Meeting types · Onboarding / welcome
A first day that doesn't depend on who was free that week
Most welcome meetings are a calendar invite and a hope. The new colleague is asked to improvise an introduction, the team recites job titles, and none of it is written down for the next hire.
Curact gives you a ready-made welcome flow: the new colleague writes part of their own introduction days before they start, the team adds theirs from a link, and the deck stays readable afterwards for everyone who could not join.
30 days, no card, cancel in one click.
How do you run an onboarding meeting for a remote employee?
A remote onboarding meeting is a welcome session that introduces a new hire to their team and their first-week tasks. It works best when the introductions are written by the newcomer and the team beforehand, rather than improvised live. A twenty-five minute session focused on faces and questions, rather than reading checklists, makes for a much better first day.
- 01Send a private link to the new colleague a week before they start.
- 02Let them write their own introduction and choose their own photo.
- 03Collect one-line bios from the team using a Slack collector.
- 04Create a first-week checklist with a clear owner for every task.
- 05Run a short live welcome focused on the icebreaker and the who's-who.
- 06Post the deck to your team channel so everyone who missed it can read it.
Today
Why do welcome meetings so rarely land?
Not because people do not care. Because the format asks for improvisation and leaves no record.
Nobody owns the content
The calendar invite exists. What happens inside it is decided in the five minutes before the call by whoever happens to be free.
"Say a bit about yourself"
A new colleague is asked to improvise a personal introduction in front of twenty strangers on day one. Almost nobody does themselves justice.
Who's who is explained once
Fourteen names and roles delivered verbally in four minutes. A week later the newcomer still does not know who to ask about billing.
Every hire gets a different welcome
Nothing is written down, so the quality of someone's first day depends on which manager they got and how busy that week was.
The flow
What happens before, during and after the welcome?
Introductions are better written than improvised. The live time is for faces and questions.
Before
The new colleague gets a private link with four prompts and writes their own slide without an account. The team adds one-line intros from a collector in the channel, and the manager approves everything before day one.
During
Twenty-five minutes: the welcome, the newcomer's own page, the who's-who wall, an icebreaker from phones and a first-week checklist with names against every line. Nobody is put on the spot.
After
The deck posts to Slack so other time zones read the same introduction, the checklist owners get nudged, and the template runs again unchanged for the next hire.
Written by the newcomer themselves on a private link, and approved by the manager before it goes live.
A quick icebreaker answered from everyone's phone — two seconds, no forced fun, the quiet people take part on equal terms.
Slide types
Which slide types make up a welcome meeting?
Six blocks, arranged once as a template and reused for every new colleague.
Speaker slide for the newcomer
A private link and a few prompts. The new colleague writes their own introduction in their own words, days before anyone meets them, and the manager approves it before it is shown.
Contribution collector for the team
One line each from the team: who I am and what to ask me about, with a photo. Collected async over a few days, so nobody spends a meeting reciting job titles.
Who's who wall
The collected intros as one readable slide grouped by team. It stays in the deck afterwards, which is when it is actually useful.
Icebreaker from phones
A word cloud or a this-or-that round everyone answers on their phone. Two minutes, no forced fun, and the quiet people take part on equal terms.
First-week checklist
Laptop, accounts, first customer call, buddy lunch — each line with an owner and a date, nudged automatically rather than chased by the manager.
Questions from the room
Anonymous questions from the newcomer and from the team, upvoted. The things people are too polite to ask on day one get answered anyway.
Example
What does one hire's welcome look like end to end?
A product designer joining a fourteen-person team spread over four countries.
- One week before
The welcome meeting is created from the onboarding template. Sofia gets a link by email with four short prompts: background, what she will work on, one thing outside work, and a photo if she wants one.
- Five days before
A collector posts to the team channel: one line each on who you are and what you can be asked about. Eleven people answer in a day, most from their phone.
- Two days before
Sofia submits her slide. Her manager reviews and approves it without rewriting the voice, and adds the first-week checklist with owners for the laptop, accounts and the first customer call.
- Day one, 25 minutes
The deck runs itself: welcome, Sofia's own page in her own words, the who's-who wall, an icebreaker everyone answers from their phone, and the checklist with names against it.
- Day one, afterwards
The deck posts to Slack. The six colleagues in other time zones read the same introduction, and Sofia has a page she can go back to when she forgets who does what.
- Next hire
The same template runs again with new names. Nothing has to be reinvented, and the second hire gets the same welcome as the first.
The template
Why write it down once instead of every time?
The difference between a good first day and a forgettable one is usually preparation nobody had time for.
The onboarding meeting is a series template. The next hire gets the identical flow with new names, so quality does not depend on how busy the manager was that week.
Letting someone author their own introduction is a small thing that changes the tone of a first day — they arrive as a person the team already met, not as a name on an invite.
The who's-who wall is worth more in week three than in minute six. Because it is a deck rather than a call, the newcomer can reopen it whenever they forget who does what.
Laptop, accounts, first customer call — each with one name and a date, nudged automatically, so the manager is not the single point of failure for someone's first week.
Agenda
A 25-minute welcome agenda, and the days around it
Copy it, change the wording, run it in whatever tool you use today. Most of the preparation happens before anyone joins a call.
Yours to use, with or without Curact. No signup for the template.
Templates
Three ready-made versions of this meeting
Pick the depth that fits the week. Every template opens as a real deck you can edit, reorder or throw away.
Short
The 15-minute welcome
A quick welcome for a small team: the newcomer's own slide, one icebreaker, and the essentials.
15 min · 6 slides
- 1.Welcome, Tomas
- 2.Join in
- 3.Meet Tomas
- 4.Tabs or spaces?
- 5.Your first few days
- + 1 more
Standard
The full welcome meeting
The newcomer's own slide, a who's-who wall, an icebreaker and a named first-week checklist.
25 min · 8 slides
- 1.Welcome, Sofia
- 2.Join in
- 3.Meet Sofia
- 4.Who's who
- 5.Tea or coffee at your desk?
- + 3 more
In depth
The company-wide welcome
A fuller welcome for a whole-company onboarding day: the newcomer, the who's-who, how we work, and the roadmap ahead.
40 min · 11 slides
- 1.Welcome to the team, Jonas
- 2.Join in
- 3.Meet Jonas
- 4.Who's who
- 5.How we work
- + 6 more
FAQ
Questions teams ask before their first welcome deck
Does the new colleague need an account before their first day?
No. They get a private link a few days before they start and write their own slide in the browser — background, what they will be working on, one thing outside work, and a photo if they want one. No login, no install, and nothing they write is visible to the team until the manager approves it.
What if the start date moves?
The welcome meeting is a normal meeting in a series, so you move the date and everything moves with it — the link stays valid, the team intros already collected stay in place, and the reminders reschedule themselves.
Can onboarding run entirely without a live call?
Mostly, yes. The introductions, the who's-who and the first-week checklist all work as a deck people read on their own time. Teams across many time zones often keep a twenty-minute live part for the welcome and the icebreaker, and leave the rest async.
How long should the live part be?
Twenty to thirty minutes. The content already exists, so the session is for faces and questions rather than for reading slides out loud. Sessions that run an hour are usually spending fifty minutes on things the deck could have said better.
Can the manager edit what the new colleague wrote?
The manager reviews it before it goes live and can suggest changes, but the point is that the wording stays the newcomer's own. In practice review catches a missing team name or an internal term, not the voice.
How is this different from an onboarding checklist tool?
A checklist tool tracks tasks. This is the human half — who you will work with, what they can be asked about, and a first impression the new colleague authored themselves. The checklist slide carries owners and dates, so tasks are covered, but the meeting exists to make someone feel part of a team rather than to tick boxes.
Instead of
What does this replace?
Most onboarding is spread across emails, docs, and Slack DMs. Each tool works fine, but the newcomer has to hunt through all of them to find who's who.
A PDF onboarding manual
Static and usually out of date.
The deck is a living record of the team, updated for every hire as part of the series.
A spreadsheet checklist
Tasks get lost without a clear owner.
Every line has a name and a date, with automatic nudges for the owners to ensure nothing is missed.
A 'Say Hi' Slack thread
Scrolls away in four hours and is never seen again.
The introductions stay as a readable who's-who wall in the meeting archive for the newcomer to revisit.
Curact does not replace Slack, your boards or your video call. It sits next to them: the deck is the meeting, and the tools you already pay for stay where they are.
Built by Textalk
Curact is made by Textalk AB in Sweden, a software company that has run its own distributed weekly meeting for years. This is the tool we built for ourselves first.
Participants need no account
People join from a link or a code on screen and answer from their phone. Only the people who build the deck need a login.
Works next to your stack
Slack for the reminders and the recap, your boards for the source material, any video tool for the call itself.
30 days, no card
The trial is the full product, not a stripped demo. Nothing to cancel if you walk away.
Written and reviewed by the Curact team. Last reviewed August 2026.
Other meetings teams run this way
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Highlights, photos and this-or-that rounds collected async, shown as two minutes at the top of a meeting you already have.
Read moreQuiz / game
Quiz slides, teams and a leaderboard live in the same deck, answered from everyone's phone.
Read moreProduct development
Squads write their own slides during the week and agents draft from Slack and your boards, so the call starts on the open questions.
Read moreGive the next hire a first day that was prepared before they arrived
Set the welcome up once as a template. The newcomer writes their own page, the team adds theirs from a link, and every hire after that gets the same start.
30 days, no card, cancel in one click.