Agentic onboarding, human-approved
New hires arrive to a plan. Otto drafts it. You approve it.
In a small company, onboarding usually lives in someone's head: a first day assembled from memory, a laptop nobody ordered, paperwork chased for weeks. Otto HR turns it into a checklist that actually runs — reusable templates where every task has an owner, a category and a due day counted from the start date, drafted by Otto when you don't want to start from a blank page. The new hire, their manager, their buddy and HR each see their part. Nothing goes live until you approve it.
4
Task owners: new hire, manager, buddy, HR
2
Reminders per task — then silence
0
Spreadsheets running the first day
Why Otto
Onboard like a company with an HR department. Without hiring one.
01
Templates, not memory
The first day stops being reassembled from scratch for every hire. A template holds the tasks — each with an owner, a category and a due day counted from the start date — and any task can carry the document it is about: the handbook, the equipment form, the policy to read. Start an onboarding and the whole plan is dated to that hire's first day.
02
Every task has one owner
Tasks route to the new hire, their manager, an onboarding buddy or HR — never to "everyone". The buddy is emailed the moment they are assigned, so the assignment cannot go stale in silence. Swap the buddy or the manager mid-process and their open tasks move to the new person instantly.
03
One record from offer to payroll
Onboarding runs on the same employee record that payroll and time off read, so day one does not end with re-typing the new hire into three other systems. By the time the checklist finishes, the record is already where the rest of HR happens — pay, leave, documents.
How it works
From signed offer to a finished first month.
A checklist Otto can draft
Build a template yourself, or describe the role and let Otto draft the whole checklist — tasks, owners, categories, due days — in your language, as an editable draft. Nothing is saved until you have read it and said so. Attach a reference document to any task, and let task copy carry each new hire's own name and role instead of a placeholder.
How many vacation days does Deniz have left?
The right task lands on the right person
Every task belongs to the new hire, their manager, an onboarding buddy or HR. Assign a buddy and they are emailed with what is on their plate. Change the buddy or the manager later and open tasks follow the new owner at once. When one hire needs different dates or owners, override just that hire — the template every other onboarding uses stays untouched.
Alex Morgan
Product Designer · day one
Sign employment contract
HR · e-signature
Upload ID & bank details
Employee
Set up laptop & accounts
IT
Intro meeting with the team
Manager
The new hire opens a plan, not a blank portal
In the employee portal, the new hire sees their own checklist grouped into Day 1, Week 1 and Month 1, every task dated from their start date. Buddies and managers see the tasks they hold for someone else on the same pages. Everyone ticks off their part, and every completion records who did it.
Good morning, Deniz
Answered without asking HR
What is late finds you
The onboarding queue shows HR every open HR task across all running onboardings, overdue first, each row naming the hire — including manager tasks that currently resolve to nobody, so no task can go invisible. Owners are nudged by email the day before a task falls due and once more if it slips: two reminders per task, then silence, never a daily drip.
Company overview
This monthFrequently asked questions
Onboarding software turns a new hire's first weeks into a tracked checklist instead of a scramble: paperwork, equipment, training and introductions, each with an owner and a date. In a small business nobody owns onboarding full-time, so Otto HR makes the category agentic — Otto drafts the checklist, routes every task to the new hire, their manager, a buddy or HR, and reminds owners before things slip, while a person approves the plan and every change to it.
Four kinds of work, whoever runs them: documentation (contract, IDs, payroll details), setup (accounts, equipment, access), training (the tools and rules of the job) and introductions (the team, the buddy, the first one-on-ones). Those four are exactly the task categories an Otto HR template holds, plus a catch-all for everything else. Each task also carries its owner and a due day counted from the start date, and can carry the document it refers to — so the checklist is the plan itself, not a reminder to go make one.
Longer than the first day. The parts that decide whether a hire sticks — training, real work, early feedback — live in the weeks after it. Otto HR groups the new hire's portal checklist into Day 1, Week 1 and Month 1, with every task dated from their start date, so the first month has a visible shape instead of tapering into silence. Reminders carry the tail: each task nudges its owner the day before it is due and once if it slips, so a week-three task does not quietly die.
A teammate — deliberately not the manager — whom a new hire can ask the questions that feel too small for a boss. In Otto HR the buddy is part of the system rather than a good intention: templates route tasks to the buddy, the buddy is emailed the moment they are assigned, and they see their buddy tasks in their own portal next to their own work. If the buddy changes mid-onboarding, open buddy tasks move to the new person instantly.
Yes — with a person between the draft and reality. Ask Otto for an onboarding template and it drafts the whole thing in your language: tasks, owners, categories, due days, ready to edit. It can also personalize task copy with each new hire's name and role. What it cannot do is put a checklist into effect on its own: a draft becomes a template only when you save it, and an onboarding starts only when you start it. That is the shape of everything Otto does — the agent prepares, a person approves.
Agentic onboarding, human-approved
Otto preps the first day. You do the welcome.
Create a workspace, ask Otto to draft your first onboarding template, and route the tasks — new hire, manager, buddy, HR. The next start date arrives with a plan. No credit card required.