30-60-90 Day Plan

The 30-60-90 Day Plan is a document created by employers or employees to streamline employee onboarding and induction by planning and setting goals for the first three months of a job. It empowers employees to take deliberate action, collaborate, and perform without feeling anxious in a new environment.

Such a plan must align with a company's goals and vision to ensure every employee is in sync with the thought process and ideology of an organization. An employer or employee prepares it to maximize output by defining job responsibilities and expectations against measurable parameters. It ensures organizational success by creating manageable goals and attainable targets. It can be used across all industries and job roles.

• A 30-60-90 Day Plan refers to a document drafted to ensure successful onboarding by supporting a new joiner in the first three months of joining an organization.
• It helps increase employee productivity over a period, ensuring new joiners adapt to their surroundings and orient themselves with company processes and systems; it also supports performance reviews.
• This document can be prepared by employees or employers after the interview process or in the first week of the job.
• Such documents are made with specific job roles in mind. Hence, a 30-60-90 day plan for managers will be different from a 30-60-90 day plan for executives.

A 30-60-90 day plan is drafted as a blueprint for a new job role or position in a company. It aims to offer actionable guidance. An employee or an employer can create it to define and document the targets, deadlines, and organizational goals that an employee should attain by the end of the first three months at a job.

The document is categorized into three phases, namely, 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days, each with set objectives. It highlights the company's policies and expectations. It specifies an employee’s roles and responsibilities, helping a new joiner understand what is expected of them in the position for which they are hired.

The document is also used to determine new project goals and targets. For instance, a 30-60-90 day plan sales may consist of new sales targets, encouraging the sales team to work toward reaching the figures expected during each phase while aiming to hit the mark upon completing 90 days.

The plan simplifies the process and enables employees and hiring managers to stay updated on employee progress, demeanor and attitude, and overall performance. Both positive and negative aspects are considered. Such plans can also be used for performance reviews as and when needed. It can be used to chalk out an employee’s growth path within the company.

Such a plan facilitates communication, feedback, and grievance resolution to ensure employees feel comfortable and motivated to do their best. While a 30-60-90 day plan is typically developed when onboarding new team members, it is useful in many situations, including introducing new projects or initiatives, making a succession plan, etc. It promotes productivity, rewards good performance, and boosts employee engagement and employee satisfaction.

A 30-60-90 day plan for interviews helps employees understand the job profile for which they are interviewing. It segregates goals into more realistic targets with comprehensible information and milestones. It allows new joiners to pace themselves and focus on each stage. A good plan follows the organization's shared ideas and long-term vision. It is possible that employees and employers have separate strategy documents, where an employee’s plan may include independent, personalized points to help them achieve their goals.

The following 30-60-90 day plan for executives focuses on a business plan to increase sales— another use of the strategy document. The executive can write each month's sales target and follow the document to plan their activities and evaluate progress.

Source

Not all businesses necessarily use this onboarding tool. However, employees may create one for themselves if they need it. Also, since these are job-based documents, they differ from one job to another. Companies may assign mentors and/or onboarding buddies to make the process knowledgeable and manageable for employees.

Here’s another example:

Source

Let us study a few examples in this section.

Example #1

Suppose Patricia joined a new company. After the interview rounds concluded, the interviewers found her suitable for the role and asked her to join in a week. During her first week, her manager, Laura, shared a strategy document with Patricia.

Laura had planned the activities Patricia needed to undertake in the first 3 months. The document helped Patricia understand her responsibilities. She followed it and noticed that it allowed her to be productive. She also communicated with her teammates during this period to gather relevant information whenever needed.

After 3 months, the plan helped Laura measure Patricia’s performance and potential for growth. She could see that Patricia had done a great job. Hence, new projects were assigned to Patricia. Through this document, Laura was able to determine how well Patricia performed, and Patricia could plan her work well without being overwhelmed or overburdened by spontaneous, unanticipated, or unfamiliar tasks.

Example #2

Beyond Finance, a fintech company in Chicago, IL, employed the 30-60-90 day plan to train newly hired people in the product management team. As Kirill Polevoy, Director of Product Management at Beyond Finance, could not devote the required time to training new members, he decided to delegate this task to experienced professionals in his team. For this, he deployed the 30-60-90 day plan.

As a growing company with ambitious goals, management needed to implement novel ideas and initiatives to ensure they could scale the business without compromising growth targets. The company promoted a “growth mindset” and encouraged judicious risk-taking to achieve goals. Through their vision, the company positioned itself well to meet business and operational targets while maintaining excellent employee engagement levels.

In this way, such plans support planning, goal attainment, and performance evaluation.

A 30-60-90 day plan has multiple uses. The key points have been discussed in this section.

• It helps plan the first three months of an employee’s time at a company, keeping in view that they are new to the system and need a certain amount of handholding until they can function independently.
• Through this plan, managers, employees, or team leads can set goals and objectives with realistic figures in view.
• It is used for team building, allowing employees adequate time to become part of the workplace culture.
• People feel valued as their skills and abilities are acknowledged through such plans.
• Since this is an action-oriented document, it enables people to handle new projects with confidence.
• Managers and team leads can refer to these documents during performance reviews and offer feedback to employees based on their contributions, cross-functional collaboration, skills development, and growth prospects within the company.

The following points elucidate the benefits of a 30-60-90 day plan.

• A 30-60-90 day plan ensures focus and clarity for an employee in a new organization.
• It works as a framework and plan of action for new employees as they find the time and space to understand company processes before they start contributing in a concrete manner.
• It optimizes the use of organizational resources and promotes time management.
• A plan communicates shared ideas and beliefs with employees and aligns them with the company's mission and vision.
• It builds confidence and trust between employees and the people they engage with professionally, including higher-ups, peers, and other associates.
• It consolidates and presents job targets and expectations, facilitates performance assessment, and establishes a mechanism for feedback.
• It reflects an employee’s skills, abilities, and mindset while working within an organization, supports the exchange of thoughts and ideas, and assists the organization when designing employee training programs.

This article has been a guide to what is a 30-60-90 Day Plan. Here, we explain the topic along with its template, examples, uses, and benefits. You may also find some useful articles here –

• Employee Productivity
• Employee Satisfaction
• Employee Morale