How to Build a Custom Onboarding Workflow in Make.com for New Hires: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

In today’s fast-paced business environment, efficient employee onboarding isn’t just a nicety—it’s a strategic imperative. Manual onboarding processes are riddled with inefficiencies, prone to human error, and consume valuable time from high-value HR professionals. Leveraging a powerful automation platform like Make.com allows companies to transform this critical process, creating seamless, personalized experiences for new hires while drastically reducing administrative burden. This guide provides a practical, step-by-step approach to designing and implementing a robust, custom onboarding workflow that ensures consistency, compliance, and an exceptional start for every new team member.

Step 1: Define Your Onboarding Objectives and Touchpoints

Before diving into Make.com, clearly outline what a successful onboarding experience looks like for your organization. This involves identifying all key stakeholders, required documents, essential systems access, and communication points. Consider the journey from offer acceptance through the first 90 days. What information needs to be collected? What forms must be signed? Which departments need to be notified? Map out every single touchpoint, from IT provisioning to welcome emails from management. Understanding this comprehensive journey is the foundation for building an effective automated workflow, ensuring no critical step is missed and that your automation efforts directly support your strategic HR goals. This clarity prevents scope creep and ensures your Make.com scenario is built with purpose.

Step 2: Identify Trigger Events and Data Sources

Every automation workflow needs a starting point. For new hire onboarding, the primary trigger is typically an offer acceptance or a status change within your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or HRIS. Pinpoint the exact system (e.g., your CRM, ATS, or even a simple Google Form) where the “new hire” event officially occurs. Next, identify all the data points you’ll need from this trigger: employee name, start date, department, role, manager, email, etc. Ensure these data fields are consistently captured. Make.com excels at connecting disparate systems, allowing you to pull this critical information automatically and use it to populate subsequent steps in your onboarding flow. This initial data capture is paramount for personalizing the new hire experience.

Step 3: Design Your Make.com Scenario Structure

Log into Make.com and create a new scenario. Start with your identified trigger module (e.g., a Webhook for your ATS, a Google Sheets module monitoring for new entries, or a module connecting directly to your HRIS). From there, begin to build out the sequential steps. Think about logical groupings of tasks. For example, you might have a branch for “Pre-Day 1 Tasks” and another for “Day 1 & Week 1 Tasks.” Use routers to create conditional paths for different departments or roles if their onboarding varies. Leverage Make.com’s extensive library of apps to connect to your specific tools—Slack for team notifications, Google Drive for document sharing, DocuSign for contract signing, or your Identity Provider for account creation. A well-structured scenario is key for scalability and easy maintenance.

Step 4: Automate Core HR & IT Provisioning

This is where Make.com truly shines. Connect your scenario to modules that handle core HR and IT tasks. Automatically send welcome emails (Gmail, Outlook 365), trigger document generation and signature requests (PandaDoc, DocuSign), and create user accounts in essential systems (Google Workspace, Microsoft Azure AD, Slack). For IT provisioning, the workflow can notify IT teams, create support tickets, or even directly interact with identity management platforms to set up accounts and permissions. The goal is to eliminate manual data entry and repetitive administrative tasks. By automating these foundational steps, you not only save countless hours but also significantly reduce the potential for human error, ensuring new hires have everything they need from day one.

Step 5: Implement Communication and Engagement Loops

Beyond the administrative, a successful onboarding workflow must prioritize communication and engagement. Use Make.com to schedule automated welcome messages from the CEO or team lead via email or Slack. Set up reminders for managers to schedule their first 1:1s or assign a buddy. The system can even send out pulse surveys at the 30-day mark to gather initial feedback. Integrate with your internal communication tools to ensure new hires feel connected and supported from the outset. By automating these touchpoints, you ensure a consistent and positive experience for every new hire, fostering a sense of belonging and accelerating their time to productivity without adding to your team’s workload.

Step 6: Test, Refine, and Monitor Your Workflow

Once your Make.com scenario is built, rigorous testing is critical. Run test data through each step, simulating different scenarios to ensure all paths function as expected. Pay close attention to error handling and data mapping between modules. After initial deployment, continuously monitor your scenario’s performance within Make.com’s operational dashboard. Gather feedback from new hires and hiring managers to identify areas for improvement. Onboarding needs can evolve, so be prepared to iterate and refine your workflow. A well-maintained and optimized Make.com onboarding workflow is a living system that continually adapts to your organization’s growth and changing needs, becoming a significant strategic asset.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Make.com: The Blueprint for Strategic, Human-Centric HR & Recruiting