Onboarding
Build a new-hire learning plan from real work
Build the learning plan by identifying what the new hire must understand and practise to deliver each early role outcome. Sequence context, observation, supervised work, feedback, and independent ownership. Name teachers and useful artifacts, leave room for questions, and review progress through work evidence rather than course completion or time spent in orientation.
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Start with early outcomes
Choose the work the person should own after thirty, sixty, or ninety days, adjusted to the role and actual ramp. For each outcome, ask what knowledge, relationships, systems, and judgment it requires. This creates a focused curriculum. Without an outcome anchor, onboarding accumulates presentations and documents because every stakeholder believes their context is essential.
Sequence how people learn
Plan a progression from explanation to observation, bounded practice, review, and independent work. Some knowledge is best read; judgment usually needs examples and discussion. Include failures, exceptions, and escalation paths. Spread learning across time so the new hire can connect ideas to experience. Avoid front-loading every system and policy before the person understands when it matters.
Assign teachers and protect their time
Name the manager, buddy, subject experts, and partners responsible for particular learning. Give each person a clear topic and expected format. Check that access and representative work will be available. Learning plans fail when they depend on unnamed helpful colleagues or on a manager who has not adjusted their calendar.
- Outcome the learning supports
- Knowledge and judgment required
- Practice task with safe boundaries
- Teacher and feedback owner
- Evidence for increasing ownership
Turn context into practice
Illustrative example: a new customer success manager must lead renewal planning by month two. The plan includes observing one review, mapping account risks with a peer, drafting a plan for a lower-risk customer, and receiving feedback from the director. Security and product training are scheduled before the task that uses them. Completion means leading a useful conversation, not watching every recorded session.
Review the plan as evidence arrives
Meet regularly to ask what the new hire can now do, where they need another example, and whether the role priorities changed. Speed up when evidence supports it and add practice when judgment is still developing. Separate missing capability from poor teaching, unavailable work, or access delays. Retire learning items that no longer serve an outcome rather than preserving the original plan for appearance. Ask the new hire to teach back one workflow or decision rule after using it. Their explanation reveals both understanding and unclear source material. Use mistakes as input for another guided attempt, while keeping consequences bounded. The goal is independent judgment built through practice, not memorisation of the manager's preferred wording. Keep optional development topics outside the core ramp so an ambitious curriculum does not delay essential ownership.
Next step
Choose one thirty-day outcome and map the knowledge, observation, practice task, teacher, and evidence required before adding another onboarding session. Put the first practice and feedback dates on the calendar.