Guide for new managers
The chronological process for your new employee’s first year
First published January 10, 2023
I am never a fan of using “ultimate” to describe a guide, but after 10+ years managing teams of 1 to 75 in size, all over the world, these steps have proven to provide the most answers to commonly asked questions by new managers.
I’ve developed this chronological process for recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, mentoring, disciplining, promoting, and firing, each with their own subdocument that will be added as time goes on.
Feel free to download, copy, paste, use what you want and discard the rest. If it works for you, please consider sharing with a friend who it might help. <3 Adrienne
This guide works for everyone because it’s a chronological view of their first year. Turn it into a spreadsheet checklist for people ops and you have something you can follow. Take what works for you and leave the rest.
First time managers, seasoned managers and directors managing multiple levels can all benefit from consistency in process.
Recruiting
Get approval for your role. This may be a pitch or HR request based on an already approved hiring plan.
Once approved, HR activates the role in the company hiring plan for the year.
Make a copy of the [JOB AD TEMPLATE] and then modify the ad for the role you are recruiting for.
Once reviewed and approved by HR, HR will post the role to the hiring platform.
Score your applicants and schedule interviews with only qualified applicants. A “qualified applicant” could mean someone who hits 2/5 skills strongly, You’ll find out if they are a culture add that would raise the bar for the team and eager to learn the other skills, in the interview.
For freelancers, you may choose to do only 1 interview and go straight to a trial.
For full time:
Interview 1: phone screen - a quick phone call to gauge their interest in the role, the company, their expectations/goals and assess any obvious red flags, plus eagerness. Schedule the full interview.
Interview 2: full interview, can be combined with 2nd stakeholder (EG. staff copywriter role interview can be joined by the senior editor and the marketing manager)
Interview 3: If senior role, meet with department head and/or other leadership
Interview 4 (optional): Group interview with wider crew; for confirmation
How to score: use the platform evaluation tools built in to score your applicant on skills, background, eagerness, and role fit. Remember that it is normal if they have 50% of the skills required for the role, but lots of eagerness, drive, and ability to learn quickly. I’ve hired plenty of people who never finished college and were top performers. Ask yourself, would this person raise the bar for the team?
Trial: 1 full day, always paid. Discuss the payment amount with your manager. This is the final step. After this, it’s not customary to drag them into more rounds. The trial proves they can do the job, then it’s time to make the offer and get started. Unless something extraordinary happens, like the CEO can finally meet, don’t delay this step.
Schedule a kickoff call for the morning on the trial day to explain exactly what you are looking for on that day. Set up a Skype, Hangouts, Slack or Zoom chat so they can ask questions throughout the day.
Deliver them a google doc outlining all of their tasks. Trials should be 3-5 exercises in length and take 3 – 5 hours to complete. I typically pay $150 for this depending on how long it takes. Typically, the work is not useable, so instead make it the same every time and just replace the details (links, questions, examples) in each question. This way you can score applicants on their approach to a similar problem.
After a successful 1-day trial, make an offer
Discuss with your manager the results of the trial and how this translates into a salaried offer for full-timers or an hourly rate for contractors.
Contracts
A verbal offer on the phone may be necessary. Your company will decide whether HR handles the offer process. If that’s the case, be available to join or answer questions.
Ask the person for their mailing address and start date
For full time: In the offer email, HR will send 2 documents:
A welcome letter that summarizes their offer and benefits and asks them their T-shirt size and any other administrative questions.
An official full time salaried contract
You will need the person's mailing address in order to fill it out.
For contract employees: In the offer email, HR will send 2 documents:
A welcome letter that summarizes their offer and how to get access to their accounts
A freelancer contract
A mailing address may be necessary in order to fill it out.
For contractors not on Upwork, share with them how to invoice the company.
Onboarding
Create a request or ticket for IT or HR to set up their accounts
Example: New starter, remote: Sybil Shepherd — Monday, April 20 CLOSED
Assign to the responsible party with a due date.
IT: Email, calendars, project management software, people & culture software
HR: Social accounts, password manager, Slack, communication tools and Saas tools
Create the onboarding documents. Make a copy of each of these docs, modify them to your report, and file them in a folder in your personal documentation space. Set permissions so only your employee and HR rep can have access.
Induction. This includes the schedule for 90-day expectations
1:1 Template
Employee Vision (sometimes called an Individual Development Plan): Generally, wait until after they pass the 6 month initial review to introduce any sort of long-term growth planning.
Cart before horse and all that. The first 6 months should be about training and meeting their job duties. Once they pass probation (ie. you are certain they can do their job), you can introduce their long-term personal growth.
Induction - first 2 weeks
Preload their calendar with welcome meetings, including for 1-hour at 11am on their first day. This gives them an hour or two to set up their computer, accounts, introduce themselves and get acquainted. Prevent overwhelm:
Do not schedule more than two, 45-minute meetings per day, for the first two weeks.
Trickle into Slack channels by only adding them to the 3-5 core team and company channels, and let natural collaboration weave them in to new ones as time goes on.
Kickoff call on first day!
Be excited. Welcome them. This is a chance to show the vibrance and passion you have for your role in your professional career. Be authentic and human and they’ll be ready to hit the ground running with enthusiasm.
Share some questions and do some icebreakers.
Go through the Company welcome slides or video
Explain the company mission, vision, and values. Provide context and inspiration.
Discuss etiquette around meetings, communication, and remote expectations:
How often to respond on Slack - "imagine if you got tapped on the shoulder in an office - you'd want to respond fairly quickly, especially if that slack is coming from your manager, reports, or other leadership or stakeholders in your projects."
On the other hand, teach triage. Unimportant slacks can be responded to with a request for the person to look up the process in the knowledge base. Meetings can be responded to with a request to get started over a narrative in Gdocs.
How to set a calendar meeting. Explain that they can invite someone to a calendar event without notifying them beforehand, so that we don't have a lot of back and forth about times. Teach when a meeting should be an email, and when a problem can only be solved with face to face collaboration. Teach when an email can be a Slack, and that 80% of Slack questions can be looked up in the knowledge base or google.
Go through the induction documents and explain when you'll use each one. Request your employee to read the documents thoroughly after the call.
Then begin with their Day 1 Induction for the rest of the day. Explain how to get access or any new processes so they can be self-sufficient for the day.
Schedule the recurring 1:1 in your calendars.
Slack channel invites
It can be overwhelming to be invited into many channels on the first day. Send invites to only the relevant channels first (team channel, project channel, Company, something fun, people and culture) then expand on this list as time goes on and they get involved in more projects.
Kicking off - first 3 months
Schedule your weekly 1:1s, 90 day check in, 6 month review, and 1 year review now.
Set each to remind you 3 weeks in advance so you can prepare.
The induction is meant to be a loose guide
Each daily task can be swapped or shifted based on your real-world needs at the time. If a high-priority task comes up, feel free to pause and train your report in that skill or task. Learn by doing and take advantage of great timing – opportunities that come up that are a perfect first dive in for your employee.
Hold your 1:1's weekly. Honor them.
1:1s are your chance to have private face time with your employees, who need your guidance, feedback, positive encouragement, and let’s be real, a little pressure.
Try to keep task updates to 10 minutes. Always leave 20 minutes just to checkin and ask, "how're things going?" take time to open up and ask questions. Listen. Teach something new. Explore something together.
A 90 day check in allows you to gauge strengths, or course correct, early on. Even a 1* shift over the long haul can land you miles away from where you started.
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Pursues training and meeting stakeholders on their own and can complete all tasks within daily and weekly responsibility list. Begins building expertise in their skill area.
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Asks “why” a lot and questions the status quo. Uses their window of opportunity to have a fresh perspective in order to improve the processes they just learned. Make the system more efficient, higher quality, and more effective. Has a plan in place for the next year on how to hit their goals.
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Takes ownership of goals and the project management and resource allocation to get it done by the deadline. Knows how to move things forward and where to look for information. Can experiment on top of daily tasks, can delegate effectively to others and prioritize their time on the most important things.
Performance Reviews
Your calendar already has your 90 day, 6 month, and 1 year reviews scheduled with 3 week advanced notice.
The week before each check-in, remind them in their 1:1 that you'll be checking in next week.
Give them the questions! Have them fill out the template and have plenty of time to reflect on their time.
At each check-in, expand on a handful of things they do really well and a few things they can work on. Some items on the list they just may not have had training in, and you can help schedule times to do them.
If they are fundamentally missing a skill, take the time to chat a little bit about where the person might need extra help or support. Ask them straight up, "what do you struggle with the most around this skill?"
Usually, your employee is self aware about what they need to work on, and you can let them surface it first. Only after they share feedback for themselves, you can add additional “opportunities for leveling up”.
90 day performance:
At the 90-day check-in, you will essentially be evaluating how the onboarding, training, and transfer of goal ownership went. If, early on in the 90 days, you feel the person is not on track to pass 6 month probation, you should work closely with them to get them additional training and skills that can help them get there. Be clear with them that they need more work to do to get there and outline what those expectations are to fulfill their role duties.
Schedule a review for every 6 months. The first official performance review will be 90 days from their 90 day review - 180 days (6 months) from their start date.
Use this performance review template
If your report doesn't pass the probation period and you've done everything you can to ensure their success, your 6 month check in may actually be a hard conversation about whether or not they will keep working here.
In these cases, please contact your manager 2 weeks before the 6 month check-in to discuss a plan.
If your report passes the probation period, this is simply a check-in, a congratulations and a review of additional training they may need to close any gaps.
At this point, lay out the roadmap of what you need from them to ensure success in their role. Let them know their next review is in 6 months.
Introduce the Goals doc and begin working with them on growth and development of further skills and character.
Raises and title changes are generally only considered at the 1-year mark.
If you have been working closely with your report and feel that they deserve a raise, please contact your manager to discuss.
All raises and title changes must be approved beforehand, so don't make any promises offhand. If you are asked in a review for a raise and you aren't sure how to answer, simply say "Let me discuss this with my manager and I will get back to you by the weekend."
Employees thrive with a supportive mentor. You may find your role as a new manager shift - you may notice more meetings, more time spent supporting people emotionally, and more time spent working out kinks, developing relationships and giving feedback. This is normal! If you find you don't take naturally to this, it's okay - not everyone does.
Mentorship
Employees thrive with a supportive mentor. You may find your role as a new manager shift - you may notice more meetings, more time spent supporting people emotionally, and more time spent working out kinks, developing relationships and giving feedback. This is normal! If you find you don't take naturally to this, it's okay - not everyone does.
Read our guide for remote management techniques. We can communicate and support our team in a way that sets clear expectations and encourages their success.
For example, practicing the window-mirror principle helps leaders empathize and take ownership.
If you feel that you are fundamentally not suited to management, or you don't enjoy it, talk to your manager - you may have other options like a shift in responsibility.
Everyone needs different kinds of support. You might not be the person to provide all of this type of support for your report. Recognize the signs and when to refer someone to another expert or mentor on the crew, or talk to your manager about how to help.
Mentors: Tap into their expertise to give advice and guidance on how to tackle challenges.
Example: Your report comes to you with an idea. You can describe an experience you've had in the past with a similar experiment and what you learned from it. Describe how you determined what metrics to test for, and which tools you used to track it. If the results weren’t positive, how do you encourage your report to reflect on that?
Coaches: Dive into the substance of an issue and help with execution, enforce best practices.
Example: Doing a hands on training inside an analytics program where you show an employee a few tips and tricks to find data in the program at the end of your 1:1.
Advocates: Encouragement and celebration of wins, grows network, makes introductions, sponsors projects.
Example: Positive shout-outs in All-hands meetings or company slack, positive feedback, sponsoring a project by surfacing it to leadership to get more backers, making an introduction to an advisor, even a thoughtful message on Slack can go a long way.
Sponsors: Remove roadblocks.
Example: Hire the resources you need to get the job description done. Overlapping role descriptions, an “everything is on fire” mindset and an inability to use goodwill to help move things along, is a recipe for disaster. Your employees need to trust that they won’t run into an obstacle that could have been accounted for.
Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)
In the event an employee is not meeting expectations, management can step in with a 2-week performance improvement plan. A performance improvement plan is an opportunity for the employee to learn how to succeed in the areas where they are not meeting minimum expectations. It is the last and required step before letting someone go.
Putting an employee on a PIP is a last resort. All training, management techniques, and ongoing feedback options should be exhausted before a manager moves to this option. Please contact your manager for help in deciding what to do next with an employee who is not meeting expectations.
The PIP objective is to make it very clear and explicit to the employee what they need to do in order to fulfill their job duties in a satisfactory manner. It should be clear that if they cannot meet these expectations or improvements after the 2-week period, they may be let go.
The responsibilities of the manager:
Explain to the employee that if they don't respond to additional training and feedback, they will be put on a PIP. Please contact your manager and HR about how to deliver this feedback.
Initiate the PIP over video chat or in person, to make it clear why it is happening and when it begins.
Create a clear document that explains what they need to do to fulfill the PIP and improve their performance.
Hold a daily check-in with the employee, to give ongoing feedback and answer questions about the pace and status of each task.
Clearly identify the purpose and measure the goals of the PIP.
Deliver transparent communication and feedback on progress.
Hold a review at the end of the PIP to let the employee know if they passed or not.
Depending on the employee performance, the employee may:
Be released from the PIP
If they pass, explain that this new performance level will be expected of them on an ongoing basis from now on. Transition from the PIP back to regular 1:1s and project management. Continue to give weekly feedback to help them grow and improve.
Have an extended PIP
Under very few circumstances, we may choose to extend the PIP (especially if there were errors or mis-management in setting it up or delivering it).
Be terminated.
This must be approved by your manager and HR If they did not pass, explain clearly which projects, failures and behaviors led to this. Arrange with IT to close their accounts directly at the end of the meeting.
Be demoted
More often than we might think, they may thrive with a narrower role and give them more time to master those skills before giving them more responsibilities.
Be moved to another role
Sometimes people perform better when they can exercise different strengths. On rare occasions, we may find that another role altogether is a better fit for this employee.