Onboard every hire against a written plan, then keep them growing

1. The yes is where the work begins

Once the interviews are over and pay is agreed, it is tempting to treat the hire as finished. The opposite holds: that is when the work starts, and bringing someone on well takes far more work than hiring them. A lot of people do not take this stage seriously; they think only about getting the candidate to say yes. What matters is whether the person, once inside, would still say yes and still likes being there.

The figure for the risk. By one figure, 91 percent of employees think about leaving during month one when what they expected does not match what they find.

Why they go. New employees leave for the same reasons customers do, in the account here: they were promised things that the way the company really runs does not bear out. Put another way: the job post made promises, and onboarding has to make good on them.

2. How the first days go wrong

The pattern, a lot of times, and what usually happens: in the interview people oversell, and a big vision of the company is sold past what it really is. Then the person starts, and nobody is expecting them. There is no laptop and there are no logins, and six hours go on compliance videos. By day three they are wondering whether joining was a huge mistake and whether the people who hired them have things together.

3. What onboarding is for

The job of onboarding, as framed here, is to show the new hire that what you told them is true: that the company is what it claimed to be, and that the vision you sold holds up. The plan in the next section exists to close the gap between what was promised and what the person actually finds.

The last thing you want is for someone to walk in and conclude that you do not have things together, and so many people let exactly that happen.

4. The 30-60-90 plan

Once the person is in, build out a plan that says what they will do by day 30, by day 60 and by day 90, stretch by stretch. In one company, each person who joins gets one, and the team lays out the first 30 days for the new person. It is called the simplest thing there is, and nobody does it, it is said.

That company's plan:

Stretch	What the new hire does
The first 30 days	Learns the business, meets the team, and goes through the foundational training
Days 31 to 60	Takes ownership of projects and of the team, with support, and gets their wins
Days 61 to 90	Owns the role fully; that company is too small for anyone not to be up and running by this point

When a new hire is not working out. One practice here: whenever someone says a person they brought on is not working out (for example, a newly hired chief operating officer), ask to see that person's 30-60-90 plan. The answer, in that practice, is that there is not one. The verdict: that is your fault.

5. How long onboarding runs

A lot of people treat onboarding as something that takes seven days. By one figure, most employees are not fully productive until their sixth month. So give it at least 90 days of focus. When 90 days are up you at least know if the person belongs, and that is typically decided within the first 30, and a lot of the time that is within your control.

Put another way: by day 90 a new hire either has a sense of belonging or has not, and the first 30 days settle which.

If you lose someone in onboarding. It is probably not that they could not handle the work; the cause is that you did not set them up to win. Put another way, the failure is not setting them up to come out ahead more often than not.

6. Why settled people leave

Once people are through onboarding, the next task is to develop them and keep them. A lot of people who quit go because their progress has stalled. Three reasons people often leave for that: too little growth, too little growth and pay, and too little recognition. A second list gives the three reasons with a share for each: 37 percent quit for lack of growth, 28 percent for pay, and 27 percent for lack of recognition.

People like to feel progress. If what challenges them, what they are paid and what they are recognized for are no different a year from now, they will start having thoughts; when those things are not rising, people tend to look elsewhere. That is just people.

Most founders believe keeping people comes down to perks. It does not. People go when they stop growing, when they feel unseen, and when they cannot see what comes next.

7. What keeping people costs

Keeping people costs less than recruiting new ones, with a condition attached: only if a growth path is built. The figures offered: replacing someone costs 6 to 9 months of their salary, while investing $2K in their growth is, as put here, basically free. Keeping people is treated here as a standing system.

The work is not complicated, in the view here, but it takes discipline and systems to keep doing it. Oftentimes it comes down to three pieces, and if you have all three, keeping people is actually pretty easy:

1. A clear growth path.
2. A rhythm of feedback.
3. A system for recognition.

An exercise: check which of the three you already have.

8. A growth path, in skills

Most people overcomplicate this, picturing a ladder from junior to senior in some role. The view here rejects that. A growth path, in this view, is simply skills: where the person starts, the job they have, the job they are aiming for, and the skills that will get them there. Put another way: each person knows where their skills fall short and which ones can move them up.

One skill at a time. If you want to change someone's behavior, you do not hand them 17 things to fix at once; you give them the skills one by one. The comparison is to the pyramid of traits on SOP 264 — Rate yourself layer by layer on a pyramid of leadership traits: one level cannot come without the other.

Why skills, not titles. You probably cannot write down every job someone will hold for the rest of their career, or the 17 steps to the top. You do not know them, and if you do, they will change in about a month. The contrast: a giant corporation of 5,000 people, which is not the case here. A lot of people get stuck at exactly this point, and talking in skills is the easiest way out.

Flag: titles or skills. On SOP 251, the page on pay and career paths for salespeople, sections 6 and 7 give a rep in a repeated role a ladder of titles from junior to senior, which it calls placeholders, with small pay changes between the rungs and steps earned largely by cumulative closes. This page says to set out a growth path in skills rather than job titles. This page does not settle which reading is right.

9. The feedback rhythm

The skills are what you talk about in your feedback rhythm. That rhythm could mean one-on-ones each week, check-ins each month and career conversations each quarter. Of these, the favorites here are the one-on-ones held weekly and the quarterly review.

It is just a conversation, and probably one you should always be having. In one example, an owner finds that with pretty much everyone that owner works with, the conversation keeps coming back to what each person is working on in themselves, so nobody is caught off guard when the quarter comes round. That owner honestly hates doing most of the quarterly reviews, because both sides already know what will be said, and ticks them off because other people do need to hold them. It should almost feel repetitive, because you should be talking about it every week.

In those talks, tell people how they are getting there: closer or further, a five out of ten, a four out of ten.

Weekly one-on-ones for a sales team, where long-term goals come in once a rep is proficient, are section 7 of SOP 256 — Run ongoing daily and weekly training for sales reps.

10. Recognition

The third piece is recognition on a calendar: shout-outs every day in a chat channel, wins every week, awards every quarter. It is the same calendar as in SOP 261, where the weekly slot has teammates naming one to three colleagues and the value each one showed. Recognize people for what they are growing in and the skills they are gaining, when they do well, and when their behavior shows progress toward winning. The whole calendar, and why it rewards values ahead of results, is SOP 261 — Build a recognition rhythm that rewards values, not results.

11. Keeping track without special software

A lot of people, it is thought, imagine this needs a giant, fancy system or special HR software. One owner keeps a note on their phone with each person's name, their goals, their skills and what they are focused on now, and then talks to them about it. Most people, in the view here, simply do not want to sit down and talk it through, so they call it hard and say they need software, AI or a coach. You could probably work it out yourself if you set aside time to think it through. People really value a boss who thinks about how to grow them, as people and in their careers, and not only about what they need done.

12. Paying senior leaders against objectives

A common question from a business growing fast: how to pay a leadership team so they feel they grow as the business grows, and stay motivated and loyal. It is a tough one. When a company grows quickly early on, pay plans have to change often, a lot of people have not yet put the structure in place, and profit margins tend to fall over time. A lot of people give too much away and later have to negotiate it back. The preference here is to stay conservative.

Management by objectives. This is one plan you might put together. For example, an executive paid $200K a year can earn up to 50 percent of what they are paid if the objectives are hit. You decide what the objectives are. Typically they are three to five things you want done that year, plus the company's revenue and profit targets, and each is weighted. Examples: set up a new CRM; maybe get collections to 80 percent; cut churn by some amount. This page gives no figure for the weights.

It is the favorite place to start here, because it is so flexible. Profit sharing and equity are not: equity is almost never recommended here when a company is that small, and profit will swing so much that you want the leader to depend on it in part, not wholly.

Flag: objectives first, or a profit-share pool. This section starts from pay on objectives and wants profit to be part of a leader's pay, not all of it. A second view calls a profit-share pool of 10 percent the simplest answer, notes that pay on objectives is paid at the end of the year, and pairs the pool with a monthly or quarterly bonus on each leader's own metrics; its steps are in section 3 of SOP 203. This page does not settle which reading is right.

Pay plans for higher-level people are built step by step on SOP 160 — Build advanced compensation plans, which leaves equity and profit sharing out. Raises are SOP 134 — Set pay increases.

13. A remote team

Asked what works best for developing and keeping a remote team, the answer is, honestly, the same system. In one example, a company did more coaching and training over video calls instead of meeting in person, held meetups and recognition awards on video, brought the whole team together in person once a year, and every quarter flew the leaders in to meet. Beyond that it did nothing really different to develop or keep people.

Retention, it would be said, differs a little, and it is thought to be sometimes easier remotely. Being required somewhere costs a person something, so a remote job costs them less; and if someone moves, or a spouse takes a job elsewhere, you do not have to worry. Remote work, it is thought, can help keep people at times. The view here is to do exactly the same things.

14. What this page does not decide for you

• Titles or skills. SOP 251 and this page point different ways on how to set out a path (section 8).
• When a new hire is up to speed. The readings differ: the plan has the hire owning the role fully by day 90, and most employees are said not to be fully productive until the sixth month. Which applies to a given role: Not established on this page.
• The weights. This page gives no figure for the weights in a plan paid on objectives.
• Objectives or a pool. See the flag in section 12.
• The foundational training. What it contains: Not established on this page.

15. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Treat the signed yes as the start of the work, not the end
2	Head off the first-day failures named here: nobody expecting the hire, no laptop, no logins
3	Write the 30-60-90 plan; in one practice the team spells out the first 30 days for the new person
4	Give onboarding at least 90 days of focus
5	If you lose someone in onboarding, ask whether you set them up to win
6	Map each person's current job, the job they want and the skills between, and give them one skill at a time
7	Talk about those skills in a regular feedback rhythm: weekly, monthly and quarterly are the options
8	Recognize the skills people gain and the progress they show
9	Have the conversation about each person's goals and skills; one owner uses no special software, only a note on a phone
10	For senior leaders, the starting point here is pay on objectives, kept conservative, before equity or profit sharing (a second view starts from a profit-share pool: section 12)
11	With a remote team, keep the same system and hold it on video calls, with people meeting in person on a schedule, as one company did

16. What this page does not cover

The interview that comes before all this is SOP 268 — Gate each interview step, then sell at the close. The funnel for hires as a whole, with onboarding and retention among its stages, is SOP 267 — Build a hiring funnel as strong as your customer funnel. A sales rep's first weeks, phase by phase, sit with SOP 255 — Onboard a new rep in phases, with a test to pass each. Bringing a customer, not an employee, on board is SOP 139 — Onboard customers to the activation point.

Employment law and tax are not covered on this page.