For whoever runs onboarding, from the accepted offer to day 90. Set it up once and every new hire gets the same ninety days, each step dated. The hiring manager and the buddy get their parts too, you see every step done or overdue, and the new hire’s answers reach their manager before each check-in.
Running onboarding
Yours: the whole program on one page and how to set it up, the feedback each new hire sends you near day 90, and the twice-yearly review that changes the program from what they said.
The new hire’s ninety days
Everything the new hire receives, a phase at a time. Each phase holds the piece they open first, then the one whose answers their manager reads before the check-in that closes the phase.
Before day one
Sent at the yes: where to be on the first morning, what nobody expects of them yet, and the three ways good people stumble in a new job’s first month.
The first week
From day one, in the team’s onboarding group: the rules nobody writes down, and the job written back in their own words at the end of week one.
The first month
The six people worth knowing, and in week three, what they had to find out on their own, written down for the next new hire.
Months two and three
Around day 45, one question asked of three colleagues; around day 50, one thing that looks odd to someone new, and what they would try.
The manager and the buddy
The hiring manager’s four pieces and the buddy’s one, each sent directly, so nothing meant for them lands on the new hire.
For the hiring manager
The plan written before day one, the first hour, the three check-ins and the ninety-day conversation that closes onboarding.
For the buddy
What a buddy does and does not do, the first three conversations, and a log of eight meetings.
When it is not going to plan
Reference, reached for one at a time: a new hire struggling early, and a new hire who wants out.
