Where Labs started: new hire onboarding

The problem

Many hourly hires drop off between accepting an offer and working their first shift. Employers told us onboarding steps often arrived one text at a time, in a fixed order, spread across links, forms and apps. New hires did not always know who to ask for help, and HR teams often had no simple way to see who was stuck.

What we built

• A mobile-first onboarding page for new hires, in the employer's branding, with a welcome message, a short video and a checklist of tasks like training, paperwork and setup. New hires could do the tasks in any order.
• An employer view that listed new hires, with a page for each person showing which tasks were done.
• Early designs for letting employers brand the page, add their own tasks and link out to tools they already use.
• A prototype for sending one text message to many workers at once, filtered by location, role or status. We showed it to a few employers but did not take it further.
• A plan for a text support test, where new hires could text a question and get an answer drawn from their employer's own FAQs. It did not work out in that form, because employers wanted to stay in the conversation themselves.

How it works

1. After accepting an offer, a new hire got a text with a link to their onboarding page.
2. The page greeted them in the employer's branding, with a welcome video and a short list of tasks.
3. They finished tasks like training and paperwork on their phone, in whatever order worked for them.
4. The employer could check each new hire's progress and follow up with anyone who was stuck.

Where it landed

• Employers who walked through the clickable prototype responded well. One asked us to tell them the first day they could sign up.
• In early 2023 the work moved from Labs to a dedicated Onboard product team.
• In March 2023, a pilot with one Fountain customer put real new hires through the onboarding page.
• The Onboard team carried the work forward, and Fountain launched Fountain Onboard publicly in February 2024.

What we learned

• Get something clickable in front of customers early. Our first rule was that a customer must be able to use the prototype, not just hear about it.
• Employers we spoke with responded to seeing every onboarding task in one place, finished in any order.
• Employers want to own the relationship with their new hires. A support setup that left them out of the conversation was a non‑starter.
• Build around text messages. New hires already use them, and asking them to download another app adds a step.
• In the pilot, the employer wanted to see open tasks for every new hire at a glance, not one profile at a time.