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Your new employees need time—as long as 12 months in some cases—to learn the ropes of the organization and reach their full performance potential within a role. However, it’s crucial to set them up for success and give them clear goals to work toward.

This is where creating a 30-60-90 day plan is important. This is a structured onboarding plan for new hires, where goals and activities are spaced across 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day periods.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create this plan and contextually onboard new employees at every step of their onboarding journey.

What is a 30-60-90 Day Plan?

A 30-60-90 day plan is exactly what it sounds like—it is a document that outlines critical milestones, actionable goals, and high-level priorities for new employees to achieve in the first 30, 60, and 90 days of their employment. The hiring manager of the new employee is responsible for creating one.

What the 30-60-90 day plan does:

Highlights workable goals to hit in the first three months of a new hire’s employment, breaking them down into 30-, 60-, and 90-day increments.
Simplifies what the employee should be focusing on
Demonstrates metrics to measure success at the 30-, 60-, and 90-day marks
Helps new employees to maximize their output and accomplish set milestones aligned with the company’s mission.

Important Elements of a 30-60-90 Day Plan

The central concept of a good 30-60-90 day plan revolves around:

Converting larger goals into smaller, more digestible milestones
Setting up an ultimate goal for 90 days with steps to be accomplished at the 30- and 60-day marks
Ensuring goals are achievable yet challenging
Getting buy-in from new employees by making them chart out or contribute to the plan
Aligning the plan with the company’s mission to help new hires understand their role in the organization and move along easily.

The five parts of a good 30-60-90 day plan

Before we learn how to create a 30-60-90 day plan, let’s first see what it involves.

What makes a 30-60-90 day plan great? For starters, it must immediately clarify the organization’s expectations from the new hire.

A great 30-60-90 day plan has five high-level elements:

Goals: States the company’s purpose, mission, and objectives in a concrete and measurable manner; categorizes the new hire’s goals into learning goals, professional goals, performance goals, and personal goals for best results
Focus: Specifies what the new hire needs to focus on during each phase to stay on track and work towards strategic goals
Priorities: Identifies vital tasks and projects that the new hire needs to prioritize in each 30-day period to manage their time and progress effectively
Metrics of success: Defines the key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the new hire’s success, offers clarity on what success looks like, and helps them track progress
Flexibility: It should be flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances, allowing new hires to adjust their goals and priorities as per the overall objectives of the company

Integrate SMART goals within your 30-60-90 day plan

Set SMART goals with ClickUp

To make your 30-60-90 day plan workable, try writing SMART goals. Your 30-60-90 day plan should have specific objectives that are measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound:

Specific: Clearly define what you want to achieve in each 30, 60, and 90-day period. For example, instead of setting a vague goal like ‘improve project efficiency,’ set a specific goal such as ‘reduce project timelines by 10%’
Measurable: Include key performance indicators to track your progress, such as project completion time, cost savings, customer satisfaction scores, etc.
Achievable: Set challenging and realistic goals. For example, aiming to reduce project timelines by 50% in 30 days may not be achievable, but a 10% reduction could be realistic
Relevant: Ensure that your goals align with the overall objectives of the company and the project
Time-bound: Set specific deadlines for achieving each goal to stay focused and track progress over time

The Benefits of a 30-60-90 Day Plan

A 30-60-90 day plan is a blueprint of success—in that it identifies key milestones for new employees during their early employment days.

It draws parallels to a productivity plan—one that helps new team members:

Know what’s expected of them
Manage their workload
Focus on goal-oriented tasks
Set the right parameters for success

Here are the top benefits of a 30-60-90 day plan:

Productivity boost

A strategic onboarding plan is instrumental in boosting productivity; 61% of new hires feel prepared to take on a new role once they have undergone a structured onboarding.

The onboarding plan provides direction into how the new hire can get started quickly and offers one-click access to the right resources. The team understands what to prioritize and how to get help if they get stuck at any point in their onboarding journey:

Greater productivity and team sync are bi-products of a solid onboarding experience via Gallup

To help the new hire understand their role and get contextual help, use a 30-60-90 day plan template.

Better team cohesion

A seamless onboarding experience is possible with the involvement of the team.

The team should meet and get to know each other early to build a strong foundation. Integrate one-on-one calls within your onboarding process and help team members get to know their colleagues and stakeholders.

Remember, the idea is to start building important relationships early and create a sense of teamwork. Along the way, managers must also clarify goals and elaborate on how the organization’s goals fit into team and individual goals.

To improve the employee’s understanding of team activities and deliverables, use ClickUp Kanban Board view to show all team tasks and their progress at one glance:

ClickUp Kanban Board allows you to group tasks by status

Consistent performance appraisals

Around 61% of employees would prefer staying at their current organization for development and career growth:

But you can’t develop what you don’t assess, right? This is where a 30-60-90 day plan adds performance reviews into a manager’s calendar and ensures that new hires are reviewed periodically.

Consistent reviews allow for better assessments of new hires’ progress and performance. This, in turn, helps them improve their skills, perform optimally, and integrate well into the organization.

The data says it all— ‘The half of workers who get meaningful performance enablement—have far higher levels of optimism, confidence, engagement, and productivity than the half of employees who don’t.’

Manage your 1:1 meetings with team members using ClickUp’s 1-on-1 Template

Managers can have structured performance review discussions with the new hire with the help of the ClickUp 1:1 Meeting Template.

This Docs template helps managers input and track relevant information for new hires. It includes pre-built pages for employee roles, expectations, and recurring meeting agendas. For even more organization, create nested pages within each page.

Setting employees up to succeed

Share company policies, plans, and other helpful information with your new hire through ClickUp Docs

A 30-60-90 day plan details the initial three months of a new team member’s employment, introducing them to company policies, teamwork, and business objectives. It’s a surefire way to help your new hires get up to speed as they check off essential items at the 30-60-90 day milestones on their plan.

Get the newcomer off to a good start by ensuring they can access all the necessary documentation: company policies, team plans, organization chart, etc. Managers and HR teams can do this with shareable ClickUp Docs.