In one sentence: automating onboarding means the contract, the hand-off to your social secretariat and the first tasks are executed instead of ticked off. That's needed: only 12% of employees strongly agree their organisation does a great job onboarding (Gallup).
What does automating onboarding actually mean?
Automating onboarding is the process where software itself performs the administrative and operational steps of a new hire (drafting and sending the contract, handing data to the social secretariat, assigning equipment and kicking off first tasks), taking over the manual work of ticking off each step.
The key word there is performs. Most "onboarding software" does something else: it hands you a neat checklist and reminders. That's organising onboarding. The distinction is what decides whether your HR team gains hours back or just gets a nicer dashboard.
Key takeaway: a checklist that reminds you what to do is not automation. Automation is when the work is done without you clicking through it.
Why automating onboarding matters
The numbers on onboarding are unusually consistent — and unusually bad.
Only 12% of employees say their organisation onboards new people well (Gallup). So for the vast majority there is room for improvement, and those first weeks matter.
Why that costs money: replacing an employee costs 50–200% of annual salary (Gallup). A mid-level hire who leaves after three months isn't a minor setback — it's a bill in the thousands, plus the weeks your team loses restarting.
At the same time, onboarding is a highly repetitive process: every new hire goes through the same steps. In other words, it's exactly the kind of work where automation pays off most: high volume, high repetition, high cost when it goes wrong.
Key takeaway: weak onboarding isn't a soft "employee experience" problem. It's a direct retention and cost problem, and it hits a process that costs time again with every new hire.
What can you actually automate in onboarding?
Not every step is equal. Here's what a modern HR solution can take off your plate:
- Draft and send contracts based on role, salary scale and joint committee, including signature.
- Assign accounts and access as a task with a deadline to whoever creates them (for example IT), and at offboarding revoking them is a task with a deadline in the offboarding routine.
- Hand data over to your social secretariat (personal data, timesheets and, depending on your secretariat, the Dimona) without double entry.
- Assign the work schedule and set up the tasks for the first working days.
- Send first tasks and reminders to the new hire and their manager: automating onboarding emails and notifications is one of the most searched concrete use cases.
- Request documents and collect them in one place (ID, diplomas, bank details).
The line that matters: does your software automate only the reminder ("send the contract"), or the execution ("the contract is drafted, sent and signed")? That distinction is the core of agentic HR.
Organising vs. executing: the 4 levels of HR software
HR software has spent years stuck at organising work. Agentic HR executes it. That difference shows up most clearly in the 4 levels of HR software:
| Level | Name | What it does for onboarding |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manual | Contracts in Word, checklists in Excel, everything by email |
| 2 | System of Record | One central place for employee data, but you still do every step |
| 3 | System of Workflow | Automatic routing and reminders, you still click through every task |
| 4 | System of Execution (agentic) | You give the instruction "onboard this new colleague"; the work is done, you only approve where needed |
The distinction is augmentation vs. execution. With augmentation, AI helps you with a task you still do yourself (a chatbot, a copilot). With execution, the agent does the task, and you're the supervisor. Most tools that promise "onboarding automation" sit at level 3: they move the work around, they don't remove it. The full contrast is in Agentic HR vs. traditional HRIS.
This shift isn't marketing. Gartner expects that by 2028 around 33% of enterprise software will contain agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, and Deloitte predicts that by 2027 half of companies using generative AI will deploy agentic AI for complex work with limited oversight. Josh Bersin explicitly calls this era "Agentic HR".
Key takeaway: the question isn't whether you automate onboarding, but at what level. Level 3 organises the work; level 4 removes it.
How Peepel approaches it
Peepel is a system of execution (level 4): an agentic HR platform that executes the onboarding process for you. In plain language, you give the instruction to start a new hire, and the platform drafts the contract, prepares the data, hands input to your social secretariat and kicks off first tasks. You only approve where policy requires — not every click. See AI onboarding with Peepel for the product flow.
For the Belgian and Dutch context specifically: Peepel delivers the payroll input (time worked, absences, contract and salary changes) to your social secretariat, so you don't enter that data twice; the payroll calculation stays with the secretariat. With Attentia, Besox and Daenens, Peepel also files the Dimona IN/OUT itself and follows up on the NSSO's response; with Securex, Securex files the Dimona based on the hire data from Peepel; with the other secretariats, the Dimona runs through your secretariat. Peepel is up and running within one day.
The biggest time saving usually comes from removing double entry toward payroll and from having contracts drafted and signed automatically — precisely the steps where manual onboarding stalls today.
What level is your onboarding at?
One yes/no question per level. Your first "yes" is your level:
- Are your contracts and checklists still in Word, Excel and email? → Level 1
- Do you have one central system, but still do every onboarding step yourself? → Level 2
- Do you get automatic reminders and routing, but still click through each task? → Level 3
- Do you give one instruction and see the work executed, with approval where needed? → Level 4
Most SMBs sit at level 2 or 3. The jump that saves time is the one to level 4.
Ready to hand over the execution of your onboarding?
Book a demo and see how Peepel executes a full onboarding using your own use cases.
Further reading: HR automation: the complete guide · AI onboarding with Peepel · Agentic HR vs. traditional HRIS · What is agentic HR? · Best onboarding software in Europe (2026) · What is Dimona?.
