The importance of ramping
Ramping closes the gap between “hired” and “high-performing.” By sequencing the right people, processes, tools, and knowledge, it ensures every new hire has a clear roadmap supported by their manager and key stakeholders.
The Enboarder solution
Enboarder offers two key ways to enable your new hires through more targeted onboarding - Role-Specific Onboarding and Individualized Ramping Plans.
Role-Specific onboarding enables your HR and L&D teams to build personalized and scalable role-specific onboarding programs with our intelligent AI-driven Journey Builder. Think of these as the look and feel of the typical workflows that you know and love, but supercharged with extra prompts and best practices to allow the workflow content to go much deeper into role-specific needs.
Individualized ramping plans help your people managers lead functional onboarding with an Agentic Journey Builder, focusing on role readiness, 30-60-90 day performance goals, and internal networking.
Key Benefits:
1. Faster Time-to-Productivity
New hires ramp up faster with role-aware, personalized plans designed around their unique responsibilities—not generic checklists.
2. Built-in Stakeholder Orchestration
Ramping prompts managers, buddies, and subject matter experts (SMEs) to engage at the right moments, ensuring consistent support and collaboration.
3. Adaptable Over Time
As progress is tracked, managers can monitor performance, adjust pacing, and refine activities so the plan stays relevant and effective.
4. Consistent, Repeatable Excellence
Ramping provides a scalable framework that delivers a consistent, high-quality onboarding experience across roles, departments, and regions.
Choosing Between Role-Specific Onboarding Journeys and Individualized Ramping Plans
Choose the ramping approach that best fits your onboarding approach:
Role-specific onboarding journeys: Reusable workflows (frameworks) for a job family or common position (e.g., Sales Rep, Customer Support).
Individualized ramping plans: Tailored to a specific new hire’s goals, projects, and onboarding context.
Scenario | Individualized Ramping Plans | Role-Specific Onboarding Journeys |
Goal | Empower managers to review, edit, and own their new hire’s ramp plan before it starts. | Build scalable, competency-based onboarding workflows for each role or function. |
Primary Owner | Manager (triggered automatically when a new hire is launched into their onboarding workflow). | L&D / HR Program Owner (workflow built once, reused for many roles). |
Trigger Point | When the candidate is marked as Hired in the ATS or manually launched into a workflow. | When the new hire is launched into workflow, either manually or through an integration. |
Best For | Individual new hires — personalized, editable ramp plans created from a job description or a manager uploading their existing ramp plan. | Standardizing onboarding for each role (e.g., “Sales Engineer”, “Store Manager”) with competencies, timing, and learning resources. |
Created By | Using Enboarder's Role analysis agent. | Enboarder admins via Role-Specific Onboarding AI Workflow Builder |
Output | 90-day ramping plan: Goals → Milestones → Activities → Tasks with manager approval flow. | Workflow skeleton: Phased sequences with stakeholders, modules, timing, and learning content that can be edited by system admins. |
Integration Point | Connected to ATS → auto-launches per new hire. Also connected to AI Document Library → pulls job descriptions. | Connected to AI Document Library → pulls job descriptions and learning content to build workflows. |
Why It Exists | Keeps managers accountable and ensures every plan reflects real-world role expectations. | Helps companies build structured, scalable, and competency-driven journeys across all roles. |
Before You Start
These steps apply whether you’re creating individualized ramping plans or role-specific onboarding journeys.
1. Confirm Core Fields
Make sure these key fields (Custom Fields, Categories, Locations and Profile Fields) are available in Enboarder (either synced from your ATS or added via CSV/manual upload):
First Name / Last Name (standard)
Work Email
Start Date / Key Milestones (standard)
Job Position (or your preferred synonym, such as Role or Job Title)
Department / Location
Direct Manager
2. Set Up Stakeholders
Set up stakeholder roles so they’re reusable across all workflows.
Go to Settings → General Setup → Stakeholders
Add common roles such as Direct Manager, Buddy, SME, HR, IT
Choose:
Variable stakeholders – for people who change per employee (e.g., Direct Manager)
Fixed stakeholders – for consistent recipients (e.g., it@company.com)
NOTE: For personalized ramp plans, you will need to have one of these stakeholder labels for the process to function correctly. These are the role types that will be assigned the process of reviewing and confirming the ramp plan for the new hire:
Manager
Direct Manager
Supervisor
Hiring Manager
3. Collect Role Inputs
Gather the information and resources that will shape your ramping workflow and ramping plan, and upload these into the AI Document Library.
For role-specific onboarding journeys, you will need
Job descriptions (when not integrated with your ATS)
Team or project documentation
Key tools and system access guides
Learning resources and onboarding materials
Compliance or required training modules
For individualized ramp plans, you will need to upload:
Job descriptions (when not integrated with your ATS)
Role-Specific Onboarding Journeys
Click here for detailed setup instructions
Click here for detailed setup instructions
Role-Specific Onboarding goes beyond company-wide orientation (like compliance, culture, and core values). It involves providing targeted training, resources, and connections that are directly tied to the new hire's job function, department, and day-to-day responsibilities.
Step 1: Create a new journey
Add a new workflow, selecting Start with AI Journey Builder
Select the New hire enablement journey
You can then choose whether to Begin (which will see AI guide you through a series of questions to generate the workflow), or, you can Upload a document (recommended) which will provide a much more tailored experience based on your existing process. Here you can upload PDFs, Word Docs, and Excel files.
Step 2: AI guidance on workflow structure
If you have uploaded an existing role-specific onboarding template (recommended), the AI will analyze the template and provide recommendations on what the workflow structure could look like
The system will check if the assumption is correct on the type of role you are looking to create a workflow for:
The AI will look into the AI Document Library for a job description that you have uploaded that matches this role. If one exists, it will utilize this when designing the workflow. If a job description does not exist, then the AI assistant will prompt you to paste the job description in the chat
The AI assistant will then map what it can, and will ask for further clarification where needed
Once this is confirmed, it will ask a series of discovery questions to help enhance the workflow based on Enboarder's best practices
Once you have answered the discovery questions, a summary will be displayed, allowing for you to make any changes before the workflow starts to be built
Step 2: Review the journey that has been created and edit using AI
Once the system has generated the workflow (this should take 5 - 10 minutes), you are able to edit this workflow before saving it.
Once you're happy with this, simply click Finish at the top right of the screen. You will always be able to optimize your workflow in the future using the AI Optimizer
Step 3: Launch your new hires into the workflow as normal
It's that easy - you are ready to launch your new hires in a role-specific onboarding journey!
Role-Specific Onboarding Journeys FAQs
Role-Specific Onboarding Journeys FAQs
Do you need to have an onboarding plan uploaded?
No, you do not need to have an onboarding plan, however, if one is uploaded then much richer content will be created.
Can admins upload Job Descriptions in another language?
Currently only English is supported. In early 2026, we'll look to roll out support for French, Spanish and German
“Items not mappable” - what is the definition of that?
Items not mappable - anything that the AI thinks are pure back-end processes or reference material that don't fit well into a workflow.
If there are documents loaded into the AI library under 'Onboarding' - how do these interfere with the creating of the Role-Specific Onboarding Journey, if at all?
When creating the workflows, the AI looks into both folders, whereas Onboarding journeys only look in the Onboarding folder.
When we launch off a role-based journey vs an onboarding journey, is it possible for a new hire to go through both at the same time?
Both journeys can technically be triggered at the same time, as they are independent workflow types:
Onboarding Journeys = use_case_type = Onboarding
Role-Based Journeys = use_case_type = New Hire Enablement
Individualized Ramping Plans
Click here for detailed setup instructions
Click here for detailed setup instructions
To activate individualized ramping plans on a workflow:
Go to Workflow Settings → Enable Manager-Facing Ramp Plans and toggle this to On.
Choose notification timing — when should the Direct Manager receive the review notification?
7 days before start date: proactive preparation
On start date: real-time readiness
3. Ensure that the Use case type of the workflow is set to Onboarding
Once this is configured, when a candidate is marked as Hired in your ATS (or launched manually), Enboarder automatically:
Launches them into the HR Pre-Onboarding / Onboarding workflow that you have created - with the process flowing as normal
Sends the Direct Manager a notification to review and approve the ramping plan
💡 Tip: Enabling manager-facing plans gives managers early visibility and ownership of onboarding, ensuring plans are relevant, timely, and manager-approved before launch.
As the plan progresses:
Stakeholders receive nudges (similarly to how they do through the workflow experience)
Activities unlock over time
HR and managers can track progress and adjust pacing as needed.
Path 1 — Ramping with an ATS Integration (Recommended)
When to Use This
Choose this path if you want new hire ramping plans to launch automatically as soon as a candidate accepts their offer in your ATS.
What It Enables
Zero manual data entry — all data syncs directly from your ATS
Auto-triggers when a candidate reaches a defined stage (e.g., Hired)
End-to-end automation from ATS → Plan generation → Manager approval → New hire share
Step 1: Connect Your ATS to Enboarder
Authenticate your ATS in Settings > Apps & Integrations → ATS.
Select your trigger stage (e.g., Offer Accepted or Hired, dependent on your ATS configuration).
Map your fields — align ATS fields with Enboarder fields used in plans and stakeholder details.
Example: Job Position → Job Position, Hiring Manager → Direct Manager, Hire Date Date → Start Date
Step 2: Prepare Your Ramping Foundations in Enboarder
Content & Resources:
Upload relevant documents, links, and tools for processes, compliance, and onboarding references in the AI Document Library.Notifications:
Confirm that the correct workflows are active and contain the relevant sequences and stakeholders that you have designed.
Path 2 — Individualized Ramp Plans Without an ATS Integration (CSV / Manual)
When to Use This Path
Use this option if:
You don’t have (or prefer not to use) an ATS connection.
You’re piloting Ramping with a small or controlled group of new hires.
What This Setup Enables
Fast start via CSV upload or manual entry
Full plan quality and stakeholder orchestration — just without automated data sync
Step 1: Set Up Your Data Inputs
Choose one of the following methods to add new hires:
Option 1: CSV Upload
Prepare a CSV file with the following columns:
First Name
Last Name
Work Email
Job Position (or synonym such as Role or Title)
Start Date
Manager Email
Department
Location
Then upload it directly in Settings → Apps & Integrations → Manager Employees in Workflows > Upload CSV.
Option 2: Manual Add
Add each new hire directly in Workflows > Launch workflow, filling in the same fields as above.
💡 Tip: Use the field “Job Position” consistently. You can rename its label (e.g., Role or Title) while keeping the same underlying field to ensure data consistency. Avoid creating duplicate or similar fields, as this can complicate future integrations or migrations
Triggering Individualized Ramp Plans
To trigger the individualized ramp plan, you will need to launch a new hire into the relevant workflow (this can be done in multiple ways, as shown HERE). This will then trigger a ramp plan notification to the manager, if the setting is activated in the workflow settings (as shown earlier in this article).
NOTE: If the Job Position field is not populated during workflow launch, a ramp plan will not be generated and the process will not begin.
Step 1: Manager Review Notification
Once a plan is generated, the manager receives a notification (email/SMS) prompting them to review the draft plan before it starts.
Why:
This ensures the plan reflects actual expectations for that role before the new hire ever sees it.
Benefit:
Managers feel ownership from the start and can make context-specific tweaks that increase engagement and alignment.
Step 2: Manager Views Plan
Managers can preview the plan instantly via a secure link—no login required.
If a manager needs to change timelines, add/remove activities, or update stakeholder details, they can log in to Enboarder to edit.
Why:
Editing requires authentication for security and traceability.
Benefit:
Managers can confidently personalize the plan while ensuring all changes are tracked.
Step 3: Manager approval required to start the plan
The manager must approve and start the plan before the new hire receives it.
Why:
This serves as a control point so the new hire only sees the version the manager endorses.
Benefit:
Guarantees quality, prevents premature launches, and signals to the new hire that their manager is invested in their success.
Step 4: Manager shares the plan with the new hire
Once approved, the manager can share the plan with the new hire directly from the preview screen or dashboard.
Why:
This makes the communication personal—“Your manager has shared your personalized enablement plan.”
Benefit:
Boosts trust and engagement. The handoff feels like a supportive gesture, not an automated notification.
Step 5: Manager can change the new hire’s buddy
During review or later in the plan, the manager can update or reassign the Buddy role.
Why:
Buddies may change if someone leaves, is unavailable, or if a better fit emerges.
Benefit:
Keeps the social integration element alive and relevant, ensuring the new hire always has a reliable go-to person.
Individual Ramping Plan Reporting Metrics 📈
Enboarder’s Individualized Ramping Plan reporting gives managers real-time visibility into how each new hire is progressing across their onboarding journey — from Foundation to Impact.
It surfaces key execution signals like goal completion, overdue milestones, and time-to-first-outcome, allowing managers to intervene early, coach effectively, and shorten the new hire’s path to productivity.
🎯 Purpose
Enable managers and HR to:
Track real progress, not just completion clicks.
Spot delays or stuck goals quickly.
Measure readiness in terms of outcomes achieved.
Have meaningful 1:1 conversations using structured ramp data.
All reporting metrics follow consistent logic across roles and plans to ensure comparability and transparency.
📈 Key Metrics and Formulas
📈 Key Metrics and Formulas
1️⃣ Ramping Progress (%)
Formula:
Completed activities ÷ (Sent activities – In Progress activities)
Definition:
Shows how far the new hire has progressed through their ramping journey. Each activity represents a time-based activity group (e.g., Week 1, Week 2).
Why it matters:
Gives managers a clear, single-number summary of ramping momentum.
2️⃣ Goal Completion (%)
Formula:
Completed Goals ÷ Total Goals
Definition:
Measures completion of core ramping goals, such as “Learn the Tools” or “Deliver First Outcome.”
Why it matters:
Shows the manager exactly how much of the role-specific ramp plan has been achieved.
3️⃣ Milestone Completion
Logic:
A milestone is complete only when all its child activities are complete.
An activity is complete only when all associated modules (Content, Form, Event, etc.) are complete.
Why it matters:
Ensures reporting reflects true execution, not just opened tasks.
4️⃣ Goal Overdue (Days)
Formula: Today’s Date – Goal Due Date (if not completed)
Display Example:
Overdue by 5 days
Why it matters:
Allows managers to focus coaching efforts on delayed goals that might affect productivity.
5️⃣ Goal Completion Delta
Formula:
Actual Completion Date – Goal Due Date
Definition:
Shows whether a goal was completed early (negative value) or late (positive value).
Why it matters:
Reveals execution discipline and helps identify patterns of delay across teams.
Status Color Coding:
Status | Meaning | Color |
✅ On Time | Activity or goal completed by due date | Green |
🟣 In Progress | Started but not yet completed | Purple |
⚪ Upcoming | Not yet started / scheduled | Grey |
🔴 Late | Due date passed without completion | Red
|
6️⃣ Phase-Level Productivity Progress
Each ramping plan follows a 3-phase progression aligned to the 30/60/90-day ramping model.
Phase | Duration | Example Goals | Represents |
Foundation | Days 1–30 | Understand the company, connect with people, learn tools & processes | Early readiness |
Contribution | Days 31–60 | Deliver your first outcome | Meaningful contribution |
Impact | Days 61–90 | Make a tangible team impact | Independent performance |
Formula per phase:
(Completed Goals in Phase ÷ Total Goals in Phase) × 100
Why it matters:
Allows managers and HR to see which stage of readiness the new hire has reached.
7️⃣ Time to First Outcome
Formula: Date(“Deliver Your First Outcome” Goal Completed) – Plan Start Date
Definition:
Measures how long it took for the new hire to achieve their first productive milestone (Goal 5, “Deliver Your First Outcome”).
If plan has not started or TTP goal is not completed:
“This ramping plan does not contain a goal marked as ‘First Outcome.’”
“Ramping plan has not yet started.”
Why it matters:
Quantifies how soon new hires start delivering value.
8️⃣ Last Week’s Activities
Logic: Displays activities from the previous 7 days based on the plan’s start date and timing offsets.
Why it matters:
Helps managers review what was completed last week and address blockers in their next 1:1.
9️⃣ Next Week’s Activities
Logic:
Shows activities scheduled for the next 7 days.
Why it matters:
Enables proactive preparation — managers can set expectations, assign support, and prevent delays.
💡 Tips for Managers
Use the Last Week and Next Week tiles to guide weekly 1:1s.
Review Goal Completion Delta to identify which areas consistently run late.
Track Time to First Outcome across hires to benchmark onboarding effectiveness.
Discuss Foundation → Contribution → Impact progress in team reviews.
Summary
These reports help managers focus on what matters most — progress, productivity, and performance signals — rather than activity noise.
By combining plan data, milestones, and timing, Enboarder enables you to:
Act early when delays appear.
Celebrate readiness milestones.
Continuously improve your onboarding playbook.
Individualized Ramping Plans FAQs
Individualized Ramping Plans FAQs
Can admins see the ramping plan and make edits?
The entire ramping initiative is based on the hypothesis that “functional onboarding” is the manager's responsibility. So, once a new hire is onboarded and has completed their company onboarding, they will move to “functional onboarding/ramping”. Managers can of course edit as needed.
How are we taking into consideration managers with multiple hires on a key date?
Managers will receive notifications for each new hire individually.
Does the Job position sync with the ATS?
Absolutely! We will look at the label match from the ATS, even if you change the name of this field.
Would this work without an integration?
Yes! Simply upload the job description in the AI Document Library and this will be function correctly.
Can a manager delegate a task to another leader or stakeholder in that same team?
Currently, managers cannot delegate the task to another stakeholder.
What is a “Failed” status on the ramping plans?
A “Failed” ramping plan indicates that the AI plan generation process did not complete successfully — typically because:
The Role Analysis or Experience Assessment agent didn’t return a structured output,
Mandatory context (e.g., Job Description, Manager input, or timeline) was missing, or
Do reminders go out about ramping plan notifications?
Automated reminders are sent by the system. It follows the account level settings for reminders.
Where does the ramping plan get it’s content?
Data from the ATS, job description and AI Document Library and account data
Will the plans be branded in the customers colour?
The branding follows Enboarder's branding.
Can admins upload Job Descriptions in another language?
Currently, English is supported, with German, Spanish and French coming in 2026.
If you don’t input the Job Position field at workflow launch, what happens?
No individualised ramping plan will be triggered.
Is it in the same queue of sequences as the Preboarding journey i.e. if their is any catch up (it didn't seem like it was)?
It will play catch-up the same way that the pre-boarding workflows function.
You’re all set. Whether you flow hires in from an ATS or upload them yourself, Enboarder New Hire Enablement gives every new hire a clear, supported path to productivity—while giving managers and HR the visibility and control to adapt as they grow.
Note on Availability: The New Hire Enablement product is available as an optional add-on solution and is included in the Lead The Market pricing tier. Please reach out to your account team if you'd like to learn more about this product and have it activated on your account.