30-60-90 day plan template

An employee’s first three months can make—or break—their ability to succeed in a new role. In fact, research shows that a strong onboarding process can improve employee retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%. 

If you want to create an effective onboarding process, it helps to have a plan. That’s where a 30-60-90 day plan template can help. 

What is a 30-60-90 day plan template?

A 30-60-90 day plan template is a reusable framework that guides employees through their first three months in a new job. It’s a type of onboarding checklist that includes everything new team members should do, learn, and achieve as they ramp up. With a 30-60-90 day plan template, new hires can set achievable goals, check off essential action items, and gradually acclimate to their role. 

By templatizing your plan, you can standardize your team’s onboarding process and ensure every new hire is set up for success. This also gives you a pre-built framework to use—so instead of starting from scratch for every new hire, you can copy the template, adjust as needed, and kick off the onboarding process quickly. 

What are the benefits of a digital 30-60-90 day plan template?

Onboarding doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Instead, it’s a cross-functional process that involves many different team members, stakeholders, and steps. New hires need to attend training sessions, build relationships, practice key skills, and collect feedback throughout the onboarding process. 

Static documents and spreadsheets don’t provide room for all that collaboration. On the flip side, using a work management platform centralizes onboarding tasks and communication in one place. That means new hires have a one-stop-shop where they can work on tasks, ask questions, and receive feedback—without needing to constantly switch between different tools.

By building your 30-60-90 day plan in a work management platform, you can: 

• Give new hires a concrete action plan for their first day, first week, and first months at a new company. 

• Centralize onboarding details in one place, so new hires can easily find the information they need.

• Set measurable goals for each week and month of onboarding. 

• Follow along in real-time as your new hire completes tasks.

• Attach relevant documents and training videos to tasks. 

• Adjust deadlines and goals to fit your new team member’s onboarding pace. 

• Facilitate collaboration between your new hire and cross-functional stakeholders. 

• Provide a comprehensive roadmap of everything new team members should complete within their first three months. 

How to create a 30-60-90 day plan template

Every new hire is different, so a 30-60-90 day plan template should be general enough that you can reuse and customize it for every new team member. That means instead of being too specific, think of the tasks every new hire should accomplish in the first 90 days—regardless of their role or experience. Often, these are things like getting to know your company culture and company mission, scheduling meet-and-greets with fellow team members, and setting personal goals. This list of general tasks will be the backbone of your template—from there, you can add more specific assignments to fit the new hire’s role as needed. 

Once you have a broad idea of what new hires should accomplish, here’s how to structure your template: 

• Divide onboarding tasks into sections. To keep things organized, create separate sections in your template for the first 30, 60, and 90 days. Separating tasks out like this prevents new hires from feeling overwhelmed, and ensures you’re properly spacing out assignments. That way, new team members can ramp up gradually over time. 

• Make a reference section. During onboarding, your new hire will likely want to save information to reference later. Make a space for them to keep track of important information, like your PTO request processes and IT contacts.

• Create milestones for each time segment. Create clear milestones that employees should accomplish at the end of their first, second, and third months. These can be learning goals or performance goals, and they don’t have to be set in stone. Rather, they’re placeholders you (and your employee) can use to create more customized success metrics later on. When the time comes, just remember to set SMART goals—objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. 

• Identify the primary contact for each task. Onboarding often involves a flood of new information, and it’s likely your new hire will have questions as they sift through everything. To make it easier for them, add space in your template to identify the best point of contact for each task. This is especially helpful for remote onboarding, since new employees can’t just stop by their hiring manager’s desk with questions. 

Integrated features

• Timeline View. Timeline View is a Gantt-style project view that displays all of your tasks in a horizontal bar chart. Not only can you see each task’s start and end date, but you can also see dependencies between tasks. With Timeline View, you can easily track how the pieces of your plan fit together. Plus, when you can see all of your work in one place, it’s easy to identify and address dependency conflicts before they start, so you can hit all of your goals on schedule.

• Milestones. Milestones represent important project checkpoints. By setting milestones throughout your project, you can let your team members and project stakeholders know how you’re pacing towards your goal. Use milestones as a chance to celebrate the little wins on the path towards the big project goal. 

• Custom fields. Custom fields are the best way to tag, sort, and filter work. Create unique custom fields for any information you need to track—from priority and status to email or phone number. Use custom fields to sort and schedule your to-dos so you know what to work on first. Plus, share custom fields across tasks and projects to ensure consistency across your organization. 

• Start dates. Sometimes you don’t just need to track when a to-do is due—you also need to know when you should start working on it. Start times and dates give your team members a clear sense of how long each task should take to complete. Use start dates to set, track, and manage work to align your team's objectives and prevent dependencies from falling through the cracks. 

Recommended apps

• Zoom. Asana and Zoom are partnering up to help teams have more purposeful and focused meetings. The Zoom + Asana integration makes it easy to prepare for meetings, hold actionable conversations, and access information once the call is over. Meetings begin in Asana, where shared meeting agendas provide visibility and context about what will be discussed. During the meeting, team members can quickly create tasks within Zoom, so details and action items don’t get lost. And once the meeting is over, the Zoom + Asana integration pulls meeting transcripts and recordings into Asana, so all collaborators and stakeholders can review the meeting as needed.

• Vimeo. Text may get the point across, but written words lack tone, emotion, and expression. With video messaging in Asana, powered by Vimeo, you can give your team all the context they need, without having to schedule another meeting. Record short video messages of yourself, your screen—or both—then embed the videos in tasks, projects, messages, and comments to provide additional clarity and context. A transcript of the recording is automatically created by Asana, making it readable and searchable. Give feedback, ask questions, and assign tasks—all without leaving Asana.

• Google Workplace. Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Google Workplace file chooser, which is built into the Asana task pane. Easily attach any My Drive file with just a few clicks.

• Microsoft Teams. With the Microsoft Teams + Asana integration, you can search for and share the information you need without leaving Teams. Easily connect your Teams conversations to actionable items in Asana. Plus, create, assign, and view tasks during a Teams Meeting without needing to switch to your browser.

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