a comment if they have any additional questions. This will help you create an FAQ for new people that’s tailored to the things they actually need to know.

It’s worth noting that you and your team can continually update this Card as you get a better handle on the knowledge gaps that exist after the new hire’s first week (or whenever you’d like to deliver the Card).

3. Assign new hires with certain Cards to read

As your new hires get onboarded, they’ll need to learn various items at specific points in time.

For example, they’ll likely need to understand how your organization uses your business communications platform as soon as they join, but they can afford to learn how to use more niche apps once they’re a few weeks in.

To ensure that your new hires learn specific information at the appropriate points in time, you can automatically assign them Cards to read with an onboarding project, via your project management platform. The project can include specific Guru collections, boards, and Cards to read, in a specific timeline, so that they can get oriented at their own speed.

To help you ideate and put together these Guru Cards, here are a few templates worth checking out:

How to use Slack: This customizable Card helps your new hires learn the basics of setting and up and using the business communications platform. It can also cover more specific topics, like employee etiquette on the platform.

30-60-90 day plan: This Card allows the new hire and their hiring manager to align on key onboarding activities. It also gives the new hire a clear understanding of what they need to focus on at a given point in time.

Accessing and using Asana: How, exactly, does your organization use the project management platform? You can prevent any confusion and provide clear guidance on using it by leveraging this customizable Card.

4. Educate new hires on next steps once they complete their first Card

There are features within Guru that can help new team members create highly-visible and widely-useful Cards, but they need to be taught how your organization deploys these features.

You can help educate them on what goes into making their Cards successful from the get-go by implementing the following automation: Once they publish their first Card, they receive a message via your business communications platform with a how-to Card that tells them about more advanced features. This includes activities like adding tags, putting the Card on a board, and utilizing announcements.

Experience the power of the Guru platform firsthand – take our interactive product tour
Take a tour