A technician onboarding checklist you can actually use

Most onboarding in the trades is verbal and improvised, which means it varies by who is running it and quietly omits whatever that person forgot. A written list fixes both problems for almost no effort.

Below is a general version. It is deliberately not trade-specific — cut what does not apply and add your own equipment and safety requirements. The structure is what transfers.

Before day one

Everything here is administrative and every item is something that, left undone, wastes a new hire's first morning.

• Truck assigned, stocked, and checked — not "mostly ready"
• Phone, tablet and every login created and tested by someone else
• Access to the field service system, with the right permission level
• Uniforms and PPE sized and issued
• First-week schedule written and shared with the tech and their mentor
• Mentor named and their calls lightened to make room

Week one

The goal is context and safety, not productivity. Do not schedule them as a billable head.

• Safety orientation, including your specific lockout and confined-space rules
• How work is dispatched, accepted, documented and closed in your system
• What a good job note looks like here — show three real examples
• Pricing, approvals, and what they may authorise without calling
• Warranty process: what is covered, who decides, how it gets recorded
• Introduced to supply house counter staff by name
• Shadow a full day with the mentor, including the paperwork

Day 30

• Runs routine maintenance calls solo, on familiar equipment
• Job notes reviewed with the mentor — specific feedback, not "fine"
• Can find equipment history and manufacturer documentation unaided
• Knows the escalation path and has used it at least once without friction
• First check-in: what do you still not feel confident about?

Day 60

• Handles diagnostic calls on the equipment types you see most
• Callback rate reviewed against the shop average, not against zero
• Commissioning verified: measured values recorded on tickets, not estimated
• Comfortable explaining findings and pricing to a customer
• Second check-in, same question, and compare the answers

Day 90

• Runs a normal day of mixed calls at expected efficiency
• Escalation rate at or near shop norm — and still escalating when they should
• Ramp time recorded against your baseline for the next hire
• Formal review with pay and progression discussed openly
• Asked what onboarding missed — then actually change the list

Three things that make the difference

The checkpoints, not the tasks. A task list without gates becomes a form that gets ticked in one sitting. "Has completed twelve maintenance calls solo without a return" is checkable; "trained on maintenance" is not.

A named mentor with lightened calls. If mentoring is added on top of a full schedule, it is the thing that gets dropped, and the new hire learns by guessing.

The last item on the 90-day list. Onboarding lists rot because nobody edits them after they are written. Asking each new hire what was missing, and changing the list that same week, is what keeps it worth using.