Hi Dave
There are probably 'official' ways to do this, but I though I'd share the two ways we do it:
1, We send emails to new when staff when they are assigned the system role of 'Staff Member role' :
Site Admin > Users> Permissions > Define roles
There a section for a "Welcome email message" which we use to introduce the site, sign them up for induction and also to check that IT have correctly provisioned their account.
2, We automatically enrol all staff in the '90 day survey for new staff' course page (via LDAP settings) and set Completion to 'Duration after enrolment' (90 days) and then use the Reminder emails to invite them to tell us about their first 90 days.
Cheers
Austen