How to Build and Run Onboarding Checklists in the Browser

Employee onboarding has a checklist problem. The process exists — accounts to create, tools to set up, documents to send, introductions to make — but it lives in a Google Doc or a spreadsheet that gets copied manually for each new hire, marked off in a separate place, and eventually lost or forgotten. When someone joins and something gets missed, there is usually no record of what was checked and what was not.

A structured onboarding checklist run directly in the browser solves this. The checklist stays consistent across every hire, results are saved automatically, and nothing depends on someone remembering to update a document.

Onboarding spans several phases, and a well-structured checklist reflects that. The most common structure breaks into three stages.

Before the first day (preboarding):

• Send offer letter and contracts
• Set up accounts: email, Slack, project management tools
• Prepare hardware and access credentials
• Assign a buddy or point of contact
• Send first-day logistics

First week:

• Complete required documentation and compliance forms
• Introduce to team and key stakeholders
• Walk through company tools and workflows
• Set 30/60/90 day expectations
• Schedule recurring check-ins

First 30–90 days:

• Confirm all system access is working
• Review role responsibilities and deliverables
• First performance check-in
• Collect feedback on the onboarding experience

The specific items vary by role and company, but the structure is consistent. Building this once as a reusable template means you run the same process for every hire without rebuilding it each time.

Browser-based checklist tools have a practical advantage for onboarding: HR teams spend most of the process inside web apps — email, HRIS, project tools, documentation portals. A checklist that lives in the same browser window removes the context switch of going back and forth to a separate app.

CheckRun is a Chrome extension that runs checklists from the browser side panel. You build the onboarding checklist as a template once — sections, items, whatever structure fits your process. Then you run it for each new hire: the tool captures the date automatically, you mark each item Pass, Fail, or N/A, leave comments where needed, and save the run to history when done.

Every run is saved with its date and item-level results. If something was missed, there is a record of it. Per-template statistics show pass rate over time and which items fail most often — useful for identifying where the onboarding process consistently breaks down.

A checklist only works if the right people can access it. CheckRun templates can be shared as a JSON file, a short token, or a deep-link URL that opens the template directly in the extension. If your HR team runs onboarding across multiple people, one person builds the template and shares the link — everyone else imports it in one click.

A ready-made onboarding checklist template is available if you want a starting point rather than building from scratch. It covers the standard preboarding, first-week, and first-month structure and can be imported directly into the extension and customized from there.

Everything that applies to onboarding applies in reverse to offboarding — revoking access, recovering hardware, completing exit documentation, knowledge transfer. The same template model works: build once, run for each departing employee, keep a record. Having both onboarding and offboarding checklists in the same tool means HR teams manage the full employee lifecycle in one place, with consistent records on both ends.

The CheckRun extension is free and requires no account for core features. Templates are stored locally in the browser — nothing leaves your machine unless you explicitly export it.

Web developer focused on real-time communication protocols WebSocket Tester. Also building CheckRun a browser checklist extension for SEO, QA, and web workflows.