Case Study: Automattic streamlines remote onboarding with Donut

Build an Impactful and Efficient Onboarding Process for Your Fully Remote Team

Automattic, the fully remote company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, and WooCommerce, needed a better way to onboard new hires across 62 countries, 80 languages, and 17-hour time zone differences. The team wanted an onboarding process that could support global coordination, reduce confusion, and help new employees ramp up without adding extra burden on team leads and buddies.

Using Donut, Automattic built a standardized onboarding workflow with automated, daily task breakdowns and drip-style communications. Donut helped reduce cognitive load, improve consistency across cohorts, and free up time to focus on culture-first onboarding, including tips, trivia, and clear inclusion messaging. The result was a cleaner, more comprehensive experience with less accountability burden, better productivity, and training materials that new hires could revisit over time.

Automattic

Anne McCarthy

Happiness Engineer and Team Lead