On- and offboarding team members#
Having clear onboarding processes ensure that group members are off to a good start in the lab. Offboarding processes ensure that everything is taken care off when lab members leave for a future step. The on- and offboarding checklists below provide some pointers on how to set up the on/off boarding checklists of your group, that can be a part of your Team Manual.
Onboarding Checklist#
Review relevant documents provided in a main resource such the Team Manual. Information may include:
List of team members, their roles and projects
Institutional policies as well as participation guidelines of the research group, institute, funder or country.
Code of Conduct and reporting mechanism.
Point of contacts for IT, HR, data protection, legal, communications or other teams who you might need to connect for different purposes.
Authorship and contributorship guidelines.
Check whether the team has a Data Management Plan or whether you need to set this up yourself
Review your storage options and access to software and tools such as Electronic Lab Notebooks.
Especially when working with sensitive data it is important to familiarise new team members with the recommended practices.
Consider options for long term storage and data sharing
Set up documentation for your workflows (lab notes, project repository, README files) based on the recommendations provided by your team (ideally outlined in the Team Manual or Data management Plan).
Check whether there are existing templates that can be reused.
Ensure access to all needed facilities (lab pass, keys, folders, storage locations).
If any of this information is not clear, provide feedback on the onboarding process to improve it for future lab members!
Offboarding Checklist#
Research objects are publicly shared via an appropriate data repository
Research objects that are not publicly shared are stored internally and responsibilities have been transferred, including access to documentation (READme files or labnotes) and ethical approvals.
Research objects that are dispensable are cleaned up to avoid unnecessary storage clutter and confusion.
The content of the Data Management Plan has been transferred, so that data can be found and reused within the research team.
It is clear which physical reagents are relevant and where they are stored - irrelevant reagents have been cleaned up.
Contact details for the future are provided - other personal data is removed
Have an exit meeting with supervisor/department head or HR.
Return any borrowed property (keys, passes, equipment).
The leaving lab member can be provided with a statement that describes their contributions during their employment, instead of having to rely on future reference letters.