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After exploring the challenges surrounding onboarding, it is time to move to action. During the Septeo Future Insights HR 2025 round table “Onboarding: from honeymoon to reality”, four experts — Florian Delecroix (HR Manager at Viva Technology), Cécile Speich (Associate Director at Plotfox), Marion Cosar (CEO of L’École du Recrutement) and Emmanuel Ojzerowicz (HR & CSR Consultant at Jefferson International) — shared their practices for structuring a solid, coherent and engaging integration journey.
What is an effective onboarding process?
A truly effective onboarding process is designed as a comprehensive journey that simultaneously addresses several essential needs of the employee. It is this structured ability to cover the different dimensions of integration that distinguishes a simple “employee welcome” from a successful onboarding experience.
Here are the five objectives that onboarding must fulfil in order to be considered effective:
- Confirming the employer promise
Employees should find within the organisation what was presented to them during the recruitment process. Their first days are the moment when they assess the consistency between what was promised and what they actually experience.
- Reducing uncertainty and building trust
A crucial part of onboarding takes place even before the employee’s first day. It is essential to use this critical period to prepare the ground and secure the relationship.
- Limiting early departures
An effective onboarding process helps reduce the risk of employees terminating their contract during the probation period or even within their first year in the organisation.
- Supporting the ramp-up phase
New employees need to understand their role, priorities, key stakeholders and internal codes in order to take ownership of their position quickly.
- Helping employees envision their future in the company
Effective onboarding helps employees visualise their place within the organisation, their potential development and the way they contribute to the company’s broader mission. This is a sine qua non condition for long-term engagement.
To address these five key objectives, we have identified the six levers presented below.
Lever 1: Strengthening recruitment to ensure successful onboarding
Effective onboarding begins long before the first day: it is rooted in the quality of the recruitment process. As Marion Cosar explains:
“For onboarding to succeed, the recruitment process that precedes it must also be successful.”
She emphasises the need to make this stage more rigorous, particularly by adopting structured interviews, a method proven to be twice as reliable as interviews based purely on managerial intuition.
According to her:
“Managers need to be challenged on the selection criteria and what will make a candidate suitable or not, particularly regarding soft skills. Evaluating these scientifically and scoring them clearly enables much more confident decision-making.”
According to L’École du Recrutement, the three key principles of structured interviews are:
- defining evaluation criteria shared by HR and the hiring manager
- assessing all candidates in a systematic and objective manner
- documenting decisions to ensure consistency
By structuring interviews in this way, organisations improve the reliability of their decisions and maximise their chances of recruiting employees who will thrive in their future roles. This is the first essential building block of successful integration: to welcome a new employee effectively, the organisation must first select the right person at the right time.
Lever 2: Orchestrating a solid and reassuring pre-boarding phase
Pre-boarding is often overlooked, even though it plays a decisive role in the success of the integration process.
As Cécile Speich explains:
“A lot happens between the handshake and the first day. Pre-boarding is about establishing the relationship and providing the first reference points.”
High-quality pre-boarding reduces the uncertainty that exists between contract signing and arrival, while preparing the employee for the rest of the integration process.
In practice, this involves:
- sharing key information (schedule, contacts, useful documents)
- sending content such as videos, team introductions and internal resources
- clarifying logistics (badge, equipment, practical arrangements)
- maintaining a light but regular connection
Pre-boarding is the first proof that the organisation is structured, attentive and credible. It is therefore a crucial step in building an effective onboarding process.
Lever 3: Finding the right balance between harmonisation and personalisation
Effective onboarding should provide a harmonised experience across the organisation — without becoming uniform. To achieve this, mapping the onboarding journey is an essential tool.
As Cécile Speich explains:
“Mapping what actually happens gives you an overall view. You quickly realise that experiences vary greatly depending on teams and managers.”
Indeed, some employees benefit from high-quality integration, while others are barely welcomed or experience minimal onboarding due to the absence of a shared framework.
Mapping the onboarding journey makes it possible to identify:
- the steps that are actually experienced
- the emotions associated with them
- friction points
- specific needs depending on employee profiles
This analysis helps harmonise the foundations of the process. As Cécile Speich notes:
“Only once this step is complete can we introduce personalisation — but deliberate personalisation.”
In other words, personalisation is only effective when it is built on a solid structure rather than on disparate practices across teams.
Lever 4: Organising regular follow-ups over several weeks
Integration does not take place solely during the first week — it develops over time. Florian Delecroix highlights this clearly:
“Onboarding is not just the beginning: you need regular check-ins to collect feedback.”
To structure this follow-up process, he recommends:
- regular milestones (Day 7, Day 30, Day 60, Day 90)
- qualitative feedback rather than simple scoring
- transparent integration reviews to clarify grey areas
These meetings make it possible to adjust the experience in real time and support a continuous improvement approach. Often, small friction points identified early can significantly improve the overall experience.
Marion Cosar also highlights a frequently overlooked perspective: analysing feedback from employees who leave the organisation.
“Interviewing employees who leave before the end of their probation period or within their first year helps identify the disappointments they experienced.”
This dual perspective — from those who arrive and those who leave — is extremely valuable for refining onboarding practices over time and strengthening their reliability.
Lever 5: Bringing company culture to life throughout onboarding
Company culture cannot simply be explained – it must be experienced. For onboarding to be truly effective, employees must feel the organisation’s values from their very first days.
At Viva Technology, CSR is a central topic in recruitment. Florian Delecroix explains that strong candidate expectations around this topic have led the organisation to integrate CSR directly into the onboarding journey in order to embody these values rather than simply communicate them.
Two key moments structure the integration process:
- a dedicated presentation from the CSR department explaining projects, strategy and concrete commitments
- a Climate Fresk workshop organised with all new hires, creating a collective moment that builds connections while making the company’s environmental commitment tangible
This example illustrates a key principle: culturally embodied onboarding strengthens engagement, consistency and credibility. What employees experience matters more than what they are told.
Lever 6: Leveraging technology to make the experience more reliable
Onboarding involves a succession of micro-actions: preparing equipment, creating access rights, coordinating HR and managers, sharing information and monitoring progress. Without digital support, these tasks accumulate and oversights quickly become inevitable.
An onboarding software solution therefore provides three major benefits.
Automating to ensure rigour
- automated reminders for HR teams and managers
- shared checklists across stakeholders
- sequences programmed according to employee profiles
The result: fewer oversights, less improvisation and greater consistency, while maintaining a high level of personalisation.
Guiding employees to make the experience smoother
- new employee portals centralising key documents and information
- digitalised progress tracking to identify upcoming steps
- intelligent chatbots answering administrative questions instantly
As a result, new employees know where they stand, what to expect and who to contact. Their experience becomes clearer and more reassuring.
Analysing to improve continuously
- collecting qualitative and quantitative feedback throughout onboarding
- detecting frequently reported friction points
- identifying early warning signs of disengagement or isolation
For Emmanuel Ojzerowicz, one of the main benefits of digitalising onboarding processes is that it makes them measurable, manageable and reliable:
“You need monitoring and data to understand why people leave.”
This data then allows organisations to improve their practices based on reliable insights.
Key takeaways
Building effective onboarding means moving from a one-off welcome moment to a structured, meaningful and evolving integration journey.
As the speakers at Septeo Future Insights HR 2025 reminded us, successful onboarding combines rigour (structure, coordination, monitoring) with human attention (listening, empathy and lived culture).
As Florian Delecroix emphasises, improving onboarding should always start with a clear intention:
“You need to ask yourself why you want to rethink onboarding. Not to tick a box or build employer branding, but to respond to the real needs of the field.”
If you would like to activate at least one of these levers within your organisation and implement effective onboarding, now may be the right time to discuss it with one of our experts. Discover how our onboarding software can support your approach.
FAQ – Effective onboarding: questions HR professionals often ask
An effective onboarding process does not stop after an employee’s first few days. To be truly useful, the integration process must unfold over time and progressively support the employee’s transition into their role.
In many organisations, effective onboarding extends over several weeks or even several months, with key milestones such as Day 7, Day 30, Day 60 and Day 90. These checkpoints help assess how well the employee understands their role, how successfully they have integrated into the team, and how gradually they are taking ownership of their responsibilities.
Viewing onboarding as a structured and evolving journey is one of the essential conditions for building an effective and sustainable onboarding process.
In an effective onboarding process, pre-boarding plays a decisive role. It refers to the period between the signing of the contract and the employee’s first day at the company.
This phase helps maintain a connection with the future employee and prepares the first stages of their integration. It may include:
- sending practical information before the employee arrives
- introducing the team or the manager
- preparing equipment and access rights
- sharing content about the company and its culture
Onboarding itself begins on the employee’s first day and continues over time. To be truly effective, it must support the employee in understanding their role, responsibilities and working environment.
Implementing effective onboarding also means being able to measure and improve it over time. Several indicators can help HR teams monitor the quality of the integration process.
Among the most common are:
- the turnover rate during the probation period
- the time required for employees to reach full autonomy in their role
- the satisfaction level of new hires
- the completion rate of the onboarding journey
- qualitative feedback gathered during integration checkpoints
These indicators make it possible to identify friction points and gradually refine the process in order to build a more effective and consistent onboarding experience.
Managers play a central role in the success of an effective onboarding process. While HR teams structure the integration journey and provide the tools, the manager is the person who brings the welcome experience to life on a daily basis.
In effective onboarding, the manager should in particular:
- clarify expectations and role priorities
- organise the first meetings with key stakeholders
- support the employee’s skills development
- provide regular feedback
Their involvement directly contributes to accelerating the employee’s ramp-up and strengthening engagement.
Effective onboarding usually relies on a balance between standardisation and personalisation.
A shared foundation ensures a consistent experience for all new employees: presenting the company, key processes, internal tools, values and organisational culture.
Personalisation can then be introduced depending on:
- the role or function
- the employee’s level of experience
- the team they are joining
- the type of position
Effective onboarding therefore combines a structured framework with targeted adaptations, enabling organisations to respond to the real needs of new hires.
Digitalisation can significantly support the implementation of effective onboarding. An onboarding software solution or a dedicated module within an HRIS can help structure and secure the different stages of the integration journey.
These tools make it possible to:
- automate certain administrative tasks
- centralise documents and key information
- monitor the progress of the onboarding journey
- collect regular feedback from new employees
Technology does not replace human support, but it facilitates coordination between HR teams, managers and employees. It therefore becomes an important lever for deploying effective onboarding at scale.
Request a demo of our HRIS to discover our onboarding software.
The first weeks within an organisation play a crucial role in employee engagement. It is during this period that new hires assess whether the reality matches the promise made during recruitment.
Effective onboarding helps:
- reduce uncertainty related to starting a new role
- facilitate integration into the team
- clarify expectations and objectives
- strengthen the sense of belonging
Conversely, poorly structured integration can quickly generate frustration or disappointment. Implementing effective onboarding therefore becomes a strategic lever for securing recruitment decisions and improving employee retention.