Employee Onboarding
From payroll to productive — automatically. Acorn connects to Xero and starts coaching your new hires from day one.
Onboarding That Runs Itself
Most onboarding is reactive — HR scrambles, managers forget, and new hires feel lost in their first weeks. Acorn flips this entirely. When a new employee is added to Xero, Acorn picks them up automatically and begins a structured coaching sequence before their first day is done.
Coaching arrives via SMS or email and feels like it comes directly from their manager — because it does. Managers stay informed through anonymised dashboards, not another inbox to manage.
What New Hires Get
- Automated welcome sequence via SMS or email
- SMART goal-setting coaching from day one
- Monday goal-setting, Wednesday check-ins, Friday reflections
- On-demand coaching for questions or friction points
- A consistent experience — regardless of manager style
How Acorn Onboarding Works
Zero setup per employee. Zero forms to fill in. Just coaching that begins automatically from the moment someone joins your payroll.
Xero Sync
Connect Acorn to your Xero account once. Every new employee added to payroll is automatically detected and enrolled in Acorn.
Automated Welcome Sequence
A personalised coaching sequence begins via SMS or email. It feels like it comes from their manager — introducing goals, expectations, and support.
Scheduled Weekly Rhythm
Monday goal-setting, Wednesday check-ins, and Friday reflections keep new hires engaged and on track without any manual effort from HR or managers.
Goal Setting From Day One
Acorn's Goal Setter archetype guides new hires through SMART goal frameworks — so they know what success looks like before they've even had their first one-on-one.
Manager Dashboard
Managers receive anonymised culture dashboards showing sentiment, engagement, and onboarding progress — without reading any private conversations.
NPS Collected Automatically
Onboarding NPS is captured naturally within coaching conversations — no separate survey tools, no survey fatigue. You always know how new hires are feeling.
Privacy by Design
- Managers never see raw employee conversations
- All coaching data is anonymised before reaching dashboards
- Employees interact freely — knowing responses are private
- Company admins see aggregate themes, not individual replies
- Coaching feels personal because it is — not because it's surveilled
Trust Is the Foundation
Employees open up when they know their conversations are private. Acorn is built privacy-first — coaching conversations never surface raw to managers. What managers see is anonymised sentiment data and aggregated themes.
This is what makes the coaching effective. Employees engage honestly, and organisations get real signal — not sanitised survey responses employees give because they know their boss is watching.
The Onboarding Problem Is Expensive
Most companies know onboarding is broken. Few have fixed it — because the fix required too much manual effort. Acorn automates it.
of employees more likely to stay 3+ years with great onboarding
increase in new hire productivity with structured onboarding
improvement in new hire retention with effective onboarding programs
faster onboarding when coaching is automated rather than ad hoc
Ready to Automate Your Onboarding?
Connect Acorn to Xero once. Every new hire gets structured coaching from day one — without any extra work from your team.
Related Solutions
Explore other ways Acorn helps your organisation grow.
Culture & Recognition
Real-time culture intelligence — NPS, sentiment, and engagement without a single survey.
Leadership Development
Managers are employees too. Acorn coaches leaders and gives them their own team culture pulse.
Executive & Remote Teams
Specialised coaching for executive leadership and distributed teams across time zones.