New-Hire Onboarding Plan in a Day

Onboarding repeats every time you hire. A Project stores your standard sequence — the pre-start tasks, the Day 1 shape, the ramp, the 30/60/90 goals — so you’re refitting a known plan to a new role instead of starting from a blank page.

1. Open Claude Desktop and click Cowork in the mode selector across the top (Chat · Cowork · Code).
2. In the left panel, find Projects and click the + button.
3. Choose Start from scratch. Name the project “Onboarding” or “New Hire Plans” and let Claude set up its folder.
4. You’ll know it worked when the project appears in the left panel with its own folder and an instructions field.

Your project has a folder on your computer — that’s where the two working files live.

1. Ask Claude, right in the project: “Create two files in this project’s folder: onboarding-standard.md and roles.md. Leave them empty — I’ll fill them in.” (Or create them yourself in any text editor and save them into the project folder.)
2. Fill in both files using the descriptions below.
3. Confirm Claude can see them: ask “List the files you can see in this project.” Both filenames should come back. If they don’t, see If It Doesn’t Work.

onboarding-standard.md

Your company’s standard onboarding sequence — the parts that are the same for everyone, written as plain checklists by phase. If you’ve never written it down, this is the file that finally gets it out of your head. You don’t need to start from blank: see the Knowledge File Seeding guide for how to have Claude interview you and draft it.

Example: “Pre-start (do before Day 1): order laptop, create email + Slack + tool accounts, assign a buddy, send a welcome note with first-day logistics. Day 1: 9:30 welcome, account setup, team intro, lunch with buddy, one small real task by end of day. Week 1: shadow two customer calls, read the handbook, 1:1 with manager on Friday. 30/60/90: 30 = ramped on tools and first owned task; 60 = running a piece of work independently; 90 = full ownership of the role’s core responsibility.”

roles.md

What’s different by role — the tool access, the people to meet, and the first real piece of work each role should own. This is what lets one standard plan become a specific plan.

Example: “Sales rep: needs CRM + dialer + calendar access; meets the SDR team and RevOps; first owned task = run one discovery call by end of Week 2. Support agent: needs helpdesk + knowledge base + refund tool; meets the on-call lead; first owned task = resolve five tickets solo by end of Week 1.”

When you run the recipe, you’ll add the specifics of the actual hire — name, role, start date, manager — in the prompt.

Open your Project in Claude Cowork. Give Claude the specifics for this run, ask for the main output, then follow up for any additional pieces you want. The exact wording for each prompt — with what it’s asking for and why — is in What you actually type below.

Check three things before you send anything or put dates on a calendar:

1. The pre-start items have lead times. A laptop ordered the day before won’t arrive. The plan should flag what must happen today to be ready by the start date — and who owns each one. If everything is dated “before Day 1” with no ordering, push back.
2. Day 1 isn’t all setup. A first day that’s eight hours of account creation tells the new person you weren’t ready. The good version ends with one small, real task they actually finish. Make sure there’s a human moment — a lunch, a buddy intro — not just logins.
3. The 30/60/90 goals are outcomes, not activities. “Attend training” is an activity. “Run one discovery call solo” is an outcome. If the goals read like a schedule instead of a bar to clear, ask Claude to rewrite them as things the person will be able to do.

Before you commit dates: does the plan match the actual week? If the team is at a conference Day 1 or the manager is out, the standard plan needs a manual adjustment. Thirty seconds of your own knowledge against the plan saves a bad first impression.