
How to Ace Employee Onboarding on Slack
You’ve added a new colleague to your company’s Slack. Here’s what to do next.
Onboarding your new colleagues on Slack can be a huge time saver. You can leverage its social features to easily make introductions and help people get to know each other. You can also utilize its app integrations and message history to explain the nuts and bolts of how your team works together.
With Slack’s capabilities also come constraints, though. Your new hires can get lost in countless messages, maze of channels, and jargon-riddled memes. What may have initially seemed like a great idea can just as easily turn into a rather frustrating experience.
Faced with this reality, you have to get smart in order to make onboarding on Slack work. But with a bit of planning and tools like GreetBot you can create an informative and engaging onboarding flow for your new colleagues, despite the constraints of your digital workspace. Here are a few pointers to get you started.
Don’t rush it
Signing paperwork, setting up e-mail, getting access credentials sorted out. Your new colleagues will be dealing with a lot on their first day. So the last thing you want is to create more information overload for them. Instead, take it slow. Start with a short direct message. Keep it casual, mention simple conversation starters like office trivia or fun facts about your teammates. You can say something like this:
Ahoy there @quincy 👋 Welcome aboard, glad you’re part of the gang 😃 I’ll follow up tomorrow with more details so for now sit back, relax and get to know everyone (make sure to ask @sammy for his coffee tips ☕️) And if you need a hand with anything just write to our office manager extraordinaire @georgie 🏄
Throw in a social lubricant
It’s not always easy to reach out to others online. People can be shy and not sure what to say. Or they just might be having a busy week. To help get the conversation started post a channel message soon after your new colleagues have joined your workspace. Use one of your default channels (ideally one reserved for social banter like #random) or add an @channel mention to make sure everyone gets the message, so to speak. It can be as simple as this:
@channel peeps, there’s a new cool kid on the block. Come say hello to @quincy!
Show them the ropes
After your new teammates had a chance to settle down a bit you can begin sharing more details about your workspace. Think here about any processes you follow, how you like to communicate, and how you keep things organized.
Rather than trying to explain everything in minute detail in one go, though, set up a simple “drip” schedule to send several shorter, more manageable messages over time. You can use GreetBot’s Message Scheduling to get the job done in just a few minutes.
For starters, send a brief overview of the way your workspace is structured: highlight key people (or bots) on your team (tag them with an @mention) or list a few popular channels along with the topics they cover. Here’s a template you can use:
Hello again @quincy! Hope you had a great first day and are starting to feel at home already ☺️
Here’s a list of channels we recommend you to check out:
#announcements — information everyone should know
#team-hr — space for HR-related questions and requests
#exec-ama — ask a question and get an answer from the executive team
#random — water cooler talk and banterMake sure to also play with the @guru app where we log frequently asked questions and all sorts of other useful information 🤓
Last but not least, if you have questions about using Slack you can ask in our #help-slack channel or get in touch with @georgie for assistance 💪
Once you’ve got the big picture covered, you can get more granular with the information you are sharing. Post video clips covering company history and culture, explain specific business terms and acronyms you use internally, provide links to policy and training materials, send invites to activities and appointments, as well as anything else that new joiners should know about.
Minimize distractions
Keep in mind that any messages you post publicly can distract your existing team members. Therefore, you want to be chatty, but not too chatty. Write using concise, simple language, use Slack’s mentions like @here, @channel or @everyone sparingly and opt for private messages whenever possible.
Think about the timing too. Consider sending your onboarding messages when people can more easily socialize than at other times of the day, for example around lunch time. You don’t want to send your messages too frequently either, in order to prevent any notification fatigue from kicking in.
With GreetBot you can also give your new colleagues a gentle nudge whenever they join a particular channel using ephemeral channel messages. These will only be visible to each new joiner and nobody else, providing contextual, just-in-time information in a more discreet way. Like this:
Welcome to the #exec-ama channel, @quincy!
Here you can ask a question and get an answer from the most appropriate member of the executive team 👩💼👨💼
Make sure to scroll through the conversation history to get a sense of the format and the kind of topics we’ve covered so far 💬
Don’t be shy about following up
Towards the end of their first week check in with your new teammates to see how well they’ve settled and whether they have everything they need. A simple “How is it going?” can go a long way here. But you can also consider a more structured approach, like sending a link to a survey. For example, you can say:
How is it going @quincy? Hope you had a fun and productive first week!
If you need a hand with anything or if there is anything that’s still not clear please let me or @georgie know 💪
When you have a moment, could you also share your experiences in the survey below? It will help us continue building an awesome team in the years to come ❤️
Your First Week
https://surveytime.com/your_first_week
A survey can give your new colleagues an opportunity to be more open about their experiences, leading to more nuanced and candid feedback. The data you collect this way will help you improve your approach to onboarding over time and, crucially, show that your employees trully are the pulse of your company.
Part science, part art
Onboarding, much like most of human resource management, is part science and part art. To get the best results you will have to follow your intuition as much as any data that you gather or advice you get, refining your approach along the way.
This is especially true on Slack, where many of the social norms and cues we rely on to communicate effectively can easily be obscured or displaced entirely. As the platform continues to develop our approach to onboarding surely will have to continue evolving with it.
But whether it’s making introductions or explaining the ins and outs of your organization, you can use Slack, along with tools like GreetBot, to create a stellar onboarding experience already today. With the suggestions listed here you’ll be off to a great start.

