New-Hire Onboarding
The HR checklist gets the laptop set up. The team's job is making the first retro feel survivable for someone who joined eight days ago.
Why this matters
HR onboarding and team onboarding are different documents. The team's job is integrating someone into the working rhythm — first standup, first retro, first project handoff — and almost no page separates that from the buddy-and-laptop checklist. The single highest-leverage activity in the first month is a private hopes-and-fears in week one, and almost nobody recommends it. Skip the cringe-heavy team-building until at least month two; you're asking a stranger to share personal context, and forced disclosure is the fastest way to teach a new joiner that this team performs warmth instead of practising it.
Recommended activities
Personal Map
Your name in the centre, branches for the parts of life you choose to share. Connection, not disclosure.
Hopes and Fears
A pre-mortem that doesn't admit to being a pre-mortem. Run it before kickoff; come back at the halfway mark.
ESVP
A thermometer for the room. If half the team voted Prisoner, you're running the wrong meeting.
One-Word Check-In
The cheapest diagnostic that exists. Treat the word as data, not warm-up.
Temperature Check
A barometer with a half-life. Anonymous extends the runway; rotating the question keeps it sharp.
Appreciations (Kudos)
Specific or skip. 'Thanks for being awesome' is worse than silence.
How to run it
Run a 1:1 Hopes and Fears in week one — private, written, the manager reads it before the new joiner walks into a single team meeting. At the team level, a consent-checked Personal Map (the new joiner chooses their own branches; nothing is mandatory) is the format that earns its keep without forcing disclosure. Open the new joiner's first retrospective with ESVP — it's a diagnostic; if the new person voted Prisoner you need to know now, not in month three. One-Word Check-In and Temperature Check at standups give them a low-stakes way to register a mood without a monologue. Close month one with Appreciations — specific, named moments — so the new joiner hears that the integration is taking. Skip Two Truths and a Lie unless the team is genuinely the type that enjoys it; for everyone else it lands as the cringe their previous job had.