Agency Employee Onboarding Checklist

Pull the countersigned offer letter from the HRIS and confirm the start date with the hiring manager. Flag any visa or relocation contingencies now — most slipped onboarding starts trace back to a paperwork detail caught the night before Day 1.

Cover arrival time, address, dress code, who to ask for at reception, and the buddy's name. Attach a one-page studio map and the agenda for the morning so the new hire isn't walking in cold.

Department drives which seats and platform logins IT provisions. Creatives need Adobe CC and Frame.io seats; media needs DSP and ad-platform access; account and strategy live in Workamajig, Slack, and the deck stack. Get this wrong and IT spends Day 2 backfilling.

Image the machine with the agency baseline: MDM enrollment, Slack, Google Workspace or O365, password manager, VPN profile, and the department-specific software bundle. Test login with the new hire's credentials before Day 1.

Set up the timekeeping and project-management profiles with the correct billing rate, department code, and project assignments. Without these, hours can't be charged to client codes from Day 1 — a common source of write-offs in the first month.

Walk through the agency's positioning, current account roster, and recent award-winning work. Introduce department leads — ECD, Head of Strategy, Head of Media, Director of Production — so the new hire has names and faces by lunch.

Verify Section 2 of the I-9 in person within three business days of the start date. Collect the W-4 (federal) and applicable state withholding form, plus a voided check or bank letter for direct deposit.

Both documents must be executed before the new hire touches any client deliverable. Without IP assignment, work-for-hire rights for client work can be challenged later. Store the signed PDFs in the HRIS personnel folder.

Add the new hire to the agency-wide review and asset libraries before they're added to project-specific folders. DAM permissions should default to view-only on brand assets — only producers and DAM stewards get upload rights.

Add to #agency-all, #department channels, and the client-account channels they'll be staffed on. Confirm whether any client-shared Slack Connect channels exist and follow the agency's external-channel disclosure protocol before adding.

Cover daily entry vs. weekly batching, billable vs. non-billable codes, and the cutoff for the weekly lock. Note the agency policy on rounding (15-minute increments is standard) and the consequences for late timesheets on retainer-billing reconciliation.

Assign a full Creative Cloud All Apps seat from the agency's VIP license pool and a Frame.io reviewer or collaborator seat as appropriate. Verify Premiere Pro and After Effects launch on the imaged machine before handing off.

Pull the latest brand books from Bynder for each account the new hire will touch. Highlight tone-of-voice rules, logo lockup specs, color tokens, and any category-specific compliance language (pharma fair balance, alcohol responsibility tags, financial disclosures).

Cover the agency's brief structure — business challenge, audience, single-minded proposition, mandatories, success metrics. Show two recent briefs that ran cleanly and one that drifted in revisions, and walk through why.

Cover the agency's standing rules on #ad and Sponsored disclosures under 16 CFR Part 255, native-ad labeling, and influencer whitelisting / dark-post handling. Reference the most recent NAD case the agency tracked so the policy is concrete, not abstract.

Anti-harassment (state-mandated in NY, CA, IL, CT, DE, ME, WA), data privacy and GDPR / CCPA basics for anyone touching audience data, and the agency's information-security awareness module. Capture completion certificates in the HRIS.

Manager runs a structured conversation: what's working, what's blocked, are the right accounts staffed, is the buddy pairing useful. Document outcomes and any access or training gaps surfaced.