Onboarding Buddy Activities to Copy for the First 90 Days

Run a structured buddy program that pairs short social activities with real on-the-job guidance, and follow a check-in cadence at weeks 1, 2, 4, 8, and 12. This mix, rather than a single welcome lunch, is what systematic review evidence ties to faster role clarity and competence. Tools can handle the low-prep virtual side of this for remote and hybrid teams.

TL;DR:
Choose a peer with one to two years of tenure from the same or an adjacent team, not the manager, and protect buddy time.
Give buddies a written brief that limits their role to informal questions and social integration, while directing performance goals and formal feedback to managers.
During week one, schedule five minutes of conversation each morning and a 30 minute midweek session on a tool or task.
Track retention at 30, 60, and 90 days, time to productivity, survey scores, and attendance; anonymous pulse surveys with five questions can surface concerns.

1. What an onboarding buddy actually does
2. The business case: why buddy programs are worth the structure
3. Onboarding buddy activities you can copy this week
4. How to set up and run the buddy program
5. Copyable templates for day one and the first 90 days
6. Measuring success and improving the program over time
7. Running the activities without extra prep work
8. What works in real HR programs
Gatherilla as a practical next step for your buddy program
FAQ
Sources

1. What an onboarding buddy actually does

An onboarding buddy is a peer, not a boss or a coach. Their job is to make the first weeks feel less confusing: answering the questions a new hire feels silly asking a manager, introducing them around, and modeling how things actually get done day to day. That is a narrow, specific job, and keeping it narrow is what makes buddy programs work.

Managers own performance expectations, goal setting, and formal feedback. Mentors, when a company has a separate mentorship track, focus on longer-term career growth and skill development. A buddy sits in between: close enough in experience to remember what confusion feels like, senior enough to know where things live and who does what.

Good buddy assignments share a few traits:

The buddy works in the same team or a closely adjacent one, so their knowledge is directly useful.
They have enough tenure to know the unwritten rules but not so much that they have forgotten what it was like to be new.
They are not the new hire’s direct manager or dotted-line supervisor.
They have bandwidth, meaning their workload has been adjusted to include buddy time rather than added on top.

Poor assignments tend to follow a different pattern: a buddy picked because they happened to be free that week, someone two levels removed from the new hire’s actual role, or a manager doubling as buddy because no one planned ahead. All three undercut the point of the role. A new hire paired with their manager as buddy will self-censor the exact questions the role exists to surface, and a buddy from an unrelated department cannot answer the practical “how do I actually submit this” questions that come up in week one.

The clearest way to think about it: a manager tells a new hire what success looks like, a mentor helps them get there over the long run, and a buddy helps them survive the first month without feeling lost.

2. The business case: why buddy programs are worth the structure

HR teams asking for budget or manager buy-in need more than intuition. SHRM reporting frames structured buddy programs, complete with formal milestones and check-ins, as outperforming informal or random pairings, which matters when the pitch to leadership is “this is a program, not a nice-to-have.”

One finding worth citing directly: structured, participatory onboarding paired with on-the-job training is among the most effective approaches a systematic review identified for improving role clarity and competence in new employees. That is the evidence base behind pairing social buddy activities with actual work tasks rather than treating onboarding as a purely social exercise.

A second data point reinforces timing. HBR’s coverage of workplace buddy programs notes that frequent, short meetings, especially weekly or more often in the early weeks, predicted perceived speed-to-productivity more strongly than a single large welcome event at a program piloted by Microsoft. Frequency beats grandeur.

For HR leaders building the case internally, the KPIs worth tracking from day one include:

Retention at 30, 60, and 90 days, which flags whether new hires are disengaging early.
Time-to-productivity, measured by manager sign-off or task completion benchmarks.
End-of-onboarding engagement scores from a short survey.
Buddy and new-hire participation rates in scheduled check-ins.

The operational upside extends to managers too. A buddy who fields the routine questions frees a manager from constant interruptions, and a new hire with a clear go-to person tends to show more confidence in team meetings earlier. None of this requires a large program: it requires a defined role, a schedule, and someone tracking whether it is working.

3. Onboarding buddy activities you can copy this week

The activities below are grouped by format and effort level, so pick based on whether the team is remote, in-person, or mixed, and how much prep time the buddy actually has.

Virtual, low-prep activities

These need almost no setup and fit teams working across time zones or fully remote.

Virtual coffee chat. Fifteen minutes, no agenda beyond getting to know each other; the buddy asks about the new hire’s background and shares a few team-specific quirks.
Two-minute show-and-tell. Each person shares one object, tool, or workspace detail on camera; a ready-made format for this exists in a virtual show-and-tell playbook that gives buddies a script to follow.
Daily five-minute ritual. A short, recurring check-in, like a daily question or quick trivia round, keeps contact frequent without eating into work time; see weekly five-minute rituals for format ideas.

Virtual, structured activities

These take more setup but deliver a bigger payoff for role clarity.

Virtual scavenger hunt. The buddy sends a list of internal tools, documents, or people to find within the company’s systems; detailed formats are laid out in onboarding scavenger hunt ideas for remote teams.
Role demo session. The buddy screen-shares their own workflow for a common task, narrating decisions as they go, roughly 30 minutes.
Micro-training walkthrough. A 20-minute session on one specific tool or process, followed by the new hire repeating the task solo while the buddy watches.

In-person and hybrid activities

Desk or office tour. A 15-minute walk covering where supplies, meeting rooms, and quiet spaces are, paired with introductions to the people they pass.
Paired lunch. A standing weekly or biweekly lunch for the first month, low pressure and conversational.
Joint mini-project. A small, bounded task the buddy and new hire complete together, giving the new hire a finished deliverable by the end of week one.
Culture day photo session. For hybrid teams with an in-office onboarding day, a quick portrait or team photo session, handled by a service like Studio2U Headshots, gives new hires a tangible piece of belonging to take home.

Project-based activities

These lean hardest into the evidence that on-the-job work accelerates competence faster than social time alone.

Deliver something real by day three. Structuring a small, real deliverable into the first days, as outlined in intern onboarding activities HR can copy, gives new hires a concrete sense of contribution fast.
Shadow-then-swap. The new hire shadows the buddy on a task for a day, then attempts a similar task solo with the buddy reviewing.
Shared documentation task. Buddy and new hire co-edit a piece of internal documentation, which doubles as a useful artifact and a low-stakes collaboration exercise.

For teams that want a broader bank of icebreaker-style options to slot into any of the above, a list like top new hire icebreakers for HR teams or new employee orientation games works well as a supplement.

Pro Tip: Assign one low-prep activity and one project-based activity in the first week: the social one builds comfort fast, and the project-based one proves competence just as quickly.

A quick reference for matching activity type to need:

Need	Best-fit activity type	Typical duration
Fast social comfort	Virtual coffee chat, show-and-tell	10 to 15 minutes
Tool and process fluency	Role demo, micro-training	20 to 30 minutes
Sustained connection	Daily ritual, paired lunch	5 minutes daily or weekly
Early sense of contribution	Joint mini-project, shared documentation	1 to 3 days

4. How to set up and run the buddy program

Picking activities is the easy part. Running a program that holds up past week one depends on who gets picked as a buddy, how they’re matched, and whether anyone remembers to schedule the follow-ups.

Selection criteria. SHRM guidance on workplace buddy programs recommends buddies with at least one to two years of tenure, enough to know the ropes without being so senior that the role blurs into mentorship or management. Beyond tenure, look for:

Comfortable, approachable communication style, since a buddy who seems too busy or too formal will get ignored.
Genuine interest in the role, not someone assigned by default because they were available.
A current workload that can absorb a few hours a month without strain.

Matching logic. Near-peer matching, pairing a new hire with someone doing a similar job, works best when the goal is fast practical fluency. Cross-team matching works better when the goal is broader cultural integration and the new hire’s own team is small or already stretched thin. Most programs default to near-peer and use cross-team pairing only as a backup.

Sample role brief. Hand every buddy a short, written brief rather than a verbal explanation. It should cover:

The buddy’s scope: social integration and informal questions, not performance feedback.
A reminder that managers handle goal-setting and reviews, so redirect those questions there.
The expected check-in schedule and rough time commitment per week.
A note on backup coverage if the buddy is out, an idea borrowed directly from GitLab’s own onboarding buddy handbook, which also recommends early outreach before day one and suggested resources to share in the first month.

Check-in cadence. The recommended rhythm, drawn from SHRM’s reporting on effective buddy programs, lands at weeks 1, 2, 4, 8, and 12. Automating reminders through a shared calendar invite or an HR system workflow removes the risk of a busy manager forgetting week eight entirely.

Recognition and capacity. Buddies who never get acknowledged tend to put in less effort over time. A small formal credit, an internal shoutout, or a line in a performance review noting the buddy role keeps participation consistent, and adjusting workload expectations rather than treating buddy duties as free extra work protects that consistency long term.

Pro Tip: Put the check-in dates directly on the buddy’s calendar before the new hire’s start date, not after; a scheduled reminder gets kept far more often than a mental note.

5. Copyable templates for day one and the first 90 days

A template removes the guesswork that causes buddy programs to fizzle after a strong first week.

Day-one timeline:

9:00 AM: Buddy sends a welcome message before the new hire’s first login, as recommended in GitLab’s buddy handbook.
10:00 AM: Fifteen-minute virtual or in-person coffee chat.
1:00 PM: Short tool or system walkthrough.
4:00 PM: End-of-day check-in, five minutes, just to ask how the day went.

A sample invite line for the morning chat: “Hi [name], I’m your onboarding buddy for your first few weeks here. Let’s grab 15 minutes this morning so you can ask anything that’s on your mind, no wrong questions.”

Week-one shape: a five-minute check-in each morning plus one longer 30-minute meeting midweek focused on a specific task or tool.

30-60-90 check-in plan:

Week 1 and 2: Focus on comfort and logistics. Prompt: “What’s still confusing about how the team works day to day?”
Week 4 (30-day mark): Focus on early competence. Prompt: “What’s one task you’ve started to feel confident doing?”
Week 8 (60-day mark): Focus on integration. Prompt: “Who else on the team do you wish you knew better?”
Week 12 (90-day mark): Focus on retention signals. Prompt: “Is there anything about the role that surprised you, good or bad?”

Pairing these with a short written survey at the 30, 60, and 90-day marks, rather than relying on buddies to remember to ask verbally, gives HR a documented record. A ready-made checklist format for structuring these touchpoints is available in Gatherilla’s remote onboarding checklist.

6. Measuring success and improving the program over time

A buddy program without measurement tends to drift into whatever the most enthusiastic buddy happens to do, which is not a repeatable system.

The core KPIs to track:

Retention at 30, 60, and 90 days, compared against new hires who did not go through the buddy program, if a comparison group exists.
Time-to-productivity, based on manager assessment or task milestones.
Engagement survey scores collected right after the 30 and 90-day check-ins.
Buddy and new-hire attendance rates at scheduled check-ins, which flags where the schedule is being skipped.

On measurement design: classroom-based buddy program research points to a useful underlying principle even outside education: predictable, scheduled meetups consistently outperform ad hoc ones, which is the same logic behind fixing check-ins at specific weeks rather than leaving them to chance.

Keep feedback channels anonymous where possible, especially for the 90-day survey, since new hires are often reluctant to criticize a buddy or manager by name this early. A short, five-question pulse survey works better than a long form that gets abandoned halfway.

Once a few cohorts have gone through the program, run small experiments: pilot a new activity format with one team before rolling it out company-wide, and compare retention or engagement scores against the previous cohort. Scale whatever moves the numbers, and drop whatever buddies consistently skip.

7. Running the activities without extra prep work

Several of the virtual activities above, the scavenger hunt, trivia-style check-ins, and show-and-tell sessions, map directly onto browser-based multiplayer games that run inside a video call with no downloads required, which is the format Gatherilla provides for remote and hybrid teams.

Practical mapping for HR teams building a buddy program:

A virtual scavenger hunt activity can run as a multiplayer game session instead of a manual document, cutting buddy prep time to near zero.
Daily five-minute rituals fit naturally alongside a recurring daily challenge format, keeping buddy pairs in regular light contact between formal check-ins.
Trivia-style rounds work well as an icebreaker substitute for the week-one coffee chat when a new hire is paired with a buddy across time zones.

For teams building out the day-one or week-one templates above, dropping one of these games into the midweek 30-minute slot gives the buddy a structured activity to run without writing a script from scratch.

Pro Tip: Use a quick multiplayer game for the first check-in instead of open-ended small talk; it gives both people something to react to, which tends to ease the awkwardness of a first conversation with a stranger.

Two game responses meet at a shared prompt

8. What works in real HR programs

Structure matters most in the first month and matters less after that. New hires want clear expectations early: a known schedule, a known contact, a known first task. By week eight or twelve, the program should loosen, letting the buddy relationship become whatever it naturally becomes rather than forcing a check-in that no longer serves a purpose.

Three things consistently separate buddy programs that last from ones that fizzle: a fixed check-in cadence set before day one, a written template so buddies are not improvising, and visible recognition so the role feels worth the effort.

The most avoidable failure is treating buddy selection as an afterthought, grabbing whoever is free that week. The second is skipping the later check-ins, weeks eight and twelve, once the initial excitement fades. Both are solved by putting dates on a calendar in advance and holding to them.

— Thomas

Gatherilla as a practical next step for your buddy program

If the templates above are the plan, Gatherilla is one way to run the virtual half of it without extra prep. Every activity runs directly in a browser, so no one on the buddy pair needs to install anything or create an account before a session starts, and the daily challenge format gives buddies a built-in reason to check in even outside the scheduled weeks.

Gatherilla

A sensible way to start:

Use a free plan to pilot one or two activities with a single team before rolling the program out further.
Drop a quick multiplayer game into the day-one or week-one template in place of open-ended small talk.
Upgrade to Premium, listed at $0.50 to $1.00 per seat per month or $5 to $10 per seat per year, once a team wants more game variety and reporting on participation.

Checking the pricing page is the fastest way to see which plan fits the size of the pilot in mind.

FAQ

What are some examples of onboarding activities?

Common examples include a virtual coffee chat, a desk or office tour, a scavenger hunt through internal tools, a joint mini-project, and a short daily check-in ritual. The best mix pairs at least one social activity with one on-the-job task in the first week.

What are some fun activities to do with buddy class?

For workplace buddy pairs, lighter options include two-minute show-and-tell sessions, quick trivia rounds, or a shared documentation task framed as a mini-challenge. These work well as icebreakers before moving into more structured, role-focused activities.

What are the 5 C’s of effective onboarding?

Definitions of the “5 C’s” vary across sources, so there is no single agreed list. What the evidence consistently supports instead is structured, participatory onboarding that pairs on-the-job training with social integration, which covers the same ground most 5 C’s frameworks aim for.

What are some common onboarding activities in HR?

HR teams commonly run buddy check-ins at weeks 1, 2, 4, 8, and 12, paired with a day-one welcome schedule and a short survey at the 30, 60, and 90-day marks. Virtual teams often add low-prep games like scavenger hunts or trivia to keep contact frequent between formal check-ins.

How do I create an effective buddy system?

Start by selecting buddies with one to two years of tenure, give them a written role brief that separates their job from a manager’s, and set a fixed check-in schedule before the new hire’s start date. Protecting buddy time in their workload and recognizing the role formally keeps participation consistent over multiple cohorts.