From "Duct Tape" to "System": A Manifesto for Remote Onboarding
Once again, I’ve found myself reading another cry for help on Reddit.
This one came from a founder running a small remote company who was genuinely trying to do the right thing. They were cleaning up processes, asking thoughtful questions, and wondering if the mess they kept running into was just the cost of working from home.
The problems cited by the individual were similar to ones I’ve heard in the past:
A new hire spent their entire first week locked out of systems because IT thought HR handled account setup and HR thought IT did.
Another employee admitted she couldn't find any internal documentation. After digging in, the founder realized it was scattered across old Google Drive folders and half-forgotten Notion pages.
Someone else joined the wrong weekly meeting for weeks because the correct link was buried in a long email chain (v embarrassing).
The founder’s question was simple: “is this just normal for remote onboarding right now? Or are some teams actually making this work smoothly?”
What they’re running into isn’t a failure of work-from-home. It’s what happens when informal processes finally get exposed by a remote environment.
Why This Feels Worse in Remote Teams
In an office, broken onboarding hides well: someone overhears a confused new hire, a manager steps in, and knowledge floats through proximity rather than design. Remote work removes that safety net.
From the inside, it feels chaotic but from an operational lens, it’s predictable:
Tasks exist, but ownership does not.
Information exists, but discoverability does not.
Meetings exist, but clarity does not.
The real root cause is simple: no one owns the outcome of onboarding. Functional assumptions collide:
HR assumes IT will handle access.
IT assumes HR handled context.
Managers assume documentation is obvious.
Everyone assumes someone else explained it.
When the work is remote, those assumptions collide and the new hire pays the price.
Onboarding Is a System, Not a Checklist
Most teams treat onboarding like a checklist of tasks rather than a system with a defined outcome. They ask whether steps were completed instead of whether the new hire can actually function.
A real onboarding system answers questions like:
What does “day one success” actually mean here?
Who is accountable if that doesn’t happen?
Where does a new hire go when they’re confused?
How do we know something broke before the new hire has to tell us?
Without answers to those, onboarding becomes a scavenger hunt disguised as independence.
What Actually Works in Remote Onboarding
Teams that onboard well remotely do a few things consistently, whether they realize it or not:
One owner for the entire onboarding experience: Not someone who does everything, but someone accountable for the outcome end-to-end.
A single source of truth for “how work gets done”: Not five tools. One obvious place that answers 80% of questions without Slack.
Explicit handoffs instead of assumed ones: “IT handles this” becomes “IT completes X by Y, verified by Z.”
Processes designed to work without memory or availability: Onboarding shouldn’t break because someone’s on PTO or in meetings all day.
In other words, they build systems that assume reality, not best-case behavior.
Is This Normal?
Yes. Unfortunately, that’s the problem.
When broken onboarding becomes common, teams start treating it as inevitable. Founders compensate. Managers patch holes manually. New hires hesitate to speak up. The system never improves because the pain is distributed instead of owned.
Remote work didn’t cause this. It just made it visible.
The upside is that visibility gives you leverage. Once you stop blaming tools or geography and start looking at ownership, structure, and flow, onboarding becomes fixable. Not through more effort, but through better design. That’s the difference between a team that survives remote work and one that actually scales with it.
My Experience: The 7 Rules of Operational Onboarding
I’ve been in this position before. The first time I built an onboarding program, it wasn’t about culture or perks. It was about stopping attrition and protecting runway.
People were quitting before Week 2. HR was outsourced, onboarding was just a packet and a tour, and the environment made success impossible. I designed a structured, lightweight program, and attrition dropped immediately.
Through that experience—and later helping a company transition to fully remote during COVID—I developed a manifesto for onboarding.
Here are the 7 Rules:
It's a Handoff, Not Theater: Onboarding is an operational handoff, not HR theater. Each new hire is a workflow entering a fragile system. Treat it with that level of seriousness.
Measure Ramp, Not Vibes: Track intervention needs, error rates, and milestone hits to diagnose issues early. Don't rely on "feeling" like they are settling in.
Prepare Before Day 1: Clear role expectations, decision boundaries, access, and buddy assignments must be set before they log in. Prevents wasted time.
Stabilize Day 1: Structured touch points and early wins set the stage for success.
Embed Clarity (First 90 Days): Lean 30–60–90 plans create visibility and accelerate early contributions.
Systems > Humans: Repeatable systems don’t require HR intervention. Documentation, checklists, and review cadences scale across hires.
Operational Culture Accelerates Ramp: Clear ownership, precise language, and visible standards prevent misalignment.
The Bottom Line: It’s Not About Being "Nice"
Founders often mistake onboarding for "culture work." They think it’s about swag bags, welcome lunches, and making people feel fuzzy.
It. Is. Not.
Onboarding is the first operational handshake of your company. It's the moment where you either prove that you're a structured, scalable machine or reveal that you're running on duct tape and good intentions.
If your onboarding is broken, your "Operational Backbone" is broken. And if you can’t efficiently ingest talent, you can't scale revenue.
Stop treating onboarding like a party and start treating it like a system.
If you are a founder who is tired of "manager-dependent" success and want to build an organization that is repeatable, reliable, and investor-safe, lets talk. I help teams map the mess, define the handoffs, and build the infrastructure that makes growth boring (in a good way).
Shoot me a DM. Let’s fix the flow before you hire the next person.