It’s Monday morning. Your new hire arrives for their first day, eager and ready to start.
There’s just one problem: the person who was supposed to train them called in sick.
Now what?
You know the scramble that follows. The apologetic texts to the new employee. The hastily reassigned tasks to whoever happens to be available. The new hire is sitting awkwardly at their desk, unsure what to do, while you figure out plan B for your onboarding process. Maybe you postpone their start. Maybe you cobble together a half-version of what training was supposed to look like. Maybe you just hope for the best.
This isn’t just an inconvenient moment. It’s a red flag that your onboarding is more fragile than you realize.
And before you think this only happens with entry-level positions or small potatoes hires, let me tell you a story.
Onboarding Failures Aren’t Just for the Little Guy
I was once brought in to completely overhaul an organization’s onboarding process. The reason? Their newly hired CEO had been sent to the wrong building for a scheduled business tour. He showed up, ready to meet the team and learn about operations. And then he waited. For over two hours. Because nobody at the actual facility knew he was coming.
Sure, he could have called someone. Made a fuss. Pulled rank. But he didn’t. He wanted to see what the real experience was like for people coming into the organization. He got his answer. It was a mess.
Think about that for a second. This wasn’t some hourly employee getting lost on their first day. This was the CEO. And the onboarding process was so fragile, so dependent on one person remembering to communicate the details, that even he fell through the cracks.
If it can happen to a CEO, it’s definitely happening to your regular new hires. They’re just less likely to tell you about it.
Why Informal Onboarding Stops Working
When your company was smaller, informal onboarding worked fine. The owner or a trusted employee showed new hires the ropes. It felt personal, flexible, and efficient. No need for complex systems or documentation.
What worked then won’t work now as your business model changes.
- It breaks down when your onboarding person gets promoted and doesn’t have time anymore.
- It breaks down when they quit and take all that knowledge with them.
- It breaks down when you need to hire multiple people at once and one person can’t train them all.
- It breaks down when you expand to multiple locations or add remote team members.
What feels like “keeping things small and personal” is actually creating a dangerous dependency on one person’s availability, energy, and institutional knowledge.
Warning Signs Your Onboarding Process Depends on One Person
Not sure if your onboarding process has a single point of failure? Here’s how to tell.
You can’t answer basic questions without naming a person. If someone asks “What happens on a new hire’s first day?” and your answer is “Oh, Sarah handles all that,” that’s your answer. The process shouldn’t require a specific person’s name.
Training quality varies wildly. Some new hires get comprehensive onboarding. Others get whatever the trainer had time for that week. The experience depends entirely on who’s available and what else is happening.
Nobody else can do it “right”. You’ve tried having other people train new hires when your usual person wasn’t available. But things get missed. Questions go unanswered. Only one person “really knows how to do it right.”
You’re personally exhausted. If you’re the onboarding person, you can’t take time off during new hire weeks. You can’t focus on other priorities. You can’t delegate because nobody else knows the full picture. You’ve become the bottleneck.
What Most Businesses Try (That Doesn’t Work)
The cross-training trap. You train a backup person so you’re not completely dependent on one employee. Sounds logical. But now you have two single points of failure instead of one. When they’re both unavailable, in the same meeting, both on vacation, or one has left the company, you’re back where you started.
The “just document it” myth. You create an onboarding process manual. Write down all the steps. Put it in a shared folder. Problem solved, right? Except the manual sits there unused because it doesn’t actually guide someone through the process. It’s a reference document, not a system. Documentation alone isn’t enough.
The “make it someone else’s problem” shuffle. You assign onboarding to a different person, hoping a fresh start will fix things. But without changing the structure, you’ve just moved the dependency. The new trainer becomes just as overwhelmed and indispensable as the last one.
Here’s what these failed solutions have in common: they focus on information transfer instead of infrastructure building.
Information is what’s in someone’s head or written in a document. Infrastructure is the framework that ensures onboarding happens consistently regardless of who’s available. Complete with accountability systems, progress tracking, clear handoffs, and processes anyone can follow.
That’s what actually solves the problem.
Not more training.
Not better documentation.
Infrastructure.
And here’s why building that infrastructure matters more than most businesses realize.
What’s at Stake When Onboarding Has a Single Point of Failure
When your onboarding process depends on one person, you’re risking more than just a bad first week.
Your ability to scale is capped. You can’t grow faster than your onboarding person can train people. Want to hire three people next month instead of one? Planning to expand to a second location? Your growth is held hostage by one person’s capacity.
Your retention rates are a gamble. The employees who get great training during a slow week succeed and stay. The ones who get the rushed version during your busy season struggle and start looking for other jobs. You’re leaving retention to chance.
Your competitive edge erodes. While you’re scrambling to cover training when someone’s out, your competitors are running structured programs that make new hires productive faster. They’re building reputations as great places to work. They’re hiring faster and losing fewer people.
Consider this – every time you lose a new hire in their first 90 days because onboarding was chaotic, you’re not just losing that person. You’re losing the credibility you invested in recruiting them, the time you invested in hiring them, the productivity you counted on, and the money you spent on background checks and equipment. Then you get to start over (YAY!), posting the job, reviewing resumes, conducting interviews…while your team stays short-handed.
A Better Reality
Here’s what it looks like when you fix this:
It’s Monday morning. Your onboarding person texts you: they’re sick and can’t train the new hire today. But this time? You don’t panic. You don’t scramble to find coverage or apologize to the new hire.
You open your onboarding system, reassign the first-day checklist to the designated back-up, and the new hire gets the exact same experience they would have gotten anyway. All the critical pieces happen. Nothing gets missed.
By Tuesday, they’re already productive. By their first Friday, they’re telling their friends this is the most organized company they’ve ever worked for. And you? You’re not exhausted. You’re not putting out fires. You’re actually working on growing your business.
That’s what infrastructure does.
Not more training. Not better documentation. Infrastructure – the framework that ensures onboarding happens consistently regardless of who’s available.
The Real Question
Let’s run a little thought exercise, shall we? If you removed your onboarding person from the equation tomorrow, would new hires still get everything they need to succeed?
Could someone else step in and execute the process with confidence? Would the quality stay consistent? Would all the critical pieces still happen?
If the honest answer is no, you already know what needs to change.
The question is: will you fix it before or after it costs you another good hire?
Not sure where to start?
We offer a free onboarding assessment to help you identify your single points of failure and map out what a more resilient system would look like for your organization. No sales pitch, just a practical conversation about what’s working and what’s not.
