[10 Best Templates for Jira] Employee Onboarding Template for Jira: Streamline New Hire Integration
A consistent and structured onboarding process is key to building high-performing teams and reducing turnover. Research shows that a well-planned employee onboarding experience can boost new hire retention by 82% and productivity by more than 70%.
On the flip side, poor onboarding can derail your hiring efforts. Delayed tool access, missed tasks, or confusion around responsibilities can turn a promising first day into a frustrating one—for both the new employee and the team.
If your team uses Jira and Confluence, there’s a better way to run onboarding: a centralized, automated onboarding template.
What is an Employee Onboarding Template?
An employee onboarding template is a reusable structure built in Jira that helps teams manage and track every task in the onboarding journey. Instead of manually recreating issues, subtasks, and checklists for each new hire, you start with a ready-made, optimized workflow.
Why Use an Onboarding Template in Jira?
When you manage new employee onboarding directly in Jira, your entire team—including HR teams, IT teams, and hiring managers—can work from a single source of truth.
Here’s what it helps you do:
- Standardize your onboarding checklist across departments
- Automate issue creation, assignment, and due dates
- Track onboarding progress using workflows and dashboards
- Simplify collaboration between stakeholders
- Improve the onboarding experience for your new team members
Whether you’re onboarding one hire or fifty, using a Jira onboarding template helps reduce manual work and ensures every step—technical setup, paperwork, orientation—is covered.
Creating a Customizable Employee Onboarding Template in Jira
With Smart Checklist and Smart Templates by TitanApps, you can build a comprehensive onboarding plan that fits your company’s unique structure and processes. These apps are available on the Atlassian Marketplace for Jira Cloud and help HR teams and project managers scale their onboarding efforts without losing quality.
Template Setup Example:
The first step in this process is the creation of a Smart Template that will reflect both pre-onboarding activities for the HR team required to help new hires smoothly enter the company’s environment and onboarding activities for the new hires and their coordinators.
In order to create such a template from scratch you can follow this guide and copy paste the issue names below to repeat this hierarchy for your purposes. Use variables to manage dynamic values in your templates like in the presented example. You can easily edit this template later if required.
{{employee_name}} onboarding for {{position}} at {{project}}
- Pre-onboarding preparation for {{position}} {{employee_name}}
- Provide newcomer with welcome pack {{employee_name}}
- Sign up the service agreement, NDA, DPA for {{employee_name}}
- Grant access to tools for {{employee_name}}
- Hardware setup for {{employee_name}}
- Onboarding Data check for {{employee_name}}
- Company onboarding for {{employee_name}} {{position}}
- Onboarding checklist for Coordinator {{position}} {{employee_name}}
How to Set Up an Effective Employee Onboarding Template in Jira
Once your Smart Template is ready, follow these three key steps to structure and automate your onboarding process in Jira:
- Design the Template Structure
Start by creating a reusable template that mirrors your onboarding workflow. You can build templates for individual Jira issues or entire issue hierarchies—ideal for onboarding processes that span multiple teams.
Pre-fill fields like issue summary, description, and labels. Use Smart Variables for dynamic content such as the new hire’s name, role, department, or start date. - Manage Dynamic Values with Variables
Smart Variables allow your onboarding template to adapt to different roles and scenarios. Easily define due dates, assignees, or task details based on employee type, department, or location—without duplicating templates for every situation. - Automate the Workflow
Use Jira Automation to trigger your onboarding setup automatically. For example, when a new hire ticket is created in Jira Service Management, the automation can pull from your Smart Template and instantly generate a full set of onboarding tasks.
Break Down Tasks with Smart Checklists
After the onboarding issues are created, it's time to break them down further. Add Smart Checklists inside each issue to track granular steps—without flooding your project with subtasks.
This is especially helpful when multiple departments are involved. For example, you can build role-based or team-specific checklist templates for:
- HR & People Ops (contract signing, welcome emails)
- Legal (NDA, tax forms)
- IT (hardware setup, access permissions)
- Procurement (equipment delivery)
- Security (access cards, VPN setup)
You can also add a personalized onboarding checklist for the new employee. It might include tasks for the trial period, first-week orientation, or links to key onboarding materials in Confluence.
Using Smart Checklists ensures that every team member knows what to do and when. It adds visibility and accountability to your onboarding journey—all right inside Jira.
Company onboarding for Maria Smith | Developer
# During the 1st week
- Use your *full name* in your Slack profile
- Add your picture to _all company profiles_ 🧑💻
> List of company profiles: Slack, Google account, Jira/Confluence, etc.
- Fill out [the form](http://rw.rw/vimeo-follow1111) to get company merch ⚡️
> Please state your current address
- Install required software
>VPN setup
>Antivirus installation
- Complete Orientation day
- Complete Product Training - Day 3
- Complete Compliance Workshop - Day 5
- Join team introduction meeting
# During the 1st month
- Read [company-wide policies](https://vimeo.com/1112)
- Watch [Slack usage video](https://vimeo.com/11113)
- Learn [working with sensitive information](https://railsware.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/playbook111)
- Prepare for the first feedback session
>Purpose: Assess your training progress and role adaptation.
- Schedule Bi-weekly meetings with your coordinator
>Purpose: Review progress on tasks, ask questions
Copy and paste this example into your Jira issue during creation or add to the specific Jira issue as a checklist within the onboarding Smart Template you’ve created at the first step, then save it as a Jira employee onboarding template to streamline your process. Follow the Markdown editor instructions and adjust as needed.
Adding Smart Checklists for Department-Specific Onboarding Workflows
A strong onboarding process depends on breaking large tasks into manageable steps. That’s exactly what Smart Checklists are designed for. Instead of overloading your board with subtasks, you can use Smart Checklists in Jira to guide each department through its part of the employee onboarding journey—step-by-step.
Whether you're working in HR, IT, Legal, or Sales, using a reusable checklist template streamlines collaboration across teams and helps ensure a consistent onboarding experience for every new hire.
Here’s how you can apply Smart Checklists to your onboarding template in Jira to support different team members and functions:
## IT Setup checklist
- Create corporate email
- Configure remote access
- Provide system training materials
## Legal team checklist
- Collect employee documentation in [the folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1111)
- Validate employee tax information
- Fill in emergency contact in this [the folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/form1111)
- Prepare required documents to sign with employee
>DPA, NDA, service agreement
- Send documents to the new employee for signature
- Recheck signed documents and save them in [the folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1112)
##Onboarding checklist for coordinator | Team Lead - Martin Perez
> Objective: Provide support with initial questions, team introductions, and role-specific guidance.
- Add yourself to the onboarding channel of the new hire
- Create onboarding template plan
-! Schedule weekly check-ins
- Schedule a meeting to introduce the new hire to cross-functional teams
Pro-tip: Mandatory checklist items will block issue transition to "Done" unless all mandatory items are completed. Check the detailed instructions here Smart Checklist Cloud - Confluence
You can further customize your Smart Checklist Template for various departments or roles, ensuring it aligns with unique team needs.
Customize by Role or Department with Smart Checklist Templates
You can reuse checklist templates based on job function or department—giving HR teams and managers flexibility without sacrificing structure. Below are examples of department-specific onboarding checklists you can add to your Jira onboarding plan.
Engineering Department Onboarding Checklist
- Development Environment Setup
- Install IDE and configure GitHub account
- Set up code repository access and 2-factor authentication
- Codebase & Project Familiarization
- Review code documentation
- Access project management tools
## Code of conduct
- [Work with Jira](https://railsware.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TA/pages/4444)
- [PRs management](https://railsware.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TA/pages/4445)
- [Conventional Commits](https://railsware.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TA/pages/1111)
- [Conventional Commits](https://railsware.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TA/pages/2222)
- [Branching strategy and CD](https://railsware.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TA/pages/3333)
- [Code conventions](https://railsware.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TA/pages/4444)
Sales Department Onboarding Checklist
- Sales Tools Training
- CRM training session
- Product and sales pitch training
- Client Onboarding Process Review
- Review documentation on client onboarding
- Understand sales funnel stages and metrics
Marketing Department Onboarding Checklist
- Marketing Tools Configuration
- Set up analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics)
- Access social media accounts and content calendars
- Content & Brand Training
- Review brand guidelines
- Access content library and current campaigns
Pro tip: You can automate checklist assignment based on role or issue type using Jira automation. This allows you to trigger the right onboarding checklist without manual setup—ideal for HR workflows that scale. Check out this HR onboarding use case with Smart Tools for Jira.
Using Smart Checklists within your Jira onboarding template helps ensure no step is overlooked. Every stakeholder sees their tasks clearly, and new team members get a smoother start—no confusion, no delays
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Viktoriia Golovtseva _TitanApps_
About this author
Senior Content Writer & Marketer
Railsware
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