How to Build a Custom Employee Onboarding Workflow in Adobe Workfront

Efficient employee onboarding is crucial for retention, productivity, and setting new hires up for success. Yet, many organizations struggle with disjointed processes, manual tasks, and a lack of visibility. Adobe Workfront provides a robust platform to centralize, standardize, and automate your onboarding workflows, transforming a traditionally complex process into a seamless experience. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to design and implement a custom, automated onboarding workflow in Workfront, ensuring every new team member gets off to a flying start.

Step 1: Define Your Onboarding Objectives and Stakeholders

Before diving into Workfront, it’s critical to clearly define what successful onboarding looks like for your organization. Identify the key objectives, such as reducing time-to-productivity, ensuring compliance, or enhancing employee engagement. Equally important is identifying all stakeholders involved: HR, IT, hiring managers, payroll, facilities, and any departmental leads. Engage these individuals to understand their requirements, current pain points, and necessary inputs/outputs. This foundational understanding will inform the structure of your Workfront project, ensuring all critical aspects are covered and responsibilities are clearly delineated from the outset. A well-defined scope prevents scope creep and ensures the resulting workflow truly addresses business needs.

Step 2: Map Out the Entire Onboarding Journey and Key Tasks

Once objectives are clear, visualize the entire employee onboarding journey. Break it down into phases: pre-hire, Day 1, Week 1, Month 1, and beyond. For each phase, list every single task that needs to be completed, regardless of who performs it. Examples include sending welcome packets, setting up email accounts, ordering equipment, scheduling orientation, assigning training modules, and initiating performance check-ins. Identify dependencies between tasks (e.g., equipment must be ordered before IT setup can begin). This detailed task mapping will become the blueprint for your Workfront project template, ensuring no critical step is missed and tasks flow logically through the process.

Step 3: Configure Custom Forms and Fields in Workfront

To capture all necessary new hire information efficiently, Workfront’s custom forms are indispensable. Design forms that collect data once and make it accessible to all relevant parties. For instance, an “New Hire Information” form might include fields for start date, department, manager, required equipment, and access permissions. Leverage various field types (dropdowns, text areas, date pickers) to standardize data entry. Attach these forms to the main onboarding project or specific tasks within it. Proper form configuration streamlines data collection, reduces errors, and ensures that all stakeholders have the precise information they need to complete their assigned tasks, driving efficiency and compliance.

Step 4: Design the Workfront Project Template for Onboarding

This is where your mapped journey comes to life. Create a new project template in Workfront specifically for onboarding. Structure it with phases (e.g., Pre-Boarding, First Week, First Month) as main tasks, and then populate each phase with the detailed tasks identified in Step 2. Assign tasks to specific roles (e.g., “HR Coordinator,” “IT Support,” “Hiring Manager”) rather than individuals, making the template reusable. Set dependencies between tasks, establish durations, and apply custom forms to relevant tasks. This template becomes the repeatable framework for every new hire, ensuring consistency and a predictable experience, drastically reducing manual setup time for each new employee.

Step 5: Implement Automated Approvals and Notifications

Leverage Workfront’s robust automation capabilities to eliminate manual follow-ups and ensure timely actions. Configure automated notifications to alert stakeholders when tasks are assigned, completed, or approaching their due dates. Set up approval workflows for critical items, such as equipment requests or budget approvals, routing them directly to the appropriate decision-makers. For instance, once an IT setup task is marked complete, an automated notification can be sent to the hiring manager. These automations reduce bottlenecks, improve communication across departments, and ensure that the onboarding process moves smoothly and efficiently without constant manual intervention, saving valuable time for all involved.

Step 6: Integrate with External HR and IT Systems

For an even more powerful and seamless workflow, explore Workfront’s integration capabilities. While some organizations may start simple, advanced users can connect Workfront with other essential systems, such as HRIS (Human Resources Information System), payroll software, or IT ticketing systems. This can involve using Workfront’s native integrations, custom APIs, or platforms like Make.com (formerly Integromat) to trigger actions in external systems based on Workfront task completions. For example, marking an “HR Paperwork Complete” task might automatically trigger a new employee record creation in your HRIS. Integrating systems eliminates redundant data entry, ensures data accuracy, and creates a truly end-to-end automated onboarding experience.

Step 7: Test, Iterate, and Train Your Team

The final crucial step is to thoroughly test your new Workfront onboarding workflow. Run through the entire process with a dummy employee profile, ensuring all tasks trigger correctly, forms are functional, assignments are accurate, and automations fire as expected. Gather feedback from all stakeholders involved and be prepared to iterate and refine the template based on real-world testing. Finally, provide comprehensive training to all users who will interact with the new workflow. Clear documentation and training ensure widespread adoption and proper usage, maximizing the return on your investment in Workfront and transforming your employee onboarding into a strategic advantage.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Adobe Workfront: Orchestrating Strategic HR & Talent Acquisition with AI & Automation