I onboarded a volunteer before HR finished the paperwork. Here's the system I used. This week, I brought in a web designer for PHCC — one of three coalition sites I manage under IDA. HR flagged the hire and looped me in before day one. So I treated onboarding like an operational task, not an admin formality: → Welcomed her on Slack and set context immediately → Scoped her role clearly (what she owns vs. what she doesn't) → Shared the live site + website plan so she sees the system, not just tasks → Collected full profile details (name, title, email, LinkedIn, headshot) for fast website integration → Validated her Wix experience instead of assuming → Walked her through both the Harmony and traditional Wix versions — so she understands current state vs. where we're going → Prepared CMS access and aligned her first task Result: No ambiguity. No tool friction. No "waiting to get started." First task ready before end of Day 1. Onboarding is the first deliverable. If it's clean, everything downstream compounds.