How to Set Up Workflow Templates 

Owner & Admin Guide, Onboarding and Offboarding 

What this covers 

Workflows is a separate module from Onboarding templates, used to build and automatically trigger checklists of tasks tied to events in an employee's lifecycle. Onboarding and offboarding are the most common use cases, but workflows can be used for anything with a recurring or one-off checklist: crossboarding, sick leave follow-up, annual routines, office moves, equipment purchases, and more. 

The Workflows overview 

• Overview, the HR-facing view of every ongoing workflow across the company. 
• My tasks, tasks currently assigned to you. Everyone with assigned tasks sees this. 
• History, completed and archived workflows. 
• Settings, notification behavior (see below). 

How task notifications work 

Assignees are kept on track automatically by email: 

• Workflow start, assigned users are notified the day the workflow starts, even if it's created and starts the same day. 
• Due date reminders, assignees are reminded the day before each task is due, and again on the due date. 
• Overdue alerts, a single alert is sent the day after a task becomes overdue. 
• Daily digest, all of a person's notifications for the day are grouped into one summary email rather than sent separately. 

Two ways to start a workflow 

From Workflows, select New workflow. You'll be offered two paths: 

Tip

Give a template to anything recurring, onboarding, offboarding, crossboarding, annual HR routines. Reach for a one-time workflow for anything that only needs to happen once, like tasks around an office move or a one-off equipment purchase. 

The Template Library 

Select Manage templates from the Workflows overview. The library is organized into: All templates, Created by you, Company templates, and Created by experts, plus any custom categories you've set up (see below). 

Simployer's expert-written templates 

Ready-made templates covering common HR processes, broad enough to apply to most companies and easy to adapt with your own company-specific tasks. Currently available: 

• Onboarding 
• Offboarding 
• Reboarding 
• Crossboarding (change position) 
• Sick leave, long term (Norway) 
• Sick leave, short term (Norway) 
• Sick leave (Sweden) 
• Rehabilitation (Sweden) 
• Going on parental leave (Norway) 
• Going on parental leave (Sweden)

Good to know

Expert templates can't be edited or deleted directly, this keeps them reliable as a baseline. To adapt one, open the three-dot menu and select Duplicate. This creates your own editable copy where you can remove sections, add sections, reword tasks, and give it a new name. 

Creating your own template 

1 Select Create template and fill in the basics

Give it a Name and Description. Optionally assign it to a template category, useful if you want to group related templates together, for example an “Onboarding” category holding every onboarding variant across your organization, departments, or offices. 

2 Set up the trigger

Toggle Use automatic trigger on if you want the workflow to start itself. Choose a trigger event: options include Sick leave reported, Employee title changed, Position changed to manager role, First employment start date, and Employee end date, among others. 

3 Optionally set the scope for who the workflow is for

This screen is titled Select scope for whom the workflow is for, and lets you select the employee this workflow is about, the person might not have any tasks assigned to them directly, but they're the focus of the workflow (as in onboarding). Tasks can still be assigned to others, and the workflow is owned by that person's manager by default. Scope options include Individuals, Teams, Offices, Employment types, Departments, Organizations, and Exclude from this scope (to carve out specific employees from an otherwise broad scope). A running count at the bottom shows how many employees currently match. For example, a scope of Office: Denmark on an onboarding template means only new hires assigned to that office will trigger it, letting you build country- or region-specific task lists that fire on their own. 

4 Or leave automatic trigger off

The template then has to be started manually, for example by selecting Create workflow from template when you're ready to use it. 

Building out the tasks 

5 Add a Category name

Categories group related tasks together. Common approaches are grouping by timeline (“2 months before start date,” “1 month before start date,” “First working day”) or by ownership (“Tasks for HR,” “Tasks for IT,” “Tasks for Manager”). Use Add category to create more than one. 

6 Add each task's title and description

Use Add task to add more than one task within a category. 

7 Optionally attach a link

The link icon lets you attach a URL to the task, useful for a training video, an internal policy page, or any other resource the assignee needs. 

8 Set a deadline

Select the clock icon (Add deadline). Choose Set relative deadline to count days from an event, for example 7 days after workflow start, or before/after first employment start date, end date, or reported sick leave. Choose Set specific deadline instead to pick one fixed calendar date from a date picker, useful for tasks tied to a real-world date rather than the employee's own timeline. 

9 Assign the task

Select the @ icon (required for every task). Choose The employee, The employee's manager, or Select a scope to assign it to a department, team, office, or specific person. 

Tip

For long task lists, assign ownership to a department (like IT) rather than a named individual wherever possible. If that person leaves the company, the task automatically routes to whoever else is in that department or team instead of becoming an orphaned task with no clear owner. 

10 Review and select Save as template

The final screen shows your template's name, description, trigger event (or “Manually” if no automatic trigger is set), and every task grouped by category with its assignee and deadline shown alongside it. 

Linking to an onboarding template 

Workflow templates can be linked to a separate Onboarding Template (covered in its own guide). When linked this way, inviting a new hire using that Onboarding Template automatically triggers the linked workflow and every task's relative deadline in one motion, rather than needing to start the workflow separately. 

Example, inside simployer's own onboarding template 

For reference, here's roughly how Simployer's own expert-written Onboarding template is structured, useful as a model when building your own: 

• Before employment start date, 10 tasks. Example: “Signed Employment Agreement Archived,” assigned to the Manager, due 0 days after workflow start. 
• Tasks staggered at 28, 21, and 14 days before the start date cover internal communication, contacting the new employee, ordering IT equipment, and practical preparations, all assigned to the Manager. 
• First working day, 1 task, assigned to The employee, due 0 days after the first employment start date. 
• Follow-up sessions, 7 tasks. A sequence of manager-led check-ins at 7, 14, 28, 90, 150, and 180 days after the start date, plus a “Summary of the Probationary Period” task at 150 days.

Tip

Notice how deadlines are set relative to the trigger event throughout (days after first employment start date), rather than fixed calendar dates. This is what makes a template reusable across every new hire, regardless of when they actually start.