Optimizing Onboarding Processes

I was asked recently to compile an overview of the partnerships landscape in payments and speed of onboarding was something that I came back to a few times as I unpacked some of the biggest drivers for success. Speed of activated MIDs serves as a competitive differentiator for providers. Payments companies that can onboard merchants, platforms, and partners swiftly are emerging as winners in the market. So which providers made my shortlist after speaking to merchants and partners over the past 12 months on this subject?👇 1. Stripe 👉 Why? Stripe’s API-first approach, pre-built onboarding flows (e.g. Stripe Connect), and modular compliance tools that allow platforms to onboard merchants in minutes. 2. Adyen 👉 Why? Adyen offers a unified payments platform that integrates KYC and onboarding into a single, global process, reducing friction for enterprise merchants. 3. PayPal (including Braintree & Hyperwallet) 👉 Why? PayPal’s legacy in fast consumer onboarding extends to merchants via Braintree and Hyperwallet, providing quick payouts and simplified compliance. 4. Checkout.com 👉 Why? Checkout.com has invested heavily in onboarding efficiency, leveraging AI and automation for faster KYC and compliance reviews. 5. Rapyd 👉 Why? Rapyd’s fintech-as-a-service model enables businesses to onboard merchants in multiple jurisdictions quickly, handling local compliance seamlessly. 6. Square 👉 Why? Square’s ecosystem is built for quick and easy merchant sign-ups, with minimal manual verification for lower-risk merchants. 7. Cashflows 👉 Why? Much like Square, Cashflows has built an automated boarding tool for low-risk merchants, allowing them to activate MIDs fast for their direct customer and partner network. 8. Nomupay 👉 Why? Newer entrants to the market such as Nomupay obtain the advantage of knowing how important fast onboarding is when building technology stacks out ready for launch. 9. Mollie 👉 Why? A prominent player in the digital agency space, Mollie works closely with large volumes of retail merchants that expect tight turnarounds within minute dev sprint windows. How Are These Providers Achieving Fast Onboarding? ➡️ Automation & AI in KYC. Real-time identity verification, AI-driven fraud detection, and automated compliance checks reduce delays. ➡️ API-First & Low-Code Integration. Pre-built flows (e.g., Stripe Connect, Adyen’s onboarding API) help platforms integrate payments faster. ➡️ Pre-Vetted Risk Tiers. Many providers segment merchants into different risk levels, allowing lower-risk merchants to onboard almost instantly. ➡️ Embedded Compliance. Instead of a one-size-fits-all compliance process, leading providers integrate regulatory requirements dynamically based on merchant location and business type. Payments partnerships are evolving fast, and speed of onboarding is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a make-or-break factor. The race for faster, frictionless onboarding will only intensify in 2025.

I can’t stop thinking about this. If you invest in your people from day 1, they’ll invest their talents in your company tenfold. It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen firsthand how often this gets missed. I joined companies and startups with zero training: - no documentation - unclear processes - no real onboarding I was expected to figure it out as I went, and honestly, it was brutal 😭 So here’s what *actually* sets people up for success: —— 1️⃣ What does a new hire need to know but feels awkward asking? Think back to your first 30 days. ↳ How do things actually work here? ↳ Where do I go for answers? ↳ What mistakes should I avoid early on? If the answers live only in someone’s head, that’s the gap. ✅ Document anything you explain more than once. —— 2️⃣ Where are people guessing instead of being guided? When training doesn’t exist, people improvise. ↳ Clicking the wrong thing ↳ Following outdated steps ↳ Copying work that isn’t quite right That’s how errors and rework happen. Tools like Tango make this easy by turning workflows into step-by-step guides. ✅ Record one common task this week and turn it into a reusable guide. —— 3️⃣ What tribal knowledge needs to be documented? You know it’s a systems problem when there are: ↳ Constant pings ↳ Repeating the same answers ↳ Little time for deep work ✅ Have your strongest team member document one core process they own. —— 4️⃣ Are you onboarding people or overwhelming them? More information doesn’t mean better onboarding. People need: ↳ Clear priorities ↳ Time to practice ↳ Space to build confidence ✅ Use a simple 30-60-90 day framework for all new hires —— 5️⃣ Are expectations clear or just assumed? When expectations are vague: ↳ People second-guess themselves ↳ Feedback comes too late ↳ Performance feels personal instead of fixable ✅ Check in early and often and schedule 20-minute check-ins with your manager or onboarding buddy in the first 8 weeks. —— When you give people the right tools, training, and support, you get: → Faster onboarding → More consistent processes → Fewer mistakes and support tickets → Happier, more confident employees 💙 You can’t expect people to thrive without setting them up properly. Set people up to win and they will 🫶 Do you agree? #TangoPartner

she called me 3 weeks into her new job. "Shulin, no one's talked to me. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing." She was a great hire. Smart. Motivated. Exactly who the company wanted. And she quit before the 90-day mark. Not for a better offer. Not for more money. She left because no one made her feel like she belonged. After 15+ years of recruiting, I've watched this happen more times than I can count. It's shocking. Companies spend months finding the right person. Then lose them in weeks. Not because the hire was wrong. Because the welcome was. No one checked in. No one showed her around. No one told her what success looked like. She had a job title but no direction. A desk but no connection. And here's what most companies don't realise... The first week isn't admin. It's a message. It tells someone: "You matter here" or "Figure it out yourself." Most new hires don't leave because the job was bad. They leave because the silence was deafening. If you're bringing someone onto your team, remember this: Onboarding isn't orientation. It's the first chapter of whether they stay or go. Write it well. — Shulin Lee 💛

When you step into a new job, the real challenge isn’t the tasks—it’s the context. Who’s really making decisions? What are the unspoken priorities? What does that acronym actually mean? Without answers, most new hires spend months in hesitation. With AI, you don’t have to. You can feed in transcripts, Slack threads, or org charts and quickly get the crash course on your team’s language and dynamics. It gives you clarity where there’s usually confusion. AI won’t do the job for you—but it will help you accelerate the messy middle of onboarding so you can focus on the parts that matter most: building trust, contributing ideas, and making an impact faster.

I’m on week 8 at Grammarly, and as I ramp up here I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes executive onboarding work (or not). I’ve guided many leaders through their first months as a manager, mentor, or advisor. And unfortunately, a lot of exec transitions fall short. Dropping into a well-established team is tricky, but when done well, proper onboarding creates the foundation for success. Three exec onboarding principles I’ve found crucial: 1️⃣ No one knows who you are... and they are going to be skeptical. Leadership welcomed you warmly, but your team needs time to form their own opinions. Your hiring manager’s advocacy doesn’t automatically transfer to everyone else. You'll need to build credibility from scratch. 2️⃣ You have more to learn than you think. And no, you can't learn it later. There's a brief window when everyone expects you to ask questions. Use it! Too many execs miss this chance and later struggle to fill knowledge gaps discreetly. Be a sponge—absorb the product, meeting cadence, company acronyms, and decision-making processes now, when it’s okay to not know. It gets much harder once you’re expected to already know everything. 3️⃣ What the leader thinks is broken isn't what everyone else thinks is broken. You were hired to solve specific problems, but your team has a different list of pain points. Your job is to understand and address both perspectives. Seeing where these top-down and bottom-up views overlap (or clash) usually points to what you should tackle first. My approach and advice: resist the urge to prove yourself quickly. Instead, spend these first 8 weeks learning. And it’s inevitable that urgent issues will constantly compete for your attention, so fill your calendar with learning activities first, before daily priorities take over. I have a full guide with more detailed exec onboarding learnings, as well as a template for creating your learning plan in Coda: https://lnkd.in/g86R3NS

Most companies frontload onboarding into the first week, then wonder why great hires quit after 2 months. Here's a framework that fixes this: THE 30/60/90 ONBOARDING PLAN Days 0-30: Orientation → Belonging Goal: Make them feel part of something - Welcome kit + preboarding touchpoints - Set clear role expectations and team charter - Buddy system + manager syncs Quick Win: Schedule a values-aligned storytelling session with a company founder Days 31-60: Integration → Clarity Goal: Understand how their work fits - Role-specific training - First project delivery - Cross-functional intros Quick Win: Create a "map of influence" showing who to talk to and when Days 61-90: Acceleration → Impact Goal: Start delivering results - Feedback loop with manager - Career path preview - Culture check-in + stay conversation Quick Win: Ask "What's one thing you'd change about our onboarding?" Why this works: - Week 1 onboarding creates anxiety relief but not engagement. - 30-day onboarding builds belonging but lacks direction. - 90-day onboarding creates clarity, confidence, and measurable impact. Most companies frontload everything into the first few days, then abandon new hires to figure it out. The result? Talented people leave because they never felt integrated or clear on their impact. TAKEAWAY: Your onboarding process is a 90-day audition. Not just for the new hire to prove themselves. For your company to prove it's worth staying. The companies with the best retention don't just hire great people. They systematically integrate them into something they want to be part of.

The first few weeks of someone’s job are more revealing than most people realize. Before a new hire knows your full tech stack or process map, they’re already learning something else: → How decisions are made → How people communicate → What gets prioritized—and what doesn’t Onboarding is a mirror. It reflects the culture you’ve built—not the one you’ve written down. When managers are present, check in consistently, and clarify expectations, that sends a signal: You matter. We value your growth. We’re in this with you. But when a new hire is left to guess, to wonder, to figure things out alone… that sends a signal too. The question isn’t whether you’re onboarding someone. It’s what kind of culture you’re onboarding them into.

No one gets into HR because they love writing policies. Let’s be honest. → Workflows. → SOPs. → Checklists. They can feel boring. You would rather coach a leader. Solve a messy employee issue. Roll out a new initiative. Creating documentation feels slow. Unseen. Unexciting. But here is the truth. Clear process protects people. When there is no workflow, decisions become personal. When there is no policy, managers improvise. When there is no SOP, employees guess. And guessing is risky. I once worked with a company that had no written onboarding process. Each manager did it “their way.” Some new hires got full training. Others got a laptop and a quick intro. One employee missed a required compliance training. No one tracked it. Six months later, it became a legal concern. Was it malicious? No. It was messy. We built a simple onboarding checklist. Defined who owned each step. Added a tracking sheet. Nothing fancy. Just clear. Within one quarter: • Managers stopped scrambling. • New hires had the same experience. • Compliance gaps disappeared. The work was not glamorous. But it created fairness. And fairness builds trust. As you grow in your HR career, remember, process matters. Executives do not just reward creativity. They reward stability. They look for people who reduce risk. Who create consistency. Who think ahead. Process is not about control. It is about clarity. It keeps managers aligned. It keeps employees safe. It keeps you out of reactive mode. So the next time you are tempted to skip documentation because it feels boring, pause. Ask yourself: Is this task dull, or is it protecting someone? Where in your HR function could a simple workflow prevent your next headache? If this resonated, share it with another HR pro in your network who needs the reminder. ♻️ I appreciate 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 repost. 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗛𝗥 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀? Click the "𝗩𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗺𝘆 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿" link below my name for weekly tips to elevate your career! #HumanResources #HRLeadership #PeopleOperations

When Amerisure Insurance set out to modernize their IT operations, they saw an opportunity to rethink how the entire organization gets work done. They evaluated the options, including enterprise platforms that would have required a dedicated team to manage, and landed on Freshservice specifically because they wanted AI built into the system, not added on top of it. What happened next is the part I keep thinking about. Their IT analyst, Daniel McMaster, didn’t just fix IT. He built out 50+ custom workflows, brought legal, HR, underwriting, marketing, and facilities onto the same system, and deployed Freddy AI Insights to surface anomalies he never would have caught manually. One line says it all: "I used to spend an hour every morning looking at ticket trends. Now I spend three minutes with Freddy Insights — and I get better data." It’s the expansion pattern that stays with me. IT fixed its own house, and the rest of the business followed. Not because they were pushed, but because the results spoke for themselves. One platform, scaling across the enterprise without adding headcount or operational complexity. Result: 4,000+ hours saved in 2025. Employee onboarding resolution dropped from 118 hours to 4. Not AI as a moonshot. AI as the thing that gives you your morning back, and makes the whole organization run better while it does it. Read the full story: https://lnkd.in/e6Qnjnei #Freshworks #Amerisure #AI

Onboarding is killing your velocity, not hiring. Most #GCCs obsess over offer rollouts and interview velocity. Then Day 1 arrives and your star hire spends 2 weeks hunting VPN tokens, tool access and “who owns what.” That’s not culture; that’s a latency tax. What to fix (and what to measure): Time to First Meaningful Commit (TTFMC): Target: ≤ 7 days for engineers; ≤ 10 days for analysts to ship a first insight. If you don’t track it, you’re guessing. Access in One Hour, Not One Week: Pre-provision prod-safe sandboxes, repos, dashboards, experiment tools. If it needs an email chain, it needs a policy change. Onboarding Pods, Not Orientation Decks: Pair every new hire with a buddy + product owner + SRE for 14 days. Goal: one real task shipped, one pager rotation shadowed. 90-Day “Evidence > Excuses” Plan: Week 1: ship something tiny. Week 2–4: own a bug class or dashboard. Day 30–90: lead one small change end-to-end (with a post-ship write-up). Kill the Tool Maze: Publish a single launcher (links, creds, APIs, logs, style guides). If your new hire needs to ask “where is X?” twice, the doc is broken. Scoreboard to make this real (post it publicly in the #GCC): TTFMC median (weekly) % new hires shipping in Week 1 Access SLA met in 60 minutes Drop-off in “where is…” tickets after 30 days Bottom line: If Day 1–30 is chaos, your “cost arbitrage” evaporates into backfills and burnout. Make onboarding a product. Ship value in Week 1. Everything else is theatre