High-volume hiring organizations estimate that 35% of their onboarding work is still done by hand, according to Onboarded’s The State of High-Volume Onboarding 2026.
The survey asked which tasks run automatically, how much work remains manual and which activities take the most staff time. Keeping systems in sync was the most commonly automated task. Scheduling orientation, training or pre-start sessions was the most frequently reported time drain.
For teams deciding what to improve next, those findings provide a useful starting point. They show how widely specific tasks are automated and where respondents still report spending time.
Which onboarding tasks are automated most often?
In Onboarded’s 2026 survey, respondents reported whether each task happens automatically, without someone on the team stepping in:
- Keeping hiring, HR and payroll systems in sync: 52.7%.
- I-9 or E-Verify cases: 42.6%.
- Candidate reminders: 40.8%.
- Background checks: 40.8%.
- Assigning the right forms: 38.6%.
- Next-step updates: 35.1%.
- Signatures: 34.4%.
- Document-accuracy checks: 34.4%.
- Client- or location-specific paperwork: 33.7%.
- Returning-worker onboarding: 25.7%.
Respondents reported an average of 3.8 automated tasks out of the ten measured. System syncing was the only task reported as automated by more than half of respondents.
These percentages describe how many respondents automate each task. They do not measure the percentage of hires processed automatically or how much staff time the automation saves.
How much onboarding work still requires manual effort?
The estimated average manual share was 35%, calculated from the ranges respondents selected:
- Less than 10% manual: 13.1% of respondents.
- 10% to 25% manual: 24.5%.
- 26% to 50% manual: 41.1%.
- 51% to 75% manual: 15.3%.
- More than 75% manual: 5.9%.
The largest group reported doing between a quarter and half of their onboarding work manually.
This is a separate measure from the number of automated tasks. Counting an automated background check and an automated reminder as two tasks tells you which activities run automatically. It does not tell you how much work is left for the team.
That matters when assessing your own setup. A list of enabled automations is useful, but it cannot answer how much of the working day still goes into onboarding.
What takes the most time in onboarding?
Respondents could select up to three activities as their largest time drains. The five most frequently selected were:
- Scheduling orientation, training or pre-start sessions: 53.5%.
- Verifying compliance documents: 44.1%.
- Duplicate data entry: 31.7%.
- Reviewing or correcting documents: 31.2%.
- Assigning the right forms: 30.9%.
Scheduling was the only activity named by more than half of respondents. Document verification followed at 44.1%.
These figures identify commonly reported demands on staff time. They are not a breakdown of hours worked. For example, 53.5% does not mean scheduling consumes half of an onboarding team’s time.
Does automated system syncing eliminate duplicate entry?
Duplicate entry remained a reported problem among teams with automated syncing.
In Onboarded’s survey, 31.9% of respondents with automated system syncing named duplicate entry as a top-three time drain. Among respondents without automated syncing, the figure was 31.4%.
The reported rates were nearly identical. The survey did not measure which fields were synchronized, how complete the connections were or how much data people re-entered. It therefore cannot establish how effective those integrations were.
What it does establish is that automated syncing and a significant reported burden from duplicate entry can coexist. For a team experiencing both, that is a reason to examine which information still has to be entered manually and where.
Which onboarding task is least automated?
Returning-worker onboarding had the lowest reported automation rate of the ten tasks measured, at 25.7%.
That does not mean the other 74% handle every returning worker manually. The survey did not establish what those organizations do instead.
For organizations that regularly rehire or redeploy workers, this is a useful process to examine separately. Check whether your team can identify which records remain valid, what needs updating and which items require review. Those are practical questions for your operation, rather than explanations for the survey result.
Compare the work, as well as the automation
The survey gives teams three measures to consider together: which tasks run automatically, how much onboarding work remains manual and which activities consume the most attention.
That is a more useful starting point for an improvement discussion than the number of automations alone.
Explore the full 2026 onboarding benchmarks to compare automation and manual work alongside time to start, no-shows and costs. You can also download the full report from the same page.
Source: Onboarded’s State of High-Volume Onboarding 2026, a survey of 404 respondents at organizations hiring or placing at least 600 workers annually. The average manual-work share is estimated from reported ranges.
