Protecting Your Business

Risk Mitigation During Onboarding

Business Risks

• Premature Hiring:  The false sense of urgency is ruining everyone’s lives—including your own. Rushing to hire without proper planning increases the chance of picking the wrong candidate or delivering a chaotic onboarding experience that sets them up to fail. Before you extend that offer, ask yourself: Do we have the time, tools, and structure in place to onboard someone well? Is this the right role to hire for? Hiring without a plan doesn’t just affect the new employee—it disrupts your team, drains resources, and often leads to avoidable turnover.

• Wasted Time = Lost Focus: When onboarding is rushed or incomplete, your new hire takes longer to ramp up—and guess who ends up filling the gaps? You and your team do. That’s time you could be spending on strategy, generating revenue, or growing the business. Invest a little more upfront to save hours (and headaches) later.

• Expectation Misalignment: Every company has different norms. What worked at a previous job might not fly at yours. If expectations around performance, communication, or priorities aren’t clearly set early on, you risk frustration on both sides.

• Bad Hire: Onboarding isn’t just orientation—it’s also part of evaluating fit. If someone isn’t right for the role, early intervention is key.

  • Dragging out the process post-probation can be costly. Always:

    • Set expectations

    • Assess performance

    • Coach for improvement

    • Act quickly if necessary

  • But don’t skip the coaching step—you might salvage a great hire who just needed clearer direction.

• Poor First Impressions: New hires are excited to make an impact. If onboarding is messy, disorganized, or frustrating, they’ll question their decision—and may start job hunting again. This not only doubles your hiring cost but also sends a bad signal to the rest of your team - that there are better opportunities elsewhere. Flip the script by creating a smooth, confident onboarding experience that turns new hires into advocates that tell your current team why this job is better than their last.

• Culture Erosion: Failing to introduce new hires to your values, norms, and team can lead to isolation, misalignment, and culture drift. Onboarding is where culture is transferred—don’t skip it.

HR & Legal Risks

• Weak Contracts = Expensive Exits: If your employment agreements aren’t solid, and someone challenges a termination, you could be subject to common law notice periods—costly and open to court interpretation.

• Policies You Can’t Enforce: Without written agreements that refer to your handbook enforcing company policies becomes harder.

 IT & Security Risks

• Wrong Equipment or Licenses: Every role needs the right tools. Engineers, marketers, accountants—they all have different IT needs. Buying the wrong device causes daily frustration and the wrong licenses can even result in compliance costs if audited.

• Overexposed Access: It’s tempting to give new hires full access to avoid delays, but unrestricted access can be dangerous.

  • Example: An admin assistant with full inbox permissions could impersonate you without your knowledge. Send on behalf could be a better option for you.

  • Example: An IT admin using the same login for daily work and system access could compromise your entire infrastructure if they fall for a phishing email.

  • Rule of thumb: Trust your people, but always follow the rule of “least privilege” - each user is set up with the appropriate amount of access to files, folders, and data that they need to do their jobs and nothing more.

• Avoidable Delays: When a new hire doesn’t have their computer or system access on day one, they can’t do their job—and you’re paying them to wait. It’s also frustrating for them and sends a bad cultural signal.

• Cyber Security: Without training and clear tech policies, team members may accidentally put your business at risk. If expectations weren’t clearly set, and the training to be successful wasn’t provided, how can you hold them accountable? Data breaches, phishing attacks, and unlicensed software use are avoidable risks.