So you’ve got a new hire starting soon, and you want them up to speed without spending hours repeating the same instructions. You’ve heard Sharefable has some slick knowledge base features, but you’re not sure what’s actually useful or just marketing fluff. This guide is for you: team leads, managers, or anyone who wants to make onboarding less painful and more consistent.
Let’s walk through, step by step, how to actually use Sharefable to onboard new team members—what works, what to skip, and a few honest tips from someone who’s been there.
Step 1: Figure Out What New Hires Really Need to Know
Before you even log in to Sharefable, take ten minutes to jot down:
- The stuff every new hire actually needs to know in their first week
- The things people always ask about or get wrong
- Links, docs, or tribal knowledge hiding in random Slack channels
You don’t need a full curriculum. Just look for the “greatest hits”—the things that would’ve saved you time when you started.
Pro tip: Don’t try to document everything at once. Focus on the 20% that covers most of the questions.
Step 2: Set Up Your Sharefable Knowledge Base Structure
Sharefable gives you a lot of options—spaces, folders, tags, the works. Don’t overthink it.
- Create a dedicated “Onboarding” space or folder.
- This keeps things easy to find. Don’t bury onboarding content in some generic knowledge dump.
- Use clear names.
- “Product Onboarding” beats “General Information.”
- Keep it shallow.
- Two or three levels deep is plenty. If you’re six folders deep, no one will ever find anything.
What to skip: Fancy hierarchies, color coding, or custom icons. They look nice but don’t actually help people find things faster.
Step 3: Build or Import Your Core Onboarding Content
Now, add the stuff new folks actually need:
1. Write Short, Clear Guides
- Break big topics into bite-sized pages (“How to set up your dev environment,” “Intro to our process,” etc.).
- Use headings, bullet points, and screenshots. Walls of text are a pain.
2. Link Out Instead of Copying
- If you’ve got existing docs in Google Drive, Notion, or other tools, link to them. Don’t paste the same info everywhere.
- Sharefable lets you embed or reference outside docs—use this so you don’t end up with conflicting info all over.
3. Use Templates for Repeatable Stuff
- Sharefable has basic templates. Use them for things like “First Day Checklist” or “Meet the Team.”
- Don’t template everything. Most onboarding is unique to your team, not boilerplate.
4. Assign Owners for Key Pages
- Every important doc should have a clear owner. That way, when things change, you know who’s supposed to update it.
- If everything’s “owned by the team,” expect it to get stale fast.
Pro tip: Don’t try to make your docs “perfect.” Good enough beats “still in draft” every time.
Step 4: Make It Easy to Find and Use
A knowledge base isn’t helpful if no one can actually find stuff.
- Tag pages with terms like “onboarding,” “first week,” or your team name.
- Pin the most important docs to the top of the space/folder.
- Share direct links to the onboarding space in your welcome emails or Slack.
What Works
- Sharefable’s search is actually decent—as long as you use clear titles and tags.
- Pinning and starring docs helps surface the essentials.
What to Ignore
- Overly granular tags. Nobody searches for “v1.2.3-process-update.”
- Hiding onboarding docs behind permissions walls. If it’s not sensitive, keep it open.
Step 5: Turn Onboarding Into a Guided Flow (Optional, but Nice)
Sharefable offers some basic workflow features—think checklists, “mark as read,” or sequential guides. This isn’t fancy, but it does help people track progress.
- Create a checklist or “onboarding journey” page.
- List the docs to read, tools to set up, and people to meet.
- Use Sharefable’s checklist widgets (if your plan has them).
- Encourage new hires to mark items as done.
- This gives you a quiet way to nudge people who are stuck.
- Set reminders or follow-ups.
- Some Sharefable plans let you set notifications. Use them sparingly—nobody wants to be spammed.
Honest take: This isn’t a full onboarding LMS. Don’t expect progress tracking dashboards or fancy analytics. But for small teams, it’s enough.
Step 6: Invite Your New Hire and Watch What Breaks
Once you’ve loaded up your onboarding content:
- Invite the new team member directly to the onboarding space.
- Ask them to flag anything confusing, missing, or out of date.
- Encourage questions—if they’re stuck, it means your docs need work.
It’s tempting to assume “no news is good news.” Usually, it means people are silently lost. Make feedback part of the process.
Pro tip: Schedule a quick check-in after week one to ask, “What was missing or confusing?” Update your docs right away.
Step 7: Iterate—Don’t Let It Rot
The biggest problem with knowledge bases? They get stale, fast.
- Set a calendar reminder (quarterly is fine) to review key onboarding docs.
- Assign someone to own the process—ideally a team lead, not “the whole team.”
- Archive or delete old content. Outdated info is worse than no info.
What Works
- Quick, regular reviews. Don’t make it a big annual project.
- Keeping onboarding docs short—easier to update.
What to Ignore
- Over-polishing. You’re not writing a novel.
- Waiting until you have time to “redo the whole thing.” Small fixes are fine.
Common Pitfalls—and How to Avoid Them
- Trying to cover everything in one go. Start with the basics, fill in gaps as you go.
- Letting docs get outdated. Assign owners and review regularly.
- Making things hard to find. Shallow structure, clear titles, good tags.
- Assuming people will read everything. Guide them to what matters most.
Wrapping Up
You don’t need a perfect knowledge base to onboard new teammates. Start simple: document what matters, keep it easy to find, and update it as you go. Sharefable’s tools are handy, but don’t get bogged down in features you don’t need.
Iterate, ask for feedback, and remember—good onboarding is about helping real people, not impressing anyone with your documentation skills. Keep it scrappy, and you’ll be fine.