Onboarding packs — day-1 readiness for new hires

TL;DR. For each new hire, produce a personalised onboarding pack — welcome doc, role-specific reading list, week-1 plan, manager briefing. 1–2 hours per hire saved for HR ops; compounds across high-growth teams. The manager brief is the surprise win.

Job to be done#

Produce a personalised onboarding pack per new hire: welcome message, role-specific reading list, week-1 plan, briefing for the manager.

Who runs it#

HR ops or the hiring manager themselves.

Inputs (inbox/)#

• Offer letter / role definition
• The team's onboarding template
• Role-specific reading-list templates
• Manager's notes about the hire

Outputs (output/)#

• onboarding-[name].docx — personalised welcome + week-1 plan
• reading-list-[role].md — links and short summaries
• manager-brief-[name].docx — what the manager should prepare

Prompt seed#

Read /inbox/offer-[name].docx and /inbox/manager-notes-[name].md.
Use the templates in /inbox/onboarding-templates/.
Produce three files in /output/[name]/:
1) onboarding-[name].docx — welcome message, week-1 schedule,
   key contacts, expectations
2) reading-list-[role].md — top 10 internal docs and 5 external
   resources for the role
3) manager-brief-[name].docx — what to prepare in advance, talking
   points for week 1
House style: warm but specific. No corporate boilerplate.

Quality bar#

• Personalisation specific — mentions the team they're joining, the manager by name.
• Reading list curated to role + level, not generic.
• Common trip-up: warm tone tipping into AI-flavour ("excited to have you join our amazing team"). Adjust voice in CLAUDE.md with three good and three bad examples.

Time saved (typical)#

1–2 hours per hire for HR ops. Compounds across high-growth teams — a team hiring 10 people a quarter is saving 40+ HR-ops hours.

Upgrade path#

• Connector to HRIS (BambooHR, Rippling, Workday) for the input data.
• A new-hire-pack skill keyed on hire date.

Tinkso's take#

The manager brief is the surprise win. Hiring managers love the prep checklist; they did not know they wanted it until it landed in their inbox the day before the new hire's start. The welcome doc and reading list are table stakes; the manager brief is what makes the workflow defendable to leadership.