How to Effectively Onboard Product Designers (Template + Execution Plan)

Businesses embracing design generate 32% more revenue and 56% more shareholder returns. Clearly, a product designer position is one of the critical roles to fill. So, the last thing you want is a designer quitting within a few months as they weren't satisfied with the onboarding. 

And they can, or better said, they will. 

In a recent survey by The Muse, 80% of Millennial and Gen Z job seekers said they are OK to leave a job within six months if it doesn't live up to their expectations.

Times are changing, and so are employee expectations, making a systemized onboarding non-negotiable.

Employees are simply not willing to put up with negative experiences.

Wondering how to rightly onboard (and retain) a designer you just hired after going through at least a hundred profiles?

This guide will give you a detailed product designer onboarding plan along with five best practices. Also, if you also hold on till the end, you get some pro tips for executing the plan. 

✈️ Why is onboarding important for product designers?

Onboarding is important for every role, but if you specifically ask about product designers, here are the top three reasons.

Data-backed role

Designers need a lot of details, to begin with:

• understanding the company vision and mission;
• product knowledge;
• problem statement;
• Uuser persona;
• and more.

Tip: A systemized onboarding provides role clarity and ensures the product designer is not starting their work with half-baked information. 

Need for collaboration

Product design is collaborative work, so every new designer has to be appropriately introduced to the design team, product teams, engineering teams, and other stakeholders.

An onboarding plan takes care of the initial ice-breaking. 

Do not do the ice-breaking properly, and you will find an incredible talent silent in calls without giving their input. 

Improves experience

David Sherwin, a design leader with 20+ years of experience in the space, says:

"Don't think that hiring ends with making the hire. Onboarding for a new role should arise directly from the hiring process. Onboarding shouldn't feel like an afterthought, or worse like your company is showing its true colors now that a designer is in the door."

An onboarding plan creates the right experience and helps you welcome the designer standing at the door properly.

📝 Product designer onboarding 30-60-90 day plan template

An ideal onboarding should last at least three months. Considering that, we are sharing a 30-60-90-day template. Taking it one step back, we have also added preboarding steps.

You can use this template and customize it based on your team's requirements. 

Recruitment (During the interview)

• Share the vision and mission of the company.
• Lay out expectations for the role and design style expected.
• Explain key objectives and the product direction.

Preboarding (After the candidate accepts the offer)

• Send the welcome package.
• Preview the schedule for day 1.
• Send out the necessary onboarding documents to be signed. 
• Answer open questions.

Orientation (First week)

Main goal: Make the new hire feel welcomed, well-taken care of, and understand the onboarding process.

• Introduce them to their onboarding buddy. The buddy responsibilities will target cultural and social integration.
• Hold an engaging intro day, keeping the focus on human interaction.

💡 Create positive initial experiences with 17 exciting ideas to make orientation fun. Engaging your new hires from the very start will have a long-term impact. 

• Complete the required hardware setup.
• Grant all the necessary access (e.g. kits, templates, procreate brushes etc.) and employee resources.
• Explain your work policies, including the code of conduct and benefits. 
• In the case of a hybrid workplace, include the work-from-home policy, remote work guidelines, etc.

➡️ Are you still lagging behind in creating a work-from-home policy? Worry no more. Check out our ready-to-use Work From Home Policy Template.

You'll get a basic structure for your company policy and everything it entails. It is customizable by replacing the content, editing, rearranging, or deleting anything to suit your specific needs.

First 30 days

Main goal: Become familiar with the product, domain, design systems, and design processes, as well as standards for design quality. And don't forget about company culture.

• Assign mandatory training(if any) on security compliance.
• Send the designer a tech readiness document with a list of tools, installation guidelines, and support help desk details.
• Introduce them to the design team via email or a group call.
• Focus on company culture: Are you trying to establish a culture of inclusion? Make sure the new hire knows the importance of inclusivity for your organization.
• Discuss all the tasks/goals in the 30-60-90-day plan.
• Share company goals and give a quick overview of the product.
• Share a domain playbook for a basic understanding of the domain.
• Assign product training for understanding the product in depth.
• Share any design documentation covering past work, design systems, brand guidelines, and brand assets.
• Focus on ice-breaking with designers, engineers, and other stakeholders via coffee chat or virtual lunch.
• Start digging into design principles, processes, and systems.
• Review the design team's goals, key results, and the current roadmap.
• Explain the work process between the design team, the development team, product managers, and other stakeholders.
• Establish communication guidelines (Slack, Email, Teams, etc.)
• Introduce team rituals (Daily, weekly calls, retrospectives, demos, etc.).
• Ask for feedback.
• Assign them small modules to start with or let them shadow a senior designer.
• Encourage networking within and across teams (e.g., customer success teams, community managers, sales executives).

➡️ Discover 15 best practices for training new employees. 

Days 30-60 (Role-specific training)

Main goal: Start working on small modules independently.

• Complete product training. (You can also assign a quiz to test product knowledge.)
• Build up task intensity: Continue with small modules and assess progress.
• Give the new designer more speaking opportunities in meetings.
• Review the status of all tasks in the 30-60-90-day plan.
• Encourage networking within and across teams.
• Schedule a recurring 1:1 meeting.

Days 60-90 (Ongoing Development)

Main goal: Start working on more impactful modules independently.

• If the minor module work went through, give them more impactful modules or test their progress with another small module.
• Assign more role-related training.
• Continue recurring 1:1 meetings.
• Review the status of all tasks in the 30-60-90-day plan.
• Encourage networking within and across teams.
• Take feedback and share constructive feedback.

➡️ Get 11+ additional ready-to-use onboarding templates. You’ll find samples of communication, onboarding surveys, a temple for onboarding presentation etc.

👀 5 Best practices for an effective product designer onboarding

Now, you have a template to plan the onboarding. use these five best practices to ensure you make the most out of it. 

Start while hiring

Sandeep Baskaran, Product Designer, and Design Mentor, points out two major issues while hiring a designer: 

"Sometimes the problem starts even with the job description. If the design team is not involved in recruiting stages, one can see vague descriptions to confuse the candidate.

Secondly comes finding the right fit. Different designers may have different design choices. If you want to play football but get a player onboarded who wants to play cricket, it will only hurt. So, you must introduce candidates to the expected design styles, processes, tools, frameworks and also see if they are willing to disagree but commit.

Eventually, the entire design team works towards a common goal and has a few set standards. One may not like a particular color or gradient, but in the end, they have to follow design team principles and processes."

If the design style varies heavily from the type of work the designer wishes to do and they are not accommodating, your onboarding is already up for failure.

‍💡 Solution? Discuss the roles, responsibilities, and design style while conducting the interview. 

Build a knowledge center

Kumar Chitresh - Director of Product Design and Experience at Servify, says: 

"Design teams can have a common repository that becomes a knowledge center for any designer when they get onboarded. They can go back to it to refer to past work, design systems, brand guidelines, and brand assets. It can work like a master bible.

Designers feel comfortable when they have all these details, and such a repository becomes very handy and helps them pace up."

Start small

Begin with short exercises or small modules that don't have much user impact.

For example, Buzzfeed gives designers simple exercises in the first week to introduce new designers to the style guide.

➡️ Don't forget about engaging your new hires. Read 11 ways to engage new employees starting from day one.

Communication is the key

Monday.com felt miscommunication was the most significant barrier in product design. So they now have a standard process to improve communication.

Encouraging designers to ask questions and network will help not only them but also the product. 

Do not stop at the initial onboarding

From preboarding to ongoing development, the initial 4 phases of onboarding will last 90 days.

But according to Gallup's report, it typically takes 12 months for new employees to reach their full performance potential.

Tip: So, schedule regular check-ins even after initial onboarding to help the designer get up to speed.

⚙️ Why do you need to automate your product designer onboarding process?

Facilitate preboarding

Indeed found that 28% of job seekers ghosted an employer in 2021.

So even after candidates have accepted an offer, they might not show up on Day 1.

An automated preboarding maintains communication and keeps in touch with candidates while HR is involved in other tasks. 

➡️ Want to create excitement for the first day at work? Try using our preboarding template.

Add more structure

The last thing any new employee expects is to get bombarded with documents from all angles, like a jigsaw puzzle.

An automated onboarding adds structure and gives a clear direction.

Save time

HR and managers do umpteen manual tasks like scheduling meetings, coordinating onboarding documentation, answering queries, and so on. Automation gives HR/managers bandwidth to provide more quality time to employees.

👀 For example, Storyblok saves 15+ hours weekly by automating their remote onboarding.

Increase productivity

New hires will pick up faster when they get the appropriate guidance and systematic overview.

👀 Alasco started using onboarding software to bring more structure to the onboarding plan and observed the time-to-productivity of new hires reduced to half.

Increase engagement

74% of employees feel more engaged at work when their voice is heard.

An onboarding software schedules the periodic feedback so new hires can share any roadblocks. This data will also help enhance future onboarding programs. 

➡️ Execute your onboarding plan using Zavvy

Overwhelmed by the massive planning and workload for onboarding new team members? 

You can smoothly plan the entire onboarding using Zavvy by:

• ⚙️ Planning preboarding  with ease.
• ✈️ Organizing the entire onboarding content.
• 👭 Launching buddy program.
• 📈 Having easy tap on progress.
• 🔄 Getting periodic feedback.
• 👥 Automatically scheduling coffee chats.
• 💪 Assigning role-related training.
• 🌱 Career pathing: Help your new designers advance their career in product design.

Elevate the onboarding experience for your new hires. Schedule a demo call with one of your experts today.