What is a 30-60-90 day plan in the workplace, and why should it be a part of your onboarding process? This strategic roadmap isn’t just a great way to introduce a new hire to the organization, but an invaluable way to ensure successful retention long term.
Hiring a new employee requires immense trust on the part of both the employer and the employee. Employers are required to have some faith in the new hire’s ability to meet the needs of the organization, while employees attempt to trust that the new organization is an ideal place to build a career. For the most part, an employee’s initiation into the business is pre-determined, with the onboarding process sufficiently structured to ensure that the employee is gradually exposed to their team, their role, and the internal workings of the business.
This is certainly enough to guarantee a smooth onboarding for the majority of the time, however, without some tailoring, the generic onboarding process can leave the employee uncertain about their short-term and long-term goals with the business. Including a 30-60-90 day plan in the employee onboarding process can set clear goals and milestones for everyone involved in inducting the employee into the organization, ensuring the relationship is built on clarity of purpose.
A 30-60-90 day plan can be applied in many situations at work, but utilizing it during onboarding is a surefire way to ensure productivity and retention. (Image: Pexels)
What Is a 30-60-90 Day Plan? Understanding Key Strategies for HR to Consider During Employee Onboarding
A 30-60-90-day plan in the hiring process is a way for an organization to outline goals and milestones for a new hire at measured intervals, all to ensure that progress towards them is gradual but steady.
The 30-60-90-day structure isn’t exclusively used for employee onboarding. It can be utilized in other areas, like sales strategizing or determining an employee’s eligibility for more senior roles. For HR teams, it is a highly effective onboarding tool to ensure that employers and new hires remain on the same page at all times.
As the name suggests, a 30-60-90 day template breaks down an employee’s next course of action into a measurable cycle, setting achievable targets for 90 days in 30-day increments. The phases are broken down into day 1-day 30, day 31-day 60, and day 61-day 90. These phases allow employees to chart their progress towards a single goal, or alternatively allows them to move from phase to phase, gaining more experience to perform their actual roles.
Why Should a New Job Come with a 30-60-90 Day Plan?
The 30-60-90 day plan benefits both the organization and the employee in equal measure, ensuring that a strategic, structured approach allows them to progress with clarity.
For employers, managers, and HR teams, the benefits of a 30-60-90 day plan can include:
- Greater control over an employee’s onboarding
- More detailed early insights into the employees’ strengths and weaknesses, which can be addressed during the course of the plan
- More data on the onboarding process, the employee’s assimilation into the organization, and the overall success of hiring
- Increased clarity of purpose for employees who can be kept on the path towards organizational objectives
- Expanded transparency in their operations so there can be no questions of their actions or intentions later
- Better relationship with new hires thanks to the consistent communication, check-ins, openness, etc.
- Greater insights into the new hire’s alignment with the needs of the organization
For employees, the benefits of a 30-60-90 day plan can include:
- A better understanding of their purpose for the next three months at the organization
- Clarity on expectations and methods of achieving pre-set goals
- Improved communication with the organization and familiarity with its operations
- Increased access to a direct pathway to the company culture and its people
- Reduced stress and uncertainty over what comes next
- Better connection with mentors, seniors, and colleagues due to their regular structured interaction with each team
- Faster shift to productivity due to the strategic roadmap
How to Write a 30-60-90 Day Plan
Starting a new job with a 30-60-90 day plan is beneficial to both employers and employees but many organizations don’t bother with one because it can be time-intensive and require managers to be keenly involved in the new hire’s onboarding. Some might consider this an unnecessary investment, but it may just be why you find new hires quitting sooner than desired or taking extremely long to find their footing on the job.
Once you understand what a 30-60-90 day plan is and why it is relevant to an organization, it can’t hurt to test its application within your business to assess its impact. As for how to write a 30-60-90 plan, we have a few steps to consider.
1. Determine What Employees Need to Know About the Organization and Their Role
All onboarding starts with an introduction to the organization, its products and services, and the teams that make it possible. The work doesn’t stop there. Identify all the material relevant to the introduction of a new hire to the organization, and also gather information on the ins and outs of their specific role.
2. Organize the Data to Assess Priority and Relevance
Structure the information based on a hierarchy of priorities and determine what employees need to learn first. The roles of the marketing team may be relevant to the IT hire eventually, but in the first month, it is better for them to understand the organization’s culture and systems that are directly connected to them first. In a similar fashion, prioritize the learning content.
3. Set Objectives for the 30-60-90 Day Plan
The purpose of the 30-60-90 day plan isn’t just to teach a new employee about the organization, but more so their own roles and how to perform them. For each role, organizations will have to establish 30-day goals in three phases to make sure they have achievable targets to work towards. These can be SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
- 30-day goals can focus on building familiarity with the organization’s operations, the teams and their work routines, and the company culture overall
- 60-day goals can involve skill building, task execution, and active involvement with day-to-day operations
- 90-day goals can center on expanding responsibilities, working with reduced supervision, error corrections, and other, more critical aspects of the job
4. Define the Target as Well As What Successful Execution Will Look Like
While writing a 30-60-90 day plan, defining the objective isn’t enough. The plan should contain steps that bring employees closer towards achieving them, and what successful completion might look like. Setting clear steps and highlighting the purpose and application will help them better understand what to do.
5. Determine The Resources that Will Be Necessary and Establish a Process for Accessing Them
Employees can create their own 30-60-90 day plans, but it is harder for them to do it alone without clarity on what needs to get done and whose job it is to help. Not only is it important to set goals, but also important to determine what tools and resources will be needed for employees to achieve their targets so they don’t get stuck every step of the way.
6. Rope In Individuals Who Will Oversee the Execution of the 30-60-90 Day Plan
Managers, mentors, and colleagues need to be prepared to play their part in helping a new hire with working towards these goals. Managers, for example, need to be available to answer questions, monitor progress, and support the employee in achieving their goal. Mentors may need to be available for scheduled deep dives into the industry and its workings.
7. Speak to Stakeholders to Perfect the Plan Before Putting It Into Action
Once you have planned out the steps for the 30-60-90-day plan, you can gather input from other senior leaders at the organization to ensure it is realistic and comprehensive. Before the plan is put into action, you can also talk to the new hire and consider adding a few of their goals into the plan to make it more tailored to them and their expectations for the new role.
Spruce Up Your Onboarding or PIP With a 30-60-90 Day Plan
The best part of utilizing a 30-60-90 day structure is that once you’re comfortable with the process of planning, you can put it to use in various aspects of employee management. An employee who has fallen below expectations in a performance review can also benefit from such a structured strategy. A 30-60-90-day plan designed for managers could help them prepare for greater responsibility, relying on the structured approach to make progress towards expanding their skills and perspective.
A rigid structure can be occasionally oppressive, but a dynamic game plan sets all the pieces in the right place for planned progression towards goals. Such systems are essential for maintaining order and creating progress that can be replicated with employee after employee with minor variations.
`Are there benefits to a 30-60-90 day plan? Share your opinions on the process with us in the comments. Subscribe to The HR Digest for more insights on workplace trends, layoffs, and what to expect with the advent of AI.
