30-60-90 day onboarding plan: a template to copy for your next hire

The 30-60-90 day onboarding plan is the simplest way to take onboarding out of improvisation. The idea fits in one sentence: before the new hire arrives, you write down what they should be able to do after one month, two months and three months, and who helps them get there. Nothing more. No tool, no dedicated team: one well-built page is enough.

The need is real. According to Gallup, only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees (Gallup, Why the Onboarding Experience Is Key for Retention). In a small or mid-sized company, the reason is almost always the same: onboarding depends on the manager's goodwill, and it changes from one hire to the next depending on how busy they are. A 30-60-90 plan makes onboarding repeatable.

What a 30-60-90 plan is (and isn't)

A 30-60-90 plan is not a list of administrative tasks. The hiring declaration, health insurance, badge and equipment belong to preboarding and to the onboarding checklist: they must be settled before the plan starts.

It is a progression contract between the new hire, their manager and HR. For each stage, it sets three things:

1. A goal: what the new hire can do at the end of the stage.
2. Actions, each with a named owner (HR, manager, buddy, IT).
3. A checkpoint: the yes-or-no question that tells you whether the stage worked.

The third element is the one most often forgotten, yet it is what turns a list into a journey. Without checkpoints, you find out on day 90 that a new hire never got full access to their tools.

The template, stage by stage

The template below is the common base for any role. You then add what is specific to the job.

Before day one: prepare the ground

The plan starts before arrival, otherwise the first week is lost to logistics. Preboarding covers this time: contract and documents signed online with a deadline, directions and the name of the person who will welcome them, equipment ordered, accounts created.

Checkpoint: the new hire knows where to go, at what time, and who is expecting them. Their equipment is ready.

Week 1: landmarks

The goal is not to learn everything, it is to know who to ask about what.

• Present the real organization: who decides what, who to go to for what.
• Walk through everyday tools on a concrete case, not a general demo.
• Assign a buddy and set a first lunch within the first three days.
• Hand over a first deliverable task for the end of the week, however small.

Checkpoint: the new hire has produced something and knows who to turn to when stuck.

Day 30: autonomy on the scope

After one month, the new hire should handle the routine tasks of the role on their own.

• Review the recurring tasks of the role, one by one.
• Check that access rights are complete: it is the first silent blocker.
• Hold a half-hour manager conversation focused on obstacles rather than performance.

Checkpoint: the new hire no longer needs to ask where things are.

Day 60: contribution

After two months, you move from "doing" to "owning".

• Hand over a file the new hire is responsible for end to end.
• Include them in team rituals with an active role, not as an observer.
• Collect their fresh view of how you work: that window closes quickly. A short "first impressions" report, one page of open questions, is the simplest format.

Checkpoint: they have presented a topic to people other than their manager.

Day 90: review and direction

• Hold a cross review: the new hire's self-assessment, the manager's feedback, the buddy's feedback.
• Set three written, measurable goals for the next quarter.
• Ask what was missing from the onboarding, and fix the plan for the next hire.

Checkpoint: what comes next is decided on observed facts, not on an impression.

Fitting the plan to the probation period (France)

This is the point most English-language templates ignore, because it is specific to French employment law: the 30-60-90 plan must land before the end of the probation period, not after.

On a permanent contract (CDI), the initial probation period lasts at most two months for employees and workers, three months for supervisors and technicians, and four months for managers (cadres), with one possible renewal under conditions (service-public.gouv.fr, in French). An employer who wants to end it must also give notice: two weeks between one and three months of presence, one month beyond three months (same source).

In practice:

• For an employee on a two-month probation, a day-90 review comes too late. Bring the review forward to around day 45, to leave time to decide and give proper notice.
• For a technician on three months, the day-60 checkpoint becomes the real decision point.
• For a manager on four months, the 30-60-90 rhythm works as is, with a month to spare.

In every case, any renewal must be proposed in writing and accepted by the new hire during the initial period. Better to plan for it than to discover it in the last week.

Adapting the template to the role

The base doesn't change; what you put in it does. A few examples:

• Technical role: development environment ready before day one, first contribution reviewed in week 1, supported on-call or production release around day 60.
• Sales role: call shadowing in week 1, first meetings in pairs by day 30, accounts handed over by day 60.
• Manager: a one-to-one with every team member during the first month, before any decision on organization.
• Consultant on assignment: most of the journey happens remotely, at the client's site; that's the subject of our guide to onboarding in IT consulting.

The four mistakes that sink a 30-60-90 plan

1. A plan that's too rich. Forty actions per stage, nobody does them. Five actions kept beat twenty ticked in a hurry the day before the review.

2. Actions without an owner. "Introduce the team" doesn't happen until someone is named. Every line has a name.

3. Checkpoints that don't happen. A day-30 conversation postponed twice is a signal, on either side. Dates are set on the day the contract is signed.

4. A plan that's never corrected. Every onboarding reveals what was missing. Reread the plan after each hire, the way you improve a product.

The full template, ready to copy

We've packaged this template as a free kit: the 30-60-90 onboarding plan, with four role-based plans (general, technical, sales, manager), the preboarding admin checklist and the questions new hires actually ask in their first weeks.

At Weloom, the 30-60-90 plan is generated from your own documents (welcome booklet, procedures, org chart), approved by your HR team, then delivered stage by stage to the new hire. The day-30, day-60 and day-90 milestones are dated from arrival, and HR sees who is progressing and who is falling behind before the end of the probation period. 14-day free trial.

Where to start: take the next person joining, open their contract, and note the end date of their probation period. Place your review two to four weeks before it. That's the first milestone of your plan.