Edge8 Onboarding Cycle
Every new hire gets a kanban card that moves through six stages, from pre-boarding to a 180-day stay interview. The system chases the plan, sends the surveys, triggers the reviews, and flips the status. Humans hold the sessions and make one decision.
From pre-boarding to staying
Onboarding fails on follow-through: the plan nobody wrote, the check-in nobody scheduled, the probation decision that slipped. Here the calendar does the chasing, so every hire gets the same six stages whether anyone remembers or not.
A link or an upload, due one week before Day 1. If it is missing, the system emails the manager every day until it arrives, with the Talent Director copied.
Three one-hour sessions are already on the card as a checklist: HR handbook, Intro to Edge8, and a team overview with the manager.
The system sends the new hire a three-question pulse: do I have what I need, do I feel good about the culture, do I understand the policies.
Fifteen days before probation ends, the system emails the manager to record the decision; from five days out it repeats daily with the Talent Director copied. The manager makes the one decision the machine never will.
On the day probation ends, if the manager passed them, the status flips to full-time employee automatically and a congratulations email goes out, copying the manager and the recruiter.
The Talent Director gets the prompt to sit down for a stay interview. Onboarding ends with a conversation about staying, not paperwork.
How each stage works
Every person gets an onboarding plan, added by their manager as a link or an upload one week before they start. If it is not there, the manager gets an email every single day until Day 1, with the Talent Director copied. Polite, relentless, impossible to ignore.
Three orientation sessions are seeded onto the card before the hire walks in: an hour on the HR handbook, an hour of Intro to Edge8, and an hour with their manager on how the team works. The manager ticks them off; the card shows what actually happened.
A three-question survey arrives automatically: I have the information I need to do my job well, I feel good about the company culture, I understand the company policies. Five-point scale, two minutes, and the score lands on the card where the manager can see it.
Fifteen days before probation ends, the system emails the manager a link to record one required outcome: offer a full-time contract, extend probation by 30 days, or terminate. From five days out, a daily reminder repeats with the Talent Director copied until a decision is on file. An extension moves the probation end and the contract start date by 30 days and re-arms the review for the new window; a terminate decision notifies the Talent Director, and off-boarding is done by hand. Fifteen days of buffer means the Day 60 deadline never arrives unanswered.
On the day probation ends, if the manager passed them, the system flips their status to full-time employee and sends the congratulations email, copying the manager and the recruiter who found them (or the Talent Director when no recruiter is on file). Nobody files anything; the milestone just happens.
Six months in, the Talent Director gets the prompt for a stay interview: what keeps you here, what would make you leave, what should change, and the card closes. Most companies ask those questions in the exit interview, when the answers can no longer help.
The seven elements
Every workflow we document has the same anatomy: seven elements, each assigned to a human, a machine, or both. This is the Centaur Map from our workflow design method.
The calendar. Every stage keys off the start date and the probation end date, so nothing depends on someone remembering; the same daily pass creates a card for any recent hire who is missing one.
The onboarding plan from the manager, survey answers from the new hire, and the 45-day review decision.
Offer full time, extend probation 30 days, or terminate. A manager makes this call; the system only enforces its consequences.
The right email to the right person on the right day: plan nags and decision prompts to managers, the survey to the hire, congratulations to everyone involved, the stay-interview prompt to the Talent Director.
A live kanban card per hire with every milestone stamped, and a status flip to full-time the moment it is earned.
The Onboarding board in the team portal for managers, and the inbox for everyone the clock touches.
On-time milestones per hire: plan uploaded before Day 1, survey answered, review decided, promotion on schedule.
The standing rules
- Every person gets an onboarding plan, in place before Day 1, no exceptions
- The calendar triggers every stage; no step waits on memory
- The Day 45 decision is always human; the system only executes it
- Nobody is promoted, extended, or terminated by a machine
Why it works
- Daily nags make the plan deadline self-enforcing
- Day 8 catches problems while they are still cheap to fix
- Deciding at Day 45 removes the Day 60 scramble entirely
- One board shows a manager every report's onboarding at a glance