Pre-onboarding made simple
Between signing the contract and day one, communication can go quiet. Then day one hits and everything happens at once: laptop, accounts, tools, team, office, paperwork.
Half of it could have been handled earlier.
Why onboarding breaks before day one
Most companies know pre-onboarding is useful. Most still skip it. The blocker: new hires don’t have access to company systems yet.
No Slack, no corporate email, no VPN, no intranet.
If you want to send something before day one, you’re stuck with a personal email address. That means PDFs, maybe a link to the intranet (which won’t work because their account doesn’t exist yet), or nothing at all because the friction is too high.
Some companies buy dedicated onboarding software. It can work well, but it costs money and takes time to configure. Smaller teams may only need a simple page and a clear handoff into their internal systems.
What new hires actually need to know
The questions are predictable. Most come up in week one:
Where’s the office? How do I get there? Is there a dress code? What time do I show up on day one? Who’s on my team? Who’s my buddy? What tools does the team use? Is there a handbook? Where’s the cafeteria menu?
None of these are sensitive. None need a company account.
A simple solution that works
Create a page with the basics, accessible without login. A Notion page with “Share to web,” a simple website, a Google Doc with read access. The platform doesn’t matter.
What goes on it: welcome message, logistics for day one (time, location, who to contact), team names and photos, the tools you’ll be using, and links that work without login (cafeteria, parking, directions).
The problem: the link is long, ugly, and hard to remember.
Add Lora when workspace access is ready
Before the new hire has a Lora account and workspace membership, send the public page’s direct URL. A Lora shortcut—including one set to Unlisted—does not bypass Lora sign-in or workspace access.
Once the invitation can be accepted, create a /welcome shortcut and point it to the same onboarding page. Your follow-up can explain that after joining the workspace, the new hire can type short, press Space, and enter welcome.
Want to personalize? Create individual shortcuts for each person: /welcome-anna can point to a page with Anna’s team, buddy, and office location. Use appropriate visibility and avoid putting sensitive personal data on a public page.
The page can be set up quickly, and the shortcut becomes the durable internal address after access is provisioned.
After day one
The shortcut stays useful once they have their company account and are navigating the tool maze.
/handbook can open the employee handbook, /tools the tools overview, and /org-chart the org chart. New hires can use the same address-bar workflow for each one.
This can reduce routine questions in week one. A shortcut cannot answer everything, but it gives standard questions such as “Where’s the wiki?” or “How do I expense this?” a stable answer.
Who should do this
This works for teams that hire regularly enough to repeat the same explanations. Writing down the answers once and making them reachable through a shortcut can save time and frustration.
Putting the list together also forces you to review what already exists: which pages are stale, which links are dead, and which information is missing.
What to do now
Write down the questions new hires ask in their first week. Make a page that answers the non-sensitive ones and can be shared before login. Send its direct URL before account provisioning, then give it a Lora shortcut for use after the new hire joins the workspace.
Next time you hire someone, put the public URL in the pre-onboarding email and the shortcut in the workspace welcome. See if the “Where do I find…?” messages in week one go down.