How to Build an Employee Onboarding System That Multiplies Performance

Summary

Special Ops with Emma Rainville

Episode Summary: How to Build an Employee Onboarding System That Multiplies Performance

Date: October 1, 2025
Host: Emma Rainville
Guest: Thiago Sanginetti (COO, Shockwave)

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Overview

In this episode, Emma Rainville sits down with her operations lead, Thiago Sanginetti, at the Growth Hacking Live event in San Diego, to discuss a critical but often overlooked business process: employee onboarding. The conversation dives deep into how a well-structured onboarding system can multiply the performance and value of new hires—whether they’re employees, contractors, or remote team members. Emma and Thiago break down their proven strategies, the pitfalls to avoid, and share a practical onboarding checklist available to listeners.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Purpose and Power of Effective Onboarding

• Multiplying Value: Onboarding isn’t just about introductions—it’s about giving new hires the context and resources to contribute at a high level, quickly.
  • “When you onboard someone, you’re providing a lot of context and a lot of history. Give them three days to just absorb the context and that’s going to be a big multiplier as well. You can three times what any person can contribute to your company just by having a good onboarding.” — Thiago [00:09, 03:29]

2. Foundations of a Great Onboarding System

• Think Like a Host: Imagine onboarding as welcoming a guest—show them around, make them comfortable, and provide clarity.
  • “The first part for onboarding is to think about it like being a host to a guest… you would show them around, and that’s what you need to do digitally as well.” — Thiago [03:29, 04:15]
• Remote Adaptation: For distributed teams, “digital halls” replace physical walkarounds. A screen-share walkthrough or a recorded orientation is essential.
  • “For remote teams, you can’t walk them through the halls, but you can show them digital halls—your systems, platforms, and processes.” — Thiago [04:20]

3. Critical Resources for New Hires

• SOPs Are Key: Having accessible Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is the backbone of effective onboarding.
  • “Only an operator would ever say the star of the show is the standard operating procedure file… But you know you’re an operator when…” — Emma [05:34]
  • “If you don’t give [designers] the link and access to the brand assets on the first day, it’s so basic.” — Thiago [06:21]
• Access and Tools: Provide logins, assets, brand kits, essential files, and clear instructions on where to find what’s needed.
  • “You need to assign the task to the person who’s going to add them to the meetings, to the Slack channels… it’s maybe 45 days until they actually get [the right resources] if you don’t do this.” — Thiago [09:00]

4. Structuring the Onboarding Sequence

• Checklist for Each Role: Design a department-specific checklist before hiring. List out what must be given, by whom, and when.
  • “Would you agree that a checklist… should be designed before you even think of hiring someone?” — Emma [07:39]
• Collect Personal Info, Share Company Policies: Automate HR steps like forms for ID, documents, and sign-offs (e.g., DocuSign for policies/SOPs).
  • “You also need to get them to know what the policies of the company are. And you need to get that in signing.” — Thiago [08:12]

5. Meetings and Human Connection

• Frequent Early Check-ins: One-on-ones and team meetings ensure clarity, accelerate integration, and foster accountability.
  • “I like two or three [one-on-ones] for the first week, for the first two, three weeks; then once a week…and if they’re doing great, it could be a message check, then once a month.” — Thiago [10:29]
• Full Team Introductions: Even with small teams, meet everyone to build relationships and reduce silos.
  • “I want them meeting with every single person… I want you to know who everybody is and… find them should you need to.” — Emma [11:37]
• Video-First Culture: All standups are “face-to-face”—cameras on.
  • “Videos on, period. We’re a reminder… That’s not what we call it. It’s the morning face to face for us.” — Emma and Thiago [12:21–12:46]
• Rapport and Culture: Building trust and loyalty requires more than texts/emails.
  • “There’s a part of building rapport with your people… If you’re going to build loyalty and trust, it can’t be a relationship of text messages.” — Emma [13:14]

6. Additional Wisdom and Resources

• Allow Study Time: New hires need dedicated time to read, absorb, and watch training content.

  • “Give the new hire go study time… Pause for the first three days. If you don’t get them just into action the first day, give them three days to absorb the context.” — Thiago [16:10, 16:37]

• Recommended Reading:
  • Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
  • Superbosses by Sydney Finkelstein
  “There’s such a truth to the stories in there of how someone can underperform under one boss and be the star of a company under another boss… It’s because that person didn’t act like a boss, they acted like a mentor.” — Emma [14:21]

• Think Long-Term Retention

  • “You’re also competing for talent… If you make the role at your company more exciting, more valuable… you’re actually competing to get the best talent and keep the best.” — Thiago [15:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Context & Multiplier Effect:
  • “You can three times what any person can contribute to your company just by having a good onboarding.” — Thiago [03:29]
• On Ownership of Mistakes:
  • “‘Why would the problem be me? Why would it be my fault?’ Because it’s harder to fix ourselves.” — Emma & Thiago [06:46]
• On the Value of Intentionally Designed Onboarding:
  • “You go into all that work just to get someone in and just set them up for failure. You’re wasting resources.” — Thiago [15:56]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:09] – The multiplying effect of great onboarding
• [04:15] – Digital walkthroughs: onboarding remote hires
• [05:34] – The role of SOPs and giving access to critical resources
• [07:39] – Why you need an onboarding checklist customized per department
• [10:29] – Ideal first-week meeting cadence & building relationships
• [12:21] – Importance of face-to-face (video) meetings for remote teams
• [14:21] – Book recommendations for managers transitioning to people leadership
• [16:10] – Give new hires time to study and absorb information

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Actionable Takeaways

• Develop a role-specific onboarding checklist before hiring.
• Schedule a digital walkthrough (video call or screen-share) to introduce systems and company context.
• Share all essential resources (SOPs, brand assets, logins) on Day 1.
• Automate administrative onboarding (policies, Docusign, HR forms).
• Set clear expectations: have new hires confirm receipt and access of all resources.
• Build human connection early with team introductions and daily face-to-face meetings.
• Allow the first three days primarily for context-absorption and self-study.
• Reference recommended books to grow your management muscle: Multipliers, Superbosses.

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For the full playbook and Hiago's onboarding checklist, visit specialopspodcast.com.

Transcript

[A]

You've changed a lot at Shockwave. Talk to me about the way companies should onboard so that you can multiply the amount that role can do.

[B]

I think the keyword is multiply. When you onboard someone, you're providing a lot of context and you're providing a lot of history. Give them three days to just absorb the context and that's going to be a big multiplier as well you can three times. But any person can contribute to your company just by having a good onboarding. And I think the first part for onboarding is to think about it like.

[A]

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Special Ops Podcast. I'm Emma Rainville, your host. I'm thrilled. Today we are here in sunny San Diego for the Growth Hacking Live event. For those of you who don't know what that is, one of our clients, our longest running favorite client, Perry Belcher, is doing a very large, very amazing event here in San Diego. We which allowed our team to get together and do some podcasts. So today, for the first time ever, dun dun, dun, we have Thiago. For those of you who know about Thiago, because I've talked about him on the podcast so much and those of you who worked with us have gotten to work with him. But for those of you who don't, Tiago, tell people who you are and what you do.

[B]

All right, thank you, Emma. I'm Tiago Sanginetti. I'm from Argentina and I've been an operator or building up to be an operator for eight year, operator for four years. And I love, I really love and have a passion for bringing clarity into company systems and operations, bringing efficiency and I love working with visionary entrepreneurs as well.

[A]

I love that. And you've been with Shockwave?

[B]

I've been two years. We've met each other three years ago. I was mentored by you, which is, was a huge honor for you and well, I handle our operations.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I work side by side with you, with Richard and also provide operations for two of our clients.

[A]

Awesome. So that's Tiago. Today we're going to be talking about multiplying the value of your employees through proper onboarding. This goes for regular, full time contractors, employees, Remote international works for everything. Thiago has made you an onboarding checklist. You can find that over in our visionary vault. You can sign up for that totally free. We never try and sell you anything and there's lots of resources there. Www.special ops podcast.com let's dive in. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So when you came on to Shockwave from day one, you were a value. I think a lot of that had more to do with the fact that I mentored you for a year as the COO of a rather large supplement company than it did my onboarding process. And so our onboarding process, you know, the shoe cobblers, kids never have shoes. And so you've changed a lot of that at Shockwave. And so I wanted to bring you on the podcast to talk about it because it is your strong suit. So talk to me about the way companies, particularly those in direct response in E commerce, but all should onboard so that you can multiply the amount that that role can do rather than keep them from being successful. Which, really, onboarding you could do either, definitely.

[B]

So I think the keyword is multiply. You can three times what any person can contribute to your company just by having a good, good onboarding. And I think that the first part for onboarding is to think about it like being a host to a guest.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

And I think that, of course, I'm millennial, so most of my experience has been digital.

[A]

You're a millennial, but you're not a millennial.

[B]

I have an old soul. You do have an old soul, which I love.

[A]

You're. You're an old school kind of thug, but you are a millennial. So everything's digital and nothing's paper for you.

[B]

Right. So let's think.

[A]

Curse of definitely isn't your thing.

[B]

No, no. So let's think about how you would onboard someone to the company. Just the first steps if it wasn't digital.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So you would show them around, and that's what you need to do digitally as well. You got to show them around.

[A]

Take it for remote teams. Right. Because you're not going to be able to. You can't walk them through the halls. Exactly. And show them where the water cooler, the bathrooms are. Yeah, we have a different way. Yes.

[B]

We have the digital holes, though. Right. So we have our systems, our platforms. Like, here's what people come to do. X. And yeah, we actually meant for this place to be for lion seed, but okay, we're using it for these now. So when you onboard someone, you're providing a lot of context and you're providing a lot of history. And that's going to be the first, first steps and the most important for multiplying their value here. They know where things are, why they're there, and where we come from. So it could be a recording. Of course you can have a recording, but if you're a small team, probably a 30 minute call is going to be like warm, where you share the screen, you show them around, you give them space to ask questions and that will be just the onboarding call. And next to context, which is very, very relevant and history of the company. You got to give them resources, of course, and that's going to multiply it even more.

[A]

When talk to me about resources, what type of resources are we talking about?

[B]

The star is the sops all the time. Usually like you're going to give them the instructions, the recipes.

[A]

Only an operator ever would say the star of the show is the standard operating procedure file. I agree, by the way. I agree. There's no bigger resource to making a staff member. But you know you're an operator when.

[B]

You say of course, yeah, it's only for us that an SOP can be really hot.

[A]

Yeah. I think soccer would probably say a credit card and Richard would probably say spreadsheets. Lots and lots of spreadsheets.

[B]

Yeah, definitely. So start of the show, SOPs then SOPs and resource. Like for example, let's say you're onboarding a designer. If you don't give them the first day the link and location and share the access to the brand assets, for example, it's so basic, you know, so basic.

[A]

But how many people don't do it?

[B]

They start looking around, they get the old version of the logo, you know, they get the old version.

[A]

Yeah. We have a client, 100% hired a designer paying them, wants to fire them because he gave them none of the stuff. And they literally dug around and found photos of them from four or five years ago where he looks completely different.

[B]

Yeah. And you're going to default maybe to the problem was a person, you know, 100%.

[A]

Because why would the problem be me?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why would it be my fault?

[B]

Definitely.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because it's, it's harder to fix ourselves. And it does take time for us to install these systems. And we talk about speed thinking or we're going to talk about speed thinking, at least privately we've talked about what that provokes in a company. So in order to set up the onboarding systems, yes, it's going to take maybe, I won't say three hours, but it's maybe six hours, maybe a full day from someone to build the onboarding systems, to gather all the information, to organize it, to build the resources.

[A]

I think per department. I don't think that that's overall for everybody because different people need different things and the focus needs to be differently. So for us now we. So we used to hire People and be like, here's the drive, figure it out for us. Now, there's a lot that's a sequence and we'll do hiring maybe someday on how we do hiring. But there's a sequence for onboarding. Would you agree that a checklist of what they need to be given on what day their first week and how it needs to go, who it needs to come from should be designed before you even think of hiring someone. So talk to me about what that looks like.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So what's that plan look like?

[B]

First of all, they do need, of course, the onboarding call. They need to give us information from them. Like it could be id, date of birth. It's probably usually just a form that you can set up for them.

[A]

Contract, usually.

[B]

But yeah, contract before they get hired, of course, but after they're hired. And you also need to get them to know what the policies of the company are. And you need to get that in signing.

[A]

You send them a docusign of the internal SOP so they acknowledge that they understand how their vacation time is going to go, their holidays are going to go. Yeah, yeah. And then.

[B]

And that can be automated.

[A]

Yeah. And I think you have automated that, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that's why. And after the policies, of course, make sure they have access to everything. They need to have access and make sure it's their responsibility to check. Like, hey, it's supposed to be automated.

[A]

You're saying you're signing off that you've received it.

[B]

They have a task.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Automatically created. Hey, this, you have access to this link, this drive. Confirm and close the task.

[A]

Completing the task. Yeah, that's smart.

[B]

That you've got it and you need them. And this is usually one of the blind spots. You need them in the meetings, you gotta have them added in the meetings. Again, it could be automated, it could be done manually by someone. You need to assign the task to the person who's going to add them to the meetings, to the slack channels. You know, it's usually the case if you don't have these Systems, it's maybe 45 days until they actually got brand assets. If you're talking about a designer, they got to all the meetings, to all the channels. And in those 45 days, you started feeling bad about how they're performing, they started feeling better about how they're performing. So when you bring those, all of that into the first week, you got it done perfectly.

[A]

What is your meeting cadence generally look like the first week of onboarding for a remote. A remote person. Yo, we interrupt this pod to tell you like and subscribe. What are you doing? Why haven't you liked, why haven't you subscribed? Just subscribe. What's the problem? In all seriousness, subscribe so that you get notifications every time we drop new content. Additionally, if you have not signed up for our visionary vault, what the hell. Www.specialopspodcast.com Go sign up. It's free. We never try and sell you and we're putting all kinds of stuff in there to help you with the operations of your business because we're passionate about and we want to share operational excellence with our direct response e commerce and online selling. Family.

[B]

I like two or three for the whole week. For the week. For the first two, three weeks. It could be for the first month depending and after that I like it once a week and if they're doing great, it could be a message check and then once a month.

[A]

Okay. Just to confirm we're not only talking to people once a month. We have a daily meeting that I just want to make sure people understand. We have a, we're talking about one on one. Specifically we have, we have a meeting case cadence at our company that we generally put in for all of the companies we work with where we have a morning stand up where everybody gets on a video call where we see each other and, and can understand what everybody's working on. And then we have a weekly meeting where everybody talks about what they're working on and then what they're going to work on the next week. But you're talking about just one on ones and then what do you do? For me, it's really, really important to me at our business to make sure that all and I know you know this but make sure all new people meet with every single person in the company. We're small. Right. That's not possible for people with 300. But then you do IT department, right?

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

So every single, we have what, 12 people total. I want them meeting with every single person from my social media manager to the guy who does my reels. I want you to know who everybody is and I want you to know kind of what their personality is and how to find them. Should I need you to grab something from them or give something to them without me making introductions later.

[B]

Yeah, and we made that one of the tasks for the onboarding that they have to complete within the first week. And I love that I hadn't run into that sort of like task for onboarding before, but it comes down back to like on site work workspaces because it's like, hey, meet Emma. And you shake Emma's hand.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you go to get, hey, welcome to the company.

[A]

This is what I do here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It brings a lot of clarity. And the other thing that we do at Shockwave, obviously, I love because I'm the one that did it. I don't know exactly how you feel about it. I know how Richard feels about it. I know how soccer feels about it. But videos on, period. We're a reminder.

[B]

Yeah. Because you talked about the morning stand up and I wanted to tell everyone that that's not what we call it.

[A]

We don't.

[B]

It's the morning face to face for us. That's very important for you.

[A]

Yeah, very important for me. For many reasons. For many reasons. But even if I'm not on the call, my expectation is that my people. When Richard first took over, like in a management role, because he wasn't a manager initially, we were so small. I think there were three of us when he came on me, Julie and him. But when he originally started as a manager, me and him butt heads a lot because he would send things over text to people. That should have been a face to face meeting. Could it be a text message? Absolutely. Could a lot of meetings be emails? Absolutely. But there's a part of building rapport with your people. If you're going to build loyalty and trust, it can't be a relationship of text messages.

[B]

100%.

[A]

If you're going to build a culture where we can be vulnerable with each other to be able to say, hey, guys, I'm having a really bad week and I've done this. I'm having a really bad week. I'm struggling. I need help.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What can we help you with?

[B]

100.

[A]

Whereas if I don't know you, why isn't she doing her job?

[B]

Yeah. And you're also setting this up where you're investing your time in that person. I think that also speaks a lot and it also bonds people together because you're coming into like, okay, let's. I'm just going to be focused on you for 30 minutes today. And if you're manager, business owner, you.

[A]

Meeting really hard sometimes.

[B]

I mean, really hard. Yeah.

[A]

Vitally important, though.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so you got a lot of this from a book. Didn't you get a lot of this from multiplier?

[B]

Oh, yes, definitely. Yeah.

[A]

That was a book.

[B]

100%.

[A]

Yeah, that's a. Yeah.

[B]

You told me to read multiplier.

[A]

When someone's going from managing things to managing people, it's a. It's a very different dance. And so I always suggest that they read Multipliers and Super Bosses. Those are the two books I really like for what we're talking about here. Multipliers for sure. It's just a. There's such a truth to the stories in there of how someone can underperform under one boss and be the star of a company under another boss. And it's because that person didn't act like a boss, they acted like a mentor. They gave them what they needed and they allowed them to make mistakes, which allowed them to flourish. And I think you've done a pretty good job at that with our companies and with our clients companies.

[B]

Yeah, I think so. And I like it as well because people get excited about their own work when they come, come in and first week they're getting like accomplishments, you know, and they know things are. It's dopamine. They're not confused. And I think what, maybe it's not very easy to see from the start as a business owner is that you're also competing for talent. So if you make your. The role at your company more exciting, more valuable for the, for the potential employee, you're actually competing to get the best talent and keep the best.

[A]

That's the word.

[B]

Keep the best talent. It's very expensive and not necessarily just money, but time and effort to hire and to filter.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you go into all of that work just to get someone in and just set them up for failure. You're wasting resources.

[A]

Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Love it. Any last minute suggestions or words?

[B]

Yeah. During onboarding and when we talk about resources, you need to give the new hire go study time.

[A]

Go start.

[B]

Go study.

[A]

Study. Go study.

[B]

Yeah, Go study. Go study.

[A]

The.

[B]

The employee handbook.

[A]

Of course, you should know how to do everything when you get here.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

[B]

Watch these six episodes from Emma from Special Ops podcast.

[A]

You know, you watch the last three.

[B]

Webinars study, just pause for the first three days. If you don't get them just into action the first day, give them three days to just absorb the context. And that's going to be a big multiplayer as well.

[A]

I love that. Thank you.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

It's been so awesome.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We've dreamed of this moment for a long time. Getting to be in the same room and do the podcast together.

[B]

It's amazing.

[A]

Thrilled to have you. So make sure you check out www.specialopspodcast.com. sign up for our visionary vault. We have lots of free resources, but thiago has put together for you an onboarding checklist, the very one that he uses at Shockwave. And the reason why our staff is able to do so much more than the average staff member of the companies we come in and work with. Thank you, Tiago. See you next time.