Welcome Video for New Employees: Ideas, Script and Examples

Most onboarding still runs on documents: a handbook, a schedule, a login guide. None of that tells a new hire what the people they are about to work with actually sound like. A short video does that job in a couple of minutes, and it does it before the new hire has set foot in the building or logged into a single tool.

The effect is practical, not sentimental. A new starter who has already seen three or four colleagues on video arrives on day one recognising faces, which cuts down the awkward first-morning round of introductions that nobody enjoys. It also signals, before any policy document does, that the team actually prepared for their arrival.

A welcome video built from a single talking head — usually HR or the hiring manager — reads as procedural. One built from four or five different voices reads as a team. Aim for a short list rather than everyone the new hire will ever meet:

• The hiring manager, with one or two sentences on what the role will focus on in the first month.
• One or two teammates who will work closely with the new hire day to day.
• Someone from a neighbouring team, if the role has a lot of cross-team contact.
• Someone further removed — a skip-level manager or a longer-tenured colleague — to add a sense of the wider organisation.

The phrase "welcome to the team" is fine as an opener, but a video built entirely from variations of it blurs together after the second clip. Give contributors a prompt that produces something specific instead:

• Say one thing you're looking forward to working on with them.
• Mention something concrete about the team or the role that you wish someone had told you on your own first day.
• Share a small, true detail about the team's working style — how standups run, what the Friday routine looks like.
• Offer to be the person they ask a specific kind of question (tools, process, "who do I talk to about X").

Below is a short structure you can hand to contributors as a loose template rather than a script to read word for word — the goal is that it still sounds like them.

• Hiring manager, opening (20-30 seconds): "Hi [name], welcome to [team]. We're genuinely pleased you're joining — your first few weeks will focus on [specific area], and [colleague] will be your closest point of contact while you settle in."
• Teammate (15-20 seconds): "I'm [name], I work on [area], and I'll probably be the person you ask about [specific tool or process]. Looking forward to having you on the project."
• Teammate or cross-team contact (15-20 seconds): "We don't work together directly every day, but you'll see me in [meeting/channel] — feel free to reach out any time."
• Closing, from the manager or a longer-tenured colleague (10-15 seconds): "We'll see you on [date] — reach out beforehand if anything comes up. Welcome aboard."

Send the video three to five working days before the start date, alongside any paperwork or pre-boarding material — not buried as an attachment but called out in the subject line or opening line. For ideas on what else to send in that window, see Pre-boarding Video Ideas.

If the new hire is joining a fully or partly remote team, the video does more work than it would in an office, since it may be their first real look at who they will be working with. See Remote Onboarding: 15 Ways to Make New Hires Feel Included for the wider picture beyond the welcome video itself.

The usual failure mode is not a lack of goodwill — it is that asking five people to each record and send a video file turns into a small logistics project nobody has time for, and the video either slips past the start date or gets cut down to one person's message. A single shared link that contributors open on their own phone or laptop, record into directly, and submit without installing anything removes that bottleneck. See Onboarding Video Checklist for exactly who to ask and by when.

Frequently asked questions