30-60-90 Day Plan Template

2025-11-11 17:51

30% of new employees quit within the first 90 days on the job. Creating a 30-60-90 day plan helps engage your new hires from the very start, setting them up for long-term success in record time.

A 30-60-90 day plan is a document that outlines the goals and milestones an employee aims to achieve during the first 30, 60, and 90 days in a new role. It sets clear expectations, aligns the employee’s work with the company’s goals, and empowers employees to maximize their productivity.

This plan also serves as a strategic tool for both the employee and their manager to track progress, identify potential challenges early on, and make adjustments as needed to ensure the employee’s successful integration and long-term contribution to the organization.

Although 30-60-90 day plans are most often used for new hires, they can also be extremely beneficial for employees who have been promoted to a new (managerial) role or even for teams when a new project is launched.

HR’s role in the 30-60-90 day plan

Around the world and across industries, HR professionals are tasked with onboarding new hires as efficiently as possible. How well an employee is onboarded impacts how quickly they become a valuable member of the team. To achieve this, HR engages in several critical activities, including:

Helping employees visualize how they align their work and goals to the business and connect day-to-day tasks to the larger purpose of work
Working with managers and employees to create a clearly defined plan based on specific and measurable goals
Regularly checking that the plan is being followed and key metrics are being achieved.

How to write a 30-60-90 day plan for new employees

Regardless of job level, improving an employee’s skills requires concrete performance goals. It is, therefore, critical to avoid vagueness in the goals, objectives, and metrics included in a 30-60-90 day plan.

For example, ‘increase productivity’ or ‘become a better strategic planner’ are great ambitions, but they do not provide clear steps for achieving these objectives or how progress will be measured. Instead, the goals captured in a 30-60-90 day plan should be realistic, quantifiable, and focused.

Let’s take a look at a checklist for creating an effective 30-60-90 day plan.

Checklist: 30-60-90 day plan for new employees

The 30-60-90 day plan and onboarding pack should include the following:

New employee welcome
Planning get-to-know meetings
Outlining high-level goals
Clarifying short and long-term priorities
Creating SMART goals
30-day goals
60-day goals
90-day goals
Defining metrics of success
Feedback and review checkpoints

1. New employee welcome

This is HR’s opportunity to lay the foundation for setting a new employee up for success. A great welcome helps new employees understand where they fit into the larger organizational structure, what is expected of them, and which activities will help them get up and running as quickly as possible. It is not a complete list of their responsibilities but rather a summary that helps them focus on the key goals and metrics they need to achieve in their first 90 days.

The welcome should include:

Role details
How the role supports the broader organization’s objectives
A summary of expectations and the support the employee should expect from their manager.

2. ‘Get to know’ meetings

There is a specific list of people that every new hire should connect with to help them understand their role.

The ‘get to know’ section should include:

Who the employee is meeting, including their name, role, and responsibilities
The key objective of the meeting
Why this meeting will help the employee in their new role
What topics should be discussed and suggested questions that the employee can ask to gain the most they can from the meeting.

3. Outlining high-level goals

A high-level view lets new employees know what is expected of them by the end of their first 90 days. It should be outcomes based and linked to specific goals. For example, high level goals could include contributing 15% of all new sales after 90 days, building a sales plan or optimizing a new client onboarding process.

The long-term goals section should include:

A list of outcomes-based goals to be achieved in 30, 60, and 90 days
Context around how this goal relates to their position. For example: As a sales executive in this organization, one of your roles is onboarding new clients.
A clear understanding that the employee should be aiming for fluency in their role by the 90-day mark and that this plan will help them achieve this goal.

SMART goals

As an HR professional you can support new hires by helping them to set SMART goals that they can achieve.

SMART goals are:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-bound.

Example: Instead of setting a goal to increase the company’s website, a digital marketer’s SMART goal could be to increase traffic by 2% in the first 30 days.

4. Defining metrics of success

Each phase needs metrics. This is often covered by the measurable aspect of a SMART goal, but success lies in the detail. The deliverables of each goal should, therefore, be quantifiable and captured in the 30-60-90 day plan.

Having the right metrics in place not only helps a new employee visualize their role and what success looks like but also gives the new employee and their manager a clear basis to measure how effective the onboarding process is and where the employee needs additional support, tools, or insights. It’s also how progress can be determined through regular feedback sessions.

5. Feedback and review checkpoints

In this section, outline when both the new employee’s manager and a member of the HR team will check in with them during the 90-day process. These check-ins should be diarised.

HR’s role

Ensure there is adequate time in each feedback session for:

The employee to give feedback
The manager/leadership team to give feedback
Metrics to be reviewed against goals
Planning around additional support if metrics have been missed.

👉🏻 30-60-90 day plan template

A 30-60-90 day plan Excel template provides a customizable and detailed structure for tracking goals, actions, and progress, ensuring that both employees and managers can monitor performance and make adjustments as needed to stay on track.

The first weeks and months of working at a company are the most crucial. This is when a new employee's impressions are formed, connections are established, and relationships are forged. If you miss this opportunity, it will be difficult to correct the situation later. Therefore, it's much easier to ensure a smooth onboarding process and enjoy the effective work of a well-coordinated team.
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