What our onboarding process looks like

At Sunscrapers, we believe that the first day of work sets the tone for the entire time an employee spends at our company. That's why we pay extra attention to fine-tuning our onboarding process and continuously gather feedback from employees to learn what works and what doesn't.

An excellent onboarding process ensures that new team members are productive from day one, but it's so much more than that. It also helps to create a welcoming atmosphere at the office and break the ice with other team members. Here is what the onboarding process at Sunscrapers looks like.

Pre-onboarding activities

Our onboarding process begins before the employee shows up at our door. We use the HelloSign app to avoid all the hassle that comes with signing and scanning documents. With HelloSign, the employee can sign the contract with one click.

The new team member will get an email with all the essential information from us before their first day at Sunscrapers. We always let the employee know how the first will look like so they can prepare for it and feel more comfortable when they join the team.

Welcome pack

Aside from preparing the workstation and making sure that all hardware is in place before the new employee arrives, we also greet new team members with a special welcome pack.

Our welcome package includes some fun gadgets and comes with beer to help the team member celebrate their first day of working at Sunscrapers.

HR onboarding

The next stage of the onboarding process is carried out by a member of our HR team. We usually give new team members a tour of the office, so they get familiar with all its nooks and crannies. We also introduce them to other employees and invite them to a company lunch. Naturally, we also schedule a meeting with new team members where we clarify the basic rules of working at Sunscrapers and provide them with information about benefits and key procedures.

To make our work easier, we created a Trello board that includes all the essential information but also answers to the most common questions. Our board includes tasks such as sending a welcoming message on Slack to everyone or getting new members familiar with our apps to support the onboarding process.

We make the first days as smooth as possible with the onboarding board

We all know that the first day of work can be confusing. Fortunately, all the information is located in Trello so new team members can review them at any time. Instead of sending them a long, tedious text, all information is presented on a transparent Trello board.

We usually like to organize a short catch-up meeting after three and seven days to ask new team members about their experience and make sure that they've got everything they need to feel comfortable at Sunscrapers.

After a month of working at Sunscrapers, new team members usually prepare presentations about themselves to help them the entire team get to know them better.

Project onboarding

Next in line, the new team member will get the chance to learn more about the software development processes we employ at Sunscrapers.

First things first, we explain how we implement agile principles in our development process and what our workflow looks like. We also let new team members know more about our pricing strategies and ways we monitor the progress of our projects.

Developers are then added to all our project management tools like Trello (we have separate boards for projects and backlog), Slack, Google Drive, and others.

At that point, we also introduce other members of the project team and assign specific roles and responsibilities to help the newcomers instantly feel like part of team.

Once the general onboarding is finished, we proceed with detailed project onboarding. While the project manager presents the project’s vision and discussed the project’s functionalities - for example, by giving the new team member an overview of wireframes or designs.

The technical team then takes over and helps new team members learn about the tools and technologies used in the project. All that’s left is assigning specific onboarding tasks for getting familiar with the existing code base - and the job is done!

At Sunscrapers, we believe that a great onboarding process should last at least several months. We like to get in touch and gather feedback from new team members once in a while to make them feel as comfortable as possible and learn how we could improve our process.