Welcome Package

Help participants prepare & access tools

A welcome package is the difference between participants arriving on the call confident and ready, and spending the first ten minutes sorting out what they are supposed to be doing.

A welcome package is everything you send to participants before the session to help them prepare and access the tools. At minimum it includes the video link, a clear agenda, technical instructions, and any pre-work. Done well, it also gives people a sense of what to expect, who else will be there, and how to reach you if something goes wrong.

Online this matters more than in a room because participants cannot walk up and ask a quick question when they arrive, and there is no front desk to sort out access problems. The welcome package is the front desk, the signage, and the greeter all in one.

The goal is to reduce friction. Every question that is answered in the welcome package is one that does not have to be handled live at the start of the session, which is exactly when you need your attention elsewhere.

Online, specificallyOnline participants have no one to ask when they arrive, so the welcome package has to anticipate every question they might have before and right at the start of the call.

In a remote session

The same building block as it plays out online: how experienced facilitators tend to handle it when the room is a screen. Illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

One document, everything in it

Good facilitators put the video link, tool links, agenda, pre-work instructions, and a tech check in one place, not sent across multiple emails on different days. Participants should only need to find one thing.

Include a tech check

They ask participants to test their camera, microphone, and any required software before the session, and give a clear contact for getting help. A five-minute tech problem at the start is a problem the welcome package should have solved.

Send it at the right time

Three to five days before works for most sessions: close enough to be in mind, far enough that participants can sort out any access issues before the day. A short reminder the day before restates the link and the pre-work.

Make it easy to read quickly

They write the welcome message so that someone reading it in three minutes gets the essentials: when, where (the link), what to do beforehand, and what to bring. Long paragraphs of context go at the bottom.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Does the welcome package include everything a participant needs to arrive confident and technically ready?
Have you included a tech check and a clear contact for help if something does not work before the session?
When will the welcome package go out, and when will you send the reminder?
Is the welcome message easy to read quickly, or does it bury the essential information in a long introduction?
What happens if a participant follows all the instructions and still cannot access the session?

What trips people up online

Sending the video link and the joining instructions in separate messages on different days means participants arrive with half the information.
Welcome packages that are long and context-heavy get skimmed: people find the link and stop reading, so they miss the pre-work or the tech requirement.
Not including a tech check or a help contact means the first ten minutes of the session are spent troubleshooting instead of getting started.