Culture-First Onboarding: Engage New Hires in Their First Week

Coming soon to a theater near you: How to Lose a New Hire in 7 Days. Starring Slow and Sink-or-Swim Onboarding, and brought to you by Most Businesses!

Great onboarding helps new hires feel connected, confident, and culturally plugged in from day one, but if they’re not feeling that way by the end of their first week, you’ve got a problem.

BambooHR research shows that 44% of new hires regret accepting a job within their first week—often because their early experiences don’t match up with what they were promised or because the organization simply fails to inspire engagement from the start.

Onboarding isn’t just about paperwork and passwords. It’s a crucial opportunity to show new hires they belong at your organization and that what you’ve got to offer is what they signed up for.

Many onboarding programs focus more on logistics than connection and alignment. New hires may finish their first week knowing how to request PTO but not who to go to for advice, support, mentorship, or even just a bit of camaraderie.

For HR professionals and other leaders, this is a huge missed opportunity. As BambooHR CEO Brad Rencher shared recently in Entrepreneur, “Human connection has quietly been at the forefront of any good leader’s playbook, despite it being so difficult to prescribe.”

Culture isn’t something employees just have to learn—it’s something you help them feel. And that impression is built (or broken) in the earliest moments at a job.

Here’s how to make the first week an intentional, people-first experience that helps every new hire feel plugged into company culture whether they’re in the office, remote, or halfway around the world.

Read on to learn:

• How to structure a culture-first schedule for the first week
• The value of a “people to meet” list for quick cultural connection
• Ways to adapt onboarding for remote and global teams
• How to help managers lead the cultural charge
• Tools and metrics to track what’s working—and what’s not

Make week one human, not just helpful

The first week of onboarding often revolves around compliance checklists, training modules, and HR paperwork. Those are necessary, but with pre-boarding, a lot of that can be checked off before their first day, and these tasks are not what makes new hires feel welcome.

To truly connect people to culture, HR teams need to design human-centered first weeks, where every meeting and message reinforces that people define the organization, not processes.

Set an agenda for every new hire’s first week

A thoughtfully designed Week 1 schedule is one of the simplest, most effective tools for making new hires feel grounded and supported.

Here’s what it can include:

• A daily overview of key meetings, training sessions, and goals
• A “people to meet” list including 3–5 individuals who strongly exemplify your culture and can help the new hire navigate their first days
• Culture-building moments, such as team lunches, coffee chats, or cross-functional introductions

Set culture cues with a “people to meet” list

Instead of hoping new hires make organic connections with others across your organization, HR can make that happen intentionally with a people-to-meet list. This is a list of folks who’ve been with the company for a while, live locally, or embody the culture and values in inspiring ways.

A good people-to-meet list includes:

• A culture champion: Embodies company values day-to-day
• A long-tenured employee: Trusted voice who can share inside stories or traditions
• A peer in a similar role or location: Someone to connect with in-person
• A cross-department contact: Encourages collaboration and break silos early
• An executive leader or senior manager: Encourages skip-level visibility and inclusion
• A dedicated peer mentor or onboarding buddy: Signals an interest in their long-term growth and development

For remote or international employees, these meetings can happen virtually. What matters most is the personal connection and the intention. HR might even consider providing employees with ice-breaker questions or other workplace-appropriate get-to-know-you activities to help facilitate conversation during these meetings.

HR’s role: Provide structure, empower and equip managers

It is not solely HR’s responsibility to make every new-hire experience a culture win. It should be clear to your people leaders that these initiatives are HR-supported but manager-owned. HR may set up meetings, if that’s what works for your organization, or even provide comprehensive onboarding roadmaps or toolkits for managers, but managers own the new hire’s experience integrating into the company culture.

HR provides the framework (templates, examples, expectations), while managers customize it for each role. This collaborative approach ensures consistency across teams without losing authenticity.

When managers actively participate in designing their new report’s first week, they’re signaling something powerful: “You matter, and I’ve prepared for your arrival.”

An onboarding philosophy that drives results

Prioritizing the human over process during onboarding is the philosophy that guided people operations manager, Ben Parkes, in the design of Bamboo Beginnings, BambooHR’s internal new-hire program.

“Onboarding is not just about walking people through systems or policies,” says Ben. “It’s about connecting them to our values, our mission, and the people who make BambooHR what it is. We want them to understand how their work matters and to feel part of something meaningful right from the start.”

In addition to scoring 4.85/5 for being “worth my time” among new hires at BambooHR, Bamboo Beginnings has improved company-wide retention by roughly 3% in the first 15 months of the program, implemented in July 2024. It’s a philosophy that drives results.

Build practices that work for remote and global teams

Today’s workplaces are more distributed than ever, and that makes culture-focused onboarding more complex. Remote employees can’t casually absorb culture from hallway chats or after-work events. They need intentional, inclusive practices that help them experience the true culture of your organization across the digital divide.

Virtual connections that last

Here are a few scalable, remote-friendly culture programs HR teams can implement for their teams.

Speed networking

Host a monthly, 45-minute virtual event where employees rotate through short, one-on-one conversations with random colleagues across departments.

The benefits:

• Builds cross-team awareness
• Helps remote employees form natural relationships
• Creates unexpected culture champions across departments

One HR leader in the HR Heroes Slack community (facilitated by BambooHR) shared that attendance at their speed-networking Zoom events steadily grew each month since they were first introduced, proving that if you create a great program with authenticity, employees will participate and find the benefit.

Virtual welcome lunches

Send new hires a lunch delivery credit, and host a casual virtual meet-and-greet with their team. Provide prompts like, “What’s one thing you’re looking forward to learning here?” or “Why did you order what you ordered?”

Buddy systems

Pair every new hire with a “Week 1 Buddy.” This person answers informal questions, introduces them to coworkers, and models everyday culture in action.

Digital culture books and scavenger hunts

Some companies create an online “Culture Book” filled with team stories, photos, and inside jokes. Others gamify learning with scavenger hunts: “Find the Slack channel for dog lovers” or “Ask someone about our first office tradition.” These interactive activities make culture tangible, not theoretical.

Culture starts before the first login

The foundation of a great first week is built well before the first day. It starts the moment a new hire accepts the offer.

Pre-boarding activities help you get all—or most—of the logistics and paperwork out of the way before the first day so you can be more strategic about how you use your new hires’ time during their first week.

Pre-boarding isn’t all e-signatures though, and your culture-first onboarding initiatives can begin immediately too: all the thoughtful, human touches that make someone feel part of the team before they’ve even logged in.

Pre-boarding practices that make a difference

Here are a few low-lift, but high impact ways to begin integrating new hires into the company culture:

• Send a welcome email from their manager. Include what to expect during Week 1 and a warm message about why the team is excited to have them.
• Ship company swag or a handwritten card. These small gestures remind new hires they’re already part of something with momentum and a thoughtful, intentional culture of belonging.
• Share their Week 1 schedule early. This helps calm first-day nerves and shows organization and care.
• Include a digital “culture kit.” Add a welcome video, company values, team bios, and any traditions or celebrations.
• Prepare their “people to meet” list with contact info and other pertinent information, so introductions can start early.

When it comes to managing onboarding at BambooHR, Ben Parkes, says the goal is to “help people feel a genuine sense of belonging and excitement about joining BambooHR,” and this impression can begin to take form well before the first day.

Help managers lead the cultural charge

Culture isn’t owned by HR, it’s lived by the people leaders at your company, who should each be standard-bearers of the organization’s values.
Managers are the most direct link between company values and employee experience. They interact with the new hire daily, answer their questions, and interpret company norms in real time as the new hire integrates with the way work is done in a new environment.

When managers demonstrate curiosity, openness, empathy, or other qualities the organization values, new hires take cues from that behavior. Culture becomes contagious when managers model it—not just describe it.

And to help create a consistent experience across departments, HR can equip managers with the resources they need to be well-informed and culture-oriented.

Give managers the tools to lead well

• Provide welcome email templates for them to customize as needed.
• Share reminder tips and best practices for conducting effective one-on-ones.
• Outline clear onboarding milestones for at least the first 4 weeks.
• Share how HR measures onboarding success, and set expectations for their role in achieving companywide retention goals.
• Reinforce company culture messaging and alignment.

Track what’s working and what isn’t

While it’s almost impossible to know exactly what a new hire tells their loved ones about your company after their first day, post-onboarding surveys are invaluable for helping you measure your program’s success.

You can gather that sort of open-ended feedback by holding post-onboarding debriefs with your new hires, but you can be even more strategic by using employee surveys that provide data points you can easily track and report on.

When to issue post-onboarding surveys

Immediately after a new hire has completed a structured onboarding program is the best time to collect feedback about the experience. But you might consider sending another after their first 30 days, as 70% of new hires have decided if a job is the right fit for them after their first month, and it marks an important milestone in your new employees’ integration with your organization.

Managers may have one-on-one cadences with their new hires that match this survey schedule, but performance conversations are just one of the cultural touchpoints at your disposal when integrating new hires.

Coming from HR, post-onboarding surveys help establish a culture of feedback that keeps the conversation with your employees going long after their first week. And as you compare responses across departments and locations, you can ensure company culture feels consistent to employees across the org and across the globe.

Culture-first onboarding at a glance