Automating Onboarding with Make, From 2 Weeks to 2 Hours
The Challenge
A mid-sized SaaS company was losing valuable time and consistency in their onboarding process. Each new hire or client onboarding required:
- Manual account creation across 6+ tools (Slack, Notion, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Jira)
- Repetitive email sequences by HR or project managers
- Human follow-ups for sending checklists, contracts, and introductions
- Errors due to skipped steps or delays across departments
This caused onboarding delays of up to 2 weeks — leading to poor first impressions, wasted resources, and reduced retention.
The Solution: A Fully Automated Onboarding System with Make.com
We deployed a modular, no-code onboarding system using Make.com. The goal: eliminate all manual steps, reduce onboarding time, and increase process consistency.
Step-by-Step Automation
- Trigger
- New hire or client form submission via Typeform, Airtable, or Webflow
- Intake webhook hits Make and starts the scenario
- Account Setup
- Automatically creates user accounts in Slack, Notion, and Google Workspace
- Generates personalized onboarding documents from Google Docs templates
- Comms & Planning
- Sends welcome emails and links to documentation and calendars
- Schedules kick-off call in Calendly, synced with assigned team members
- Task Management
- Creates onboarding tasks in Asana/Jira based on role or project type
- Logs the entire process in Airtable for tracking and auditing
- AI Personalization (Optional)
- Generates personalized welcome messages or Slack intros using OpenAI
- Sends role-specific training material based on function
Results After 30 Days
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Avg. Onboarding Duration | 10–14 days | 1–2 hours |
| Manual Workload per Hire | ~6 hours | ~30 minutes |
| Error Rate | High (incomplete steps, forgotten access) | 0% |
| First-Month Satisfaction (NPS) | 56 | 91 |
The system paid for itself within 3 weeks due to reclaimed staff time and improved first-week productivity.
Why This Worked
- Speed — New team members or clients were set up and productive in hours, not days
- Consistency — No steps skipped, no manual errors, always the same high-quality experience
- Scalability — One flow handled 3 different onboarding types (internal hire, contractor, external client)
- Modularity — Easy to plug in tools like Trello, Monday.com, HubSpot, Notion, or Slack
Ready to Eliminate Manual Onboarding?
Whether you're onboarding new hires, clients, or partners — there's no reason to waste another hour manually coordinating tools and steps.