Building and implementing a successful onboarding strategy isn’t always easy. Too often, organizations put their energy into hiring but fail to invest in supporting their new employees by fully integrating them and setting them up for high performance.
Often, in the absence of a coordinated organization-wide onboarding strategy, the onboarding experience is inconsistent across business units and may even occur weeks or months after the employee starts. Even more often, onboarding can be like a firehose, drowning the new hires with information that may not even be relevant or useful to them.
These less-than-optimal onboarding experiences will inform a new employee’s perspective on the company and can deeply impact their future engagement and retention. So, how can you engage your new hires and carefully integrate them into your company culture? Develop a 30-60-90 onboarding strategy.
What Is a 30-60-90 Onboarding Day Plan for?
Simply put, a 30-60-90 onboarding plan provides a logical, structured approach to creating an effective and engaging learning experience that properly supports your new hires. It gives them precisely what they need when they need it as they join your company and start in their new role.
The 30-60-90 onboarding plan is divided into three phases. These phases are broadly aligned with the month before an employee starts and their first and second months of employment. While this general cadence is useful, the timing is more of a guideline than a requirement.
This specific design develops a plan for you to release information over time, as the new employee needs it most. If you thoughtfully and adequately time the release of information—like with our Align, Deliver, and Sustain learning model—you introduce new hires to practical information, cultural norms, and performance expectations right when they need it.
What Should You Include in a 30-60-90 Plan?
When beginning to design an onboarding journey, we often use a Head-Heart-Hand model to help define the right approach for the learner and the organization. The “head” represents logic, the tangible benefits your organization and learners could gain from the program. The “heart” questions what a great learning experience would look and feel like, and the “hand” represents practicalities—what the learning needs to include, and when, to be helpful.
This Head-Heart-Hand concept can help you determine what is most important to include in your onboarding journey by asking the following questions.
- Head: What can great onboarding do for your organization and learners? As you develop your onboarding plan, you must be clear about your objectives. Your goals should drive the strategic design of your onboarding plan. For example, if your priority is to increase the speed at which a new hire becomes a fully integrated and high-performing member of your organization, you would start by defining the fundamental characteristics of a high-performing employee and ensure you highlight those in your onboarding curriculum design.
- Heart: How does a great onboarding experience make the learner feel? Organizations often overlook how they want their people to feel about their experiences and the organization. Be sure to consider this question. One goal may be to make your learners feel secure and supported in their decision to work for you. Or you may want them to feel confident when they speak about all your organization’s solutions.
- Hand: What does a great onboarding journey provide your new employee? Consider what your learners need to know and when, on the most practical level. To reduce organizational risk, you will likely need to debrief them on basic operating guidelines when they start working for you. Your new employee will also need to know your daily processes and systems from the start, so it’s prudent to include these practicalities early in the onboarding process.
Increase Engagement with Blended and Personalized Learning
A critical line divides ordinary onboarding experiences from exceptional ones: the degree of highly relevant or personalized onboarding experience versus generic, organization-wide content. An approach that deeply personalizes the experience undoubtedly takes longer to create. But a journey that combines both unique and universal learning moments will pay off in terms of engagement and enthusiasm from your new employees.
Also, as you further work through what to cover in your 30-60-90 onboarding strategy, you should consider how you will deliver the information. Blended learning combines different learning modalities to increase engagement and knowledge retention.
A blended learning journey might combine interactive games and social connections as well as more traditional learning modalities like eLearning videos and on-the-job training. These ideas work just as well for remote or hybrid working environments as they do for in-person settings.
30-60-90 Onboarding: An Integrated Journey
After you determine what your organization’s specific learning needs are, what you need to do to deliver on them, and how you can best deliver that information, it’s critical to decide the optimal time to release that information to the learner.
The 30-60-90 plan structures the release of information over time so as to not overwhelm your new hire. It enables successful onboarding that accelerates integration, builds company culture, and ultimately improves retention.
The First 30 Days: The Perfect Learning Moment
The first 30 days of the 30-60-90 onboarding plan are the perfect learning moment because people are like sponges: excited at the new opportunity, engaged, and ready to learn. This phase starts before a new employee begins their first full day of employment.
Although this phase is labeled “the first 30 days,” it can be much shorter. The key is to recognize that this phase is the starting point or foundation for your learners. Everything builds on these early learning moments. If engaging with the learners before they officially start work with you is difficult, the first and second phases can even run together concurrently. The important thing is to differentiate phases and areas of focus for your learner.
The focus of this stage is usually essential preparation on topics like your brand and culture, organizational strategy, and a high-level view of your products and services. These are all useful topics that people can and should learn about, even in the pre-joining phase of their journey. Before the new hires’ first day at work, some organizations encourage them to read and watch selected resources. Other organizations use gamified learning to show the new employees what their company does, how it operates, or who its core customers are.
Days 31–60: Speed to Excellence
The 60 phase of this onboarding strategy tends to be more knowledge-focused than the first 30 days. Generally, the 60 phase starts as the learner walks through the door. You will likely provide your new employees with information about immediate practical needs in the context of their role within the company and their working environment. Such information may include systems, processes, compliance, ethics, health and safety, and data protection guidelines.
At this point, it can be easy to overload a new employee. To reduce the chances of doing so, consider blending the type of learning you offer. Blended learning may include digital resources, face-to-face sessions, meetings with managers and peers, gamification, on-the-job learning, and planned weekly reflection.
Thoughtfully layering and prioritizing information is vital in the 60 phase. Just as you must avoid overloading a new hire, you must also ensure you don’t underload them. New hires who sit around with nothing to do will likely disengage quickly and wonder if they’ve made the right choice. Getting the balance right and checking in regularly with your new hires is essential.
Days 61–90: Performing Optimally
The 90 phase embeds what your new hires have learned as they transition into independent, productive, and high-performing members of your organization. The 90 phase includes coaching, mentoring, reflecting on success, tackling problems, and gradually learning about more specialized areas.
A key component of this phase is the successful transition of the manager’s role from supporting your new employee to returning to business as usual. Your new hire’s peers also play a vital role in this onboarding stage. Social support can be integral to helping people feel like they belong.
Building Sustainable Success Through a 30-60-90 Onboarding Plan
Onboarding is a process, not a destination. It is the first step into what is ideally a long and successful partnership between your new hire and your company. The impact of onboarding can be felt throughout an entire career journey, with onboarding serving as a sturdy foundation for all future learning within your organization.
The key to all successful onboarding is to build an environment of continuous engagement. Nurture your new employees’ excitement and use it to propel them toward excellence and long-term success.
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