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Prepare for Your New Employee's Arrival

How you set the stage for your new employee's first day is critical to creating a positive impression and building strong connections from the start. 

To ease anxiety, have a plan to get your new employee involved, while remembering not to overwhelm them. Although your approach will vary depending on whether they are new to your department or to the university, your goal as supervisor or manager remains the same — to reinforce the reasons your new employee chose the position. Accepting the offer to join your department was likely a big decision for your new employee.

Employee engagement begins the moment the offer is accepted. Harness your new hire's excitement and energy and convert their enthusiasm for the new job into long-lasting momentum!

Communication

Something as simple as a two-minute phone call or a quick email can go a long way toward making your new employee feel valued and excited to begin working in your department. Build a strong connection with your new employee from the start.

Once you receive notification of your new hire's offer acceptance, it's time for action!

  • Reach out immediately to congratulate and welcome your new hire. Invite them to reach out to you with any questions as they work through pre-start activities with their Onboarding Specialist.
  • Set up a pre-start, informal, virtual "meet and greet" with the team to build familiarity prior to starting.
  • Email a week before the start date to provide logistics they’ll need for their first day (start time and schedule, parking information, appropriate attire, etc.).
Group of SSO employees.

Manager Guide and Tips

Review best practices and a script to help make your new employee feel WELCOME!

Activities

  • Technology and Access: The day you receive notification of your new hire’s acceptance is the day to submit any requests for equipment and access (laptop, key, badge, internal systems, etc.). Ideally, all new employees have everything they need to start on Day 1.
     
  • Start Strong: Create a schedule for Day 1 (and beyond! - see below for additional planning/scheduling tools)
    • If in-person: prepare their desk with basic office supplies and a welcome sign; arrange for a group breakfast or lunch
    • If hybrid/remote: send a welcome message on your team's group communication channel for everyone to chime in on and/or arrange a welcoming virtual team meeting
      Note: Campus and Health have separate Remote Work Agreement Forms 
    • Schedule time for you to meet with your new employee to review top items
    • Note: UC Davis Health new hires are often already scheduled to attend the Health New Employee Welcome on the morning of their first day. Keep this in mind for onboarding planning.

30-60-90 Day Onboarding Plan: A Roadmap for Integration

Laying the Foundation for Success

A 30-60-90 Day Plan is an excellent framework for planning and goal setting. By spending time and effort on preparation and planning up front, you can maximize efficiency down the road. A well-developed onboarding plan can be used repeatedly for future hires, needing only customization for different roles, and prompts revisiting documented processes, procedures and systems.

The major benefit of creating an intentional plan is clarity of expectations for everyone involved. It provides a structured schedule for the new hire to start learning and building relationships. You, the new employee and your team, all clearly understand the schedule, time commitments, measures of success and take accountability for roles played in the onboarding plan.

Preparation and Collaboration

Before filling in the 30-60-90-day Onboarding Plan Template, you'll want to prepare by identifying all the work tasks, processes, and systems your new hire will need to learn. Download the Task, Processes, and Systems Worksheet to assist you in identifying these items.

  • Delegate Peer-to-Peer Cross-training
  • Onboarding a new employee takes a lot of time, energy and dedication - and you don't have to do it alone! Think about who on your team or in your department or unit has the expertise and bandwidth to assist the new hire with onboarding training. Peer-to-peer training helps build strong working relationships and can serve as a challenge or stretch goal in a current employee's professional development. Use the Peer Training – Assignments & Schedule Worksheet to identify who your experts are and the scheduling priority for completing the training.
  • Knowledge Documentation
  • A new hire joining your team is an excellent time to review and update (or create!) documents outlining processes and procedures associated with your workflows. The Knowledge Documentation Worksheet can assist you in getting started or in identifying new knowledge documentation needed following process change. If you already have knowledge documentation, or when you are ready to create these documents, it is a best practice to choose ONE location for storing your knowledge documentation. Based on the nature of your work, a safe/secure storage location may be needed.
  • Onboarding Buddies
  • Another best practice is to assign an "onboarding buddy" from your team to help the new employee get settled, find needed resources and be a "go-to" for general questions. This Sample Onboarding Buddy Checklist can be customized to your team/department's specific needs and help you think about duties you may assign. For additional ideas and information on creating an onboarding buddy program, check out Gartner's Buddy Program Communication Guide and Resource Pack for New Buddies.

    Download the linked worksheets above and modify them for your needs. We highly recommend taking the time up front to identify these items before starting on the 30-60-90 Day Onboarding Plan Template. Once all of your processes, systems, expert help and knowledge documentation are identified and in place, this can all be plugged into the 30-60-90 Day Onboarding Plan Template. 

 

Note: The next page of this toolkit contains additional activity ideas and best practices to spread out all the priority tasks and activities over the 30-60-90 day period. Click The First 90 Days button at the bottom of this page to view.

Set 90-Day Goals

Use the section at the top of the Onboarding Plan Template to capture the 90-day goals you set for, and with, your new employee. Ideally, goal setting is done collaboratively between a supervisor or manager and the employee. At the very start, you will need to set these expectations. Prepare a few 90-Day goals to discuss and finalize when the employee starts. 

Some new hires fall into a Probationary Period status when they first start. You may need to complete Probationary Evaluations for Staff in this category at 90 days and then at their six-month mark. Check with your Talent Acquisition partner or with Employee & Labor Relations (ELR) if you are unsure about this requirement.

Even if a formal probationary evaluation is not required, it is a best practice to set initial short-term goals and create time to review, evaluate and provide feedback for your new employee, discussing progress made and determining new goals and next steps towards job mastery.

  • Prepare Onboarding Plan and Schedule
    • TEMPLATE_30-60-90 Day Onboarding Plan - Use this template to capture 90-day goals, 30, 60 and 90-day tasks, training and relationship-building meetings. Share this plan with the employee on their first day.
    • SAMPLE_UC Davis Onboarding Checklist. Note: This sample is a starting point. You must customize this checklist if you plan to use it. Not everything on it will be relevant to your needs, and department-specific items need to be added.

While much of the onboarding tasks and schedule are in the 30-60-90 Day Onboarding Plan Template, it could be beneficial to create an itinerary to distribute to your team, anyone assisting with onboarding and the new hire. Here is a SAMPLE_2 Week Itinerary Template that might be useful in onboarding planning.

Resources


TEMPLATE_30-60-90 Day Onboarding Plan