Name: The First 90 Days: How to Turn New Hires into High Performers Quickly
Uploaded: 2026-03-26T18:19:04.650Z
Duration: 47 min 41 s
Description: The First 90 Days: How to Turn New Hires into High Performers Quickly

Transcript for "The First 90 Days: How to Turn New Hires into High Performers Quickly": Hi, everyone. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. We're gonna start it in just another minute or so. Super excited that you're here. We're gonna have people, yeah, like I said, a minute or so to join. In the meantime too, drop your role in the chat. The chat is over. I see chat's already bumping, which I love here. Drop your role in the chat, also where you're joining from. I'm seeing some faces and friends I already know. Hey, Jess. America. Oh my gosh. It's like a reunion. This is so fun. Hey, Emily. We got another Sarah in here. Love that. Awesome. Hey, everyone. Kylie. Oh my gosh. Haven't seen your name in a while. Happy to see you. Good hello. Say, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. It just turned afternoon here in Austin. Alright. All I'll give people another minute or so, but, oh my gosh, so many people. Happy to see you all. Okay. So I'm, like, scrolling through. I love this. Alright. Amazing. Welcome. Welcome, everyone. Alright. Let's give people a few more seconds, and we will get started. Yes, Sarah. Bringing some more Sarah power. Yes. Very popular name. The other day, I was getting coffee, and the barista was like, oh, Sarah. Such a popular name. And I said, yeah. You know, I was or they had called out another Sarah's name, and, you know, we were both confused about our coffee. I'm like, oh, yeah. Such a popular name. And so, yeah, growing up, I was, like, one of four Sarah's in my in my class. So the plight of Sarah's. Another Sarah in The UK. Alright. I love this. Alright. Amazing, everyone. We're gonna go ahead and get started now. Thank you all so much for being here and for taking time out of your day. I'm so happy to see, old friends and new friends here, to talk all about onboarding, which is super, super exciting. Really appreciate y'all joining in for today's episode. We are doing a really fun format today. So I was actually in Chicago, for our Rippling on the road conference that we do every year and, filmed a lot of this content actually there on-site. So we'll be playing some of that content for you all here today. So I'm really excited to test this format out with format out with you all. Really, really pumped for that. As an added bonus too, in case you all were wondering, you will also earn one Sherm credit for this. We So love a little a little prize at the end here too. A quick little housekeeping. I I you all have found the chat, which I love. It's like, you know, we're gonna spend a lot of time in there today. There's also a docs tab. So if y'all wanna navigate to the docs tab, it's the upper right corner of your screen. We do have some goodies and some giveaways for you as well. There's a new hire kit. There's a framework that I have for how to create your onboarding programs, templates, thirty, sixty, ninety day plans, milestone reviews, new hire feedback surveys. Honestly, y'all can steal that. Copy, paste it, whatever you need to do, to make onboarding as easy as possible for you and your organizations. You'll also find an onboarding worksheet towards the end there, and we're gonna be doing some of those exercises live, and we'll be using the chat, which, again, you all have already found, which is amazing. As we go through those exercises, you'll be prompted to put your thoughts, just a brainstorming opportunities in the chat. And the goal there is for us to all get inspired by each other. So many amazing minds in the room today to share ideas. And then you can use that worksheet afterwards and after the webinar to really kick start your onboarding program there. And then lastly, submit any questions that you have in the q and a tab. So you should see there's a chat tab, a docs chat tab, and a q and a tab. Lots of different tabs that we're working with here. But submit your questions there. We'll be, you know, through like, throughout, we'll be answering questions. I'll be in the chat. I'll be in the q and a. But at the end, we're gonna leave quite a bit of time to go through your questions and just having a nice little chat about onboarding, which is exciting. I think we have a little poll that we are going to run here. And I think it's for us, you know, really wanting to understand the challenges that you have. So if you see the poll that pops up, it should be next to your chat, chat poll docs, q and a. You should see here what is your current biggest onboarding challenge. Wow. Okay. Coming in hot with inconsistent manager follow-up. Wow. Alright. Alright. We will this is a a safe zone to, you know, talk about managers and wow. We really need them to do the thing. Alright. Coming in hot managers. Okay. Manual processes too, big one. No way to track. Tracking. Yeah. Alright. Looks like new hires taking too long to ramp is not, you know, a huge, huge challenge for many of you but for a few. But, yeah, really that manager follow through and the manual processes. Okay. We're definitely gonna cover a lot of those today, and fill you on the manager follow through. You know? Always always working to help enable those managers, and I've experienced those too. And so today, we're gonna go through some actionable strategies to solve all of these problems we're talking about. We're gonna go through first how to diagnose the current state of your onboarding. So how do you know where to go if you don't know where you're starting? The must haves and the basics that you wanna get for some quick wins. I am all about, like, low hanging fruit, quick wins, how do we ramp up faster, and then how to tailor by department and start thinking about that a little bit more, scaling your program by automating. So all my friends who said that manual processes, things are falling through the cracks, that section is for you. And then, of course, we will spend as much time as we can at the end going through your questions that you have. So with that, we're gonna go ahead and, like, play the recording. Like I said, recorded this a few weeks ago, so it's nice and fresh for you all. And then afterwards, we will dive right on into our q and a. I've spent fifteen years building high impact learning programs. At Rippling, I scaled onboarding from a one day orientation to a structured ninety day experience, all while the company added 2,500 employees in just a single year. And I'm gonna teach you how to build an onboarding program from scratch. I'm Sarah Cannistra, and this is Built to Scale. When we think about onboarding, it's what comes after day one that really decides if a new hire is gonna be successful. The first thing you're gonna wanna do when you're building a new onboarding program is assess the current state of your org's onboarding. And so what I always like to do is go to the department heads and really try to understand what is the golden thread across the departments, across the organization when we look at what is making people successful and what's not making people successful their first couple weeks at the organization. And so I like to go to department heads, have one on one meetings with them, and ask them some really specific questions. So first, figuring out from them, you know, where are the skills and the areas that they see from a high level perspective that are lacking in their organization, especially across their new hires? I also like to ask them, you know, where are their managers struggling the most? So, you know, from an onboarding perspective, we wanna make sure our managers are set up for success there. And if our managers are struggling, it often means that our new hires are gonna be struggling as well. I always like to ask as well, what's happening? Right? What's already working inside of the organization? When you look at your department and you look at the new hires who are already successful, what are you already doing that's already working? I'm a very big proponent of amplifying what already works. As you're asking the department heads these questions, you wanna look for common pain points and themes. So for example, at Rippling, when I met with all of our department heads, one of the things I heard over and over again was that our new hires were just not understanding our ways of working. However, there was one department head who didn't have that same problem, that was our engineering team. And when I dug deeper, I found that they actually were hosting a separate session all about our ways of working. And so I was able to take that session and build it out company wide and really looked at how we can solve the problems across the company with that one session. When you're looking at measuring your onboarding program, what you'll really wanna do is get into the heart of the metrics that tell you if it is working and if your new hires are actually going to be successful at your company. Three of the most important metrics that you can use to effectively assess if your onboarding program is successful are time to productivity, looking at cultural integration across your new hires, and then also metrics that are important to executives like CSAT scores and sales win rates. Once you have these metrics identified, it's really important that you get a baseline snapshot of where you're at today with all those metrics. So when it comes time to go back to your executives to show that onboarding is working, you're able to then have a comparison of what it was before, during, and after you've launched the program. For example, a great baseline metric if you're trying to determine time to productivity is to send a simple survey to all of the managers in your organization and ask them to assess the onboarding ramp time of their last three new hires. That way, you have that snapshot. And in ninety days, a hundred and eighty days, after you've launched your program, you can go back and ask the new cohort of managers that onboarded new hires that same question, and you have a comparison. So now that you've diagnosed the current state, it's time to get the basics in really quickly. Day one sets the stage for how successful a new hire is going to be, and HR is ultimately responsible for it. On your first day, make sure that every new hire has three things in place. One is a live orientation where you're covering the mission, the values, your ways of working at your company. The second is scheduling a manager one on one. Every new hire should meet with their manager on their first day. And the third is making sure that they meet with their onboarding buddy and have lunch. No one likes to come in on their first day and not know where to go, who to go to, where the bathroom even is. Right? It really makes sure that the new hires are connected from the second they walk into the door or the virtual Zoom room. They're connected with your company. They understand why they're here and why they're part of something bigger, and they have someone who's there to help support them through it. After day one, it's a responsibility of the managers to carry that success forward. It's really important to enable managers in parallel with your new hires. So when new hires are completing structured learning, you wanna make sure you're also setting your managers up for success. So for example, at Rippling, we have a four week early talent program that our new hires go through. We also include managers in a separate automated Slack channel. Each week in that Slack channel, our managers receive what their employee learned and two to three coaching questions to use for their next one on one. There's three elements you wanna put in place to make sure your new hires are successful in partnership with your managers. The first is a thirty, sixty, ninety day plan, creating those templates. That way your managers can just plug and play and fill in what that thirty, sixty, ninety day milestones look like for their new hires. The second is gonna be thirty and ninety day milestone check ins. And these are really for the managers to be able to look back and assess how that new hire is performing at thirty days and ninety days. And lastly is gonna be the check ins that we have with our new hires. And we do those on day one, week one, day thirty, sixty, and 90 to make sure that they're integrating from a cultural perspective, that they're also ramping in the time that they're expected. They know what's expected of them and they feel supported in their onboarding. For the thirty, sixty, ninety day plan, it's so important because if a new hire doesn't know what they need in order to be successful, they're not going to be successful. A couple of pro tips for the thirty, sixty, ninety day plan is to have a goal section and make sure that you're encouraging managers to use SMART goals as they're setting up those initial thirty, sixty, and ninety day milestones for their new hires. The second part is having a list of stakeholders and peers that the new hire needs to meet and not just having a running list of endless coffee chats, but making sure that they know why they're meeting with that person and how they're going to be working with them. And last pro tip is that your managers are gonna wanna use this document as a conversation, not just as an artifact that sits somewhere. For us at rippling, the way that we do this is we use our thirty, sixty, ninety day plans inside of our one on one tool. So that way, it can be the initial conversation with the new hire about their expectations. And then every single week, you get to build upon that in the one on one to make sure that you're checking in and that it's not forgotten. The next piece to put in place is the thirty and ninety day milestone reviews that managers fill out. These are really important because it helps us flag any early issues that we have with new hires from a performance perspective, and it also gives us early feedback on if our new hire programs are actually working. The first pro tip is to use the same questions org wide so it's easy to spot trends. You also wanna include a question around when the new hire started to provide value so you can measure that time to productivity. Another pro tip is that you'll wanna add an extra review at a hundred and eighty days to really make sure that you are clear on how that employee is performing and really avoid any surprises before we get to annual performance review time. The third piece is the new hire feedback survey. At Rippling, we collect this on day one, week one, thirty, sixty, and ninety days, and it helps us do a few things. First, we get some early feedback from our new hires on if the program's actually working. It also helps us see if there's any early attrition risks that we may have, and we're able to spot trends early on around the program and start to course correct as needed while the program's already in place. Here's a couple of questions you'll wanna ask in those surveys. For our day one survey, we really like to understand how prepared a new hire felt for their first day. On our week one survey, we always ask how prepared did you feel to navigate your first week? At day 30, we like to ask a question around cultural integration and how they feel integrated into the culture at that point. And at day 90, the question we ask here is if the new hire has a clear understanding of their role and expectations and what top performance looks like in their role. After the basics are in place, now you can partner with department leads to layer in department specific content. I like to call this onboarding in a box to scale yourself. These are plug and play templates that let leaders customize by department. All you have to do is give them a library of content and shell decks to make it easy for them to start. Then there's no excuses. At rippling, I'm a team of three, and together, we run onboarding for over 5,000 employees. And we're only able to do that because we automate. Here are the three places that we automate the most at rippling. One is that we send out surveys and milestone reviews, and we also automate all of our learning through our asynchronous learning paths. We have a content drip for all of our managers to make sure they're prepared with what they need. The first piece is to automate sending surveys and milestone reviews. Before, I used to set calendar reminders and make to do lists that I usually forgot to do. Now I've set up automated reviews in rippling that trigger based on a new hire's start date. That means at the thirty, ninety, and a hundred and eighty day mark, managers automatically get a Slack notification reminding them to complete their review right inside of rippling. Same thing is true for our new hire feedback surveys. We set them up in Rippling to auto send to the new hire. So we're getting feedback at the right moments like day one, week one, day thirty, sixty, and 90 without having to chase people down or send a ton of reminders. And then the best part is that everything lives in one place, which makes it so much easier to step back and see what's actually going on. A pro tip is that we use workflows to take action on the feedback that we get. An example of this is that thirty days, if a new hire is saying they're not getting the feedback they need from a manager, we have a workflow that's in place that triggers to the HR or VP, letting them know that the manager is not giving the new hire the feedback that they need to be successful. The second automation is content drips for new hires using Rippling's LMS to tailor our content for the company and also for specific departments. Here's your content sheet code. You can actually use our integrated GoOne platform inside of the Rippling LMS to create learning paths so you don't have to do it from scratch. One of my favorite features is that you can also auto enroll all of your new hires into the right courses based on their specific departments. For example, at Rippling, we auto assign all of our new hires that are considered early professionals into a course that's focused on all the norms they need to have as new hires in their roles. So ten days before a new hire starts, we already shoot off communications to them with their manager being CC'd. Then five days before managers start, we start a manager Slack drip to let the managers know five days, three days, and one day before what to expect and what to prepare for their new hire. We also send prompts morning of and the afternoon of the start date of the new hire to the managers to make sure they're prepared. We give them a checklist of what to do and when to do it. Part of that content drip to managers includes sending them our manager onboarding hub. That includes a centralized Confluence hub and a step by step onboarding guide that gives them all the steps they need to be successful in onboarding their new hire, from sending them a welcome email to setting up their one on ones. Everything in there sets them up for success. After we implemented our new onboarding program at rippling, we ran a survey in 2025 and found that ninety two percent of our new hires felt fully prepared after their first week. Ninety two percent also reported feeling integrated into our culture. And most importantly, ninety seven percent reported strong clarity with respect to role expectations and strong performance. The results speak for themselves. So in putting it all together, we learned from our most effective teams. We made sure HR and managers share the responsibility to set the stage. We tailored our strategy by department and, of course, used automations to scale. Now it's your turn. I can't wait to hear about your success. Alright. And a couple of you asked, yes, if you will get a copy of that recording, as well. And I am now joined by Regina, who is our head of content. Hello, Regina. Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for all of those insights. A lot of people were asking if we're gonna send out the recording, so that means that you gave a lot of really great tips. As we're getting the q and a warmed up, if you're interested in learning about how Rippling can help you really automate your onboarding program and think about scaling early, we'd love to chat with you. So please go ahead and hit yes, and we'll reach out to you to give you a customized block group. Alright. So for q and a, we saw a lot of great questions come in through the chat. Just to start, as we're building our onboarding program, how do you know what's working? Like, what are you looking for, Sarah, as you were scaling this to the the size that Rippling was growing? Yeah. I mean, I think in, like, thinking about, like, how how I know that it's, like, actually working, that's the question here. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, first and foremost, we look at attrition. And so, I mean, we're a rapidly growing company here. We you know, when I started, we were at 3,400. We are now at 5,400. We're gonna be at 7,500. And, you know, when looking at the numbers in the early attrition is a is a huge piece, and we're able to see know, kind of before we put in a more structured onboarding program and after. So when I talk in that video about, like, a clear snapshot of before and after, it's like, to me, that's the the one of the easiest pinpoints to go to. You know, I think a a big piece is, you know, rippling, we have a very unique culture. I think most companies do. Right? That's an an ethos of of of who most companies are. And when I start to track, like, the cultural integration and same thing, when I look at in the early days of our onboarding program and getting that sentiment of, like, yeah. Like, I'm kind of feeling integrated, but not, you know, what that what that looked like then, and then what was the work product there and how if I could tie that back versus now when I look and I see, wow. Like, the the qualitative and quantitative responses. You know, I was going through our survey data for 2025, doing performance reviews for my team. And, you know, so many times in the survey, I I just saw I was looking on the on the qualitative side was, you know, this is the best onboarding program I've ever had in my entire career. And so, like, those things to me too, like, that also tells me it's working. You know, when someone who's been in the in the working world for fifteen years and they're saying this is the best onboarding program they've ever had, like, that's, to me, is a sign too. So I would tell people the quantitative is important. Right? Those those metrics I talked about, but don't disregard the qualitative and and hearing and talking to your new hires and getting that feedback from them as well. Yeah. It it's definitely a balance. Right? Figuring out the right moments in the onboarding to ask those questions and getting that feedback early and often, and then actually looking at the metrics that business leaders care about and using that to build a story of the ROI of the onboarding program and how it grows and evolves. Yeah. Looking at the early poll, it seems like getting managers onboard is something that's top of mind for folks. So maybe a question for you, Sarah, is, like, I created this beautiful onboarding in a box. I gave it to managers. No one is using it. How did I get them to? Yeah. I mean, my biggest thing here is, like, y'all have to make it really, really, really easy for them. You know, I think that it's it's just the human brain in general. Right? The more steps we put into, like, having a manager or a human do something, the harder it's just going to be, especially I'm sure you are all at rapidly growing, very busy companies like we are at rippling. And so for me, it's like, how can I constantly feed to our managers especially? Like, it's not pre chewing for them. It's not spoon feeding them, but it's enabling them along the way. And I think one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of people make is, you know, they are gonna roll out a new onboarding program. They maybe put a message in Slack. Hey, all managers. You know, this is what we expect of you from when you onboard your new hires. And then that person those managers, maybe they don't get a new hire for six months, twelve months, whatever it may be. Like, they don't remember what you had told them. And the biggest thing I always hear is like, well, we told them. Like, yeah. You told them nine nine months ago. Like, they're not gonna remember that. And so for us, it's about, like, really, really enabling in the moment. So we have that content drip that goes out. You know? I mean, ten days before a new hire starts, we start we start messaging them. We email them. We have lots of different fun things that we send to them. The managers are cc'd on all of that, so they're really clear on what the employee's first day is gonna look like, their first week, etcetera. But seven days out, we actually start directly messaging in Slack all via workflow, you know, in Rippling. But we send them via Slack. Hey. This person's starting on this day. Here's the here is the direct link to the thirty, sixty, ninety day checklist. Here is a step by step guide of, you know, how to onboard them. Here is a template you can copy and paste to introduce them to their onboarding buddy. Like, there is to me, as much as I can make it copy and paste for our managers and they they wanna add their own spin on it, by all means, please do. But, know, you I'm really optimizing for the busy manager who may not have all the time in the world. You know, we want them to, but they don't. Like, how can I just take time away from them and just make it really, really easy? And then same thing. Day like, day one, we send the managers a Slack. Hey. Your new hire is in orientation until this time. Thirty minutes before orientation end, underway. In thirty minutes, your new hire is gonna be out. Like, you they're expecting a one on one with you today. All of those things. We just make it very, very, very clear to them and give them everything they need along the way. We don't just expect it's gonna happen to them. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm hearing from you is automating those communication drips so everyone is aware of what's happening when an on a new hire is getting onboarded, and then creating this just, like, very simple repeatable template across key moments of the onboarding, programs that you're launching so that managers have plenty to work off of, and they have the space to add some of the nuances of their specific department. I guess, like, when we were scaling this, you know, from a couple of employees to 3,500, Do you think that regular check ins with managers are still practical? We got this question in the chat. So how do you maintain that connectivity with managers without eating up a lot of your time? I love this question. I feel like I know there's, like, 500 people on the call, but I feel like we're all besties. It's so funny because last night, I kinda went back and forth with a manager a little bit because they wrote to me, we're we're launching a brand new onboarding buddy program here, like certifying people to be onboarding buddies and what that looks like. And a manager wrote to me and said, you know, does a another do I need to give an onboarding buddy to a manager of mine or a senior manager of mine? And I said, yeah. Absolutely. Like, just because they're senior managers, I mean, they don't you know, need an onboarding buddy. And he wrote back and said, wow. That's a really expensive ask. And I thought, that's interesting. And I and I was like, hey. Let's talk offline because I'd like to learn more about what you're saying here. I said, but to me, like, the, like, the return on investment like, I understand, yeah, we're actually looking at it hourly. Sure. But, like, when you look at the time you're spending, especially from a new hire perspective. Right? Like, to me, my first thought was like, well, what's really expensive is losing that person. Right? What's really, really expensive is that person be like, not feeling any connection whatsoever to to the company. Especially this person's remote. That's a challenge. Right? And so, you know, to me, I'm like, it's actually way much of a bigger, like, yield and return in spending that time. And so I saw that question, and I it made me think of that. Like, you know, we we look at it as almost like a, ugh, is there that time to do it? Now what I will say is I think it depends. Right? The frequency is gonna depend on the role, on the person you're hiring. Maybe it's someone you worked with at a previous company. They know your ways of working. Like, they worked with you before. So maybe, yeah, you don't have to meet with them every single week. You know, maybe in the first thirty days, it's every single week, and you're like, alright. This person's got it. All the signals are telling me they're good. I'm gonna I'm gonna pair it back. You know? Maybe it's every other week. So I don't think it has to be super, super prescriptive. Like, for me, when I onboard someone new to my team, I always do like, we have a weekly one on one that's an hour, and then we do a weekly coaching session that's an hour. And depending on the person, I will then taper down. Maybe we won't do the coaching session anymore. Maybe we just need thirty minutes for a one on one. So I I don't want people to feel super prescriptive, but the managers do need to be involved. And that's a huge leverage point for us here at rippling. Like, we really do lean on our managers a lot because, like, I'm a team of three for 5,400 people. So, like, for me, I really need our managers to do the right thing by their new hires. And so, again, going back to the earlier question, like so I my job is to enable them to do that, but that's our culture here. We we do put a lot of onus on the managers, and that does mean that, especially early on, yeah, you are meeting with them. You get to just pick the frequency. Those like, we give them a lot of, you know, freedom within a framework there, but, you know, I do to answer the question of do I think they're still practical, the answer is yes. Mhmm. And it sounds like the two people that are key for that onboarding experience is the manager and then the onboarding buddy, that person that you can, like, ask your stupid questions to. Yeah. Tell me about the onboarding program that we built here at rippling. Like, who's a good onboarding buddy, and how did you scale it to our company? Yeah. I mean, we're super excited. Like I said, we're we're actually we're literally piloting it, like, as we speak. It is happening in the background of having an onboarding buddy certification. But even before that, I mean, we put in some, you know, pretty, you know, I'd say standard best practices for, like, what an onboarding buddy looks like, who should be selected. It's okay to have multiple onboarding buddies. So I think even going back to that last question. Right? We're like, hey. This is you know, I have 10 direct reports. Maybe I can't meet weekly with this one person. Okay. Well, maybe you're meeting biweekly, but then you're assigning two different onboarding buddies for different things. So for us, it's more of, again, giving that that framework there, but having flexibility and freedom within it. So for us, it's more around making sure that, you know, it is a person that, you know, is a top performer or someone that, you know, is is gonna be good at coaching. A big piece for us And like I said, we give a template for the manager to send to the onboarding buddy saying, like, hey. You are an onboarding buddy. This is what that means. Here's a Confluence page that walks you through all that. Mhmm. So we make sure that's very, very clear. And then we also have we use our one on one template, which is the same thing that we use for our thirty, sixty, ninety day onboarding templates. We have a one on one template for onboarding buddies. So we make that very easy for them of, like, what are the things, you know, every single week. And, you know, we we give our onboarding buddies, you know, hey. By thirty days, you know, your new hire should start to be able to to self serve. You know, if they are coming to you directly for every single thing still, like, might be some more coaching to do there. So we give them those kind of, like, green flags, red flags as well, and we, you know, we we connect with the managers along the way too. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I'm also getting a lot of questions in the chat about, like, the the systems and the processes of this whole thing. So you mentioned in Chicago that you are using Rippling to create workflows and surveys depending on the new hire start date, and then you're pairing that with some of the Slack notification drips. Can you just, like, walk us through that? Like, how you built it, what you prioritized, and how that whole system works together? Yeah. I was just joking with somebody the other day too. I was like, I could never I mean, I'm gonna say Rippling forever and ever, obviously. But I said I could never go somewhere that didn't use Rippling because, like, I don't even know what I would do. Like, I don't know. My brain can't compute, like, how I functioned, like, before having access to all of this. Okay. But, yeah, I mean, for us, like, very, very, very workflow heavy. You know, the best thing is, like, you can trigger it by start date. We then flow down into, like, all of we have different locations. So we run a hybrid onboarding experience too. So, you know, we have nine, soon to be 10 offices around the globe that are all running a live version at the same time that there is a virtual version happening, and we do it in multiple different time zones. And so, you know, that's a lot to handle and a lot to schedule, and so that's actually completely all done through workflows. So we have that in like, setting up the sessions, sending out the calendar invites. All of that is just done completely for us based on start date. And then we have that content drip. And so, you know, for us, it's it's emails to the new hires ahead of time. Like I said, it's also emails to or Slack messages to the, managers. But then once they we start, we also have a ninety day, we put them into a one cohort channel. So every week from around the globe, they all come into even though we're having separate sessions, they're all coming into one, Slack channel cohort to share their, you know, their wins, what they've learned, all of that. And that's where we actually drop a lot of content in there for them for ninety days, that really just, again, triggers directly into that Slack channel, our ways of working, you know, different Rippling isms, our leadership principles, all of those more, like, cultural things. And then every Friday, we have a Slack trigger that goes out that's hey. What was your win for this week? What did you learn? And so, again, it allows us to really create this global experience even though we're kinda operating amongst different offices all. without literally never lifting a finger. It kinda goes back to that first, pain point that we talked about, which is getting managers to engage. When you can just automate those trips and recap what people are learning, it immediately helps give value for those managers and kind of give them a road map of what they still need to develop their new hires on. So that's that's awesome. Kind of speaking to that scaling question, what would you say are the main differences when you're building an onboarding program for, like, 50 employees versus what you're building here at rippling? Yeah. I mean, I think it's you know, I I mentioned it in the beginning of the video where it's, like, the golden thread, right, and really understanding, like, department to department, what are, like, what are those. And I think when you scale, obviously, the threads become looser, and, like, what's happening over here might not be happening happening over there. So, you know, I think it's staying we one one of the questions, right, was, who is gonna be your stakeholders? Who are you gonna go to? And it's it's really staying connected to those people, you know, going to them, sharing your wins. Like, I am a huge proponent of that as well. Like, I, every single year, I do, like, a learning wrapped, like Spotify wrapped. Like, here's all the programs we did. Here's the success. Here's how many people we onboarded. Here's the NPS score of that to keep them bought in. But I think, like, as you're failing for for us, like, we again, team of three. When I tell people that, literally, their eyes, like, fall out of their head. But, you know, for us, it is about a lot of that automation. Like, you know, we use our LMS for a lot of things. We have a really great learning paths tool. You know, I think. too even in my previous companies when I've used another LMS and I've had a live session, I've been, like, manually entering people in and, like, checking that they were here. And in our live courses, there's a QR code, and people just scan it. And then if they don't show up to a session, it notifies their manager. So there's those type of things too where it's like at scale, like, you have to have that there. And so, like, to me, content itself is, like, almost the easy part when you're like, hey. Here's the golden threads. Here are the things. Maybe every quarter, we're gonna go in. We're gonna update it. But, yeah, I think the technology piece. And the other thing I would say too is, like, you don't have to do it yourself. Again, we're a really, really small team. We rely on subject matter experts. We have a really great, you know, pool of people who we utilize around the globe to come and be facilitators for us for different onboarding, you know, components, because. we cannot be at all places at once in all time zones. And so you know? And we we reward them. We have you know, we give them extra swag when we do our swag drops, and we make sure to celebrate them as well. So I think that's a really important piece of scaling as well. It's like, you you. do not have to do it yourself. There are lots of people who are willing to help, and how do you recognize and reward those people too? It takes a village to build an onboarding program. And so what I'm hearing is start the foundation early, get these, components into place where you are building relationships with department leads, you are getting the basics in place quickly, and then you're giving folks onboarding in a box so that you can really scale it. And then once you get to the the point of influx of hiring using options and workflows to really supercharge that so that you can continue to grow your own programs and carry from it. As you were building this onboarding program, what were some of, like, the pitfalls or the learnings, like, get real with us? What was, like, really hard about building this? Yeah. You know? So, like, I I I mentioned this, I think, you in the trailer for this, but I inherited our onboarding program. So when I came into Rippling, I just focused my first and foremost focus was manager development and then very quickly inherited onboarding. And, you know, I had a an l and d leader years and years and years ago that was like, if you've got them in the room, you need to, like, give them all this information. And it never quite sat with me or just like, oh my god. We're trap people in a room for, like, nine hours on their first day and just, like, overload their poor new hire brains. Like, it doesn't matter how, like, new you are to working. Like, it's overwhelming to start somewhere new whether you're virtual or not. And so for me, actually, like, one of the first things that I optimized was, like, what can we actually cut out? So, like, you know, it was, like, eight and a half hours. It was pretty wild. And I'm like, what, like, what going back to the golden threads. Like, what are the most important things? And then what can we like, what deserves to be delivered live, and what can live async? And I think that's a huge thing for people to think about. It's like we really hold on to, like, I have to be the ones to deliver it and all of that stuff. And, like, to me, it's more around there's the live component. And the live is about really especially on someone's first day or part of orientation, the information we deliver live is, like, to engage them. And so we do a lot of breakout rooms. And, again, we're in we're we're we're hybrid, so we're in person. We're virtual at the same time. Right? So we do a lot of breakout rooms. We do a lot of activities around that content. We really build in that, you know, that that connection on day one around the content. And then anything else that is just like, hey. You this is, like, yeah, really good, like, nice to know slash need to know, know, deliver that async, and we think about, you know, what the timing is of that too. So I think it's just, like, for me, that was a huge shift of, like, overloading everyone on day one. And then, you know, I would get leaders saying, like, well, didn't you tell them that in onboarding? I'm like, yeah. That and, like, 17,000,000 other things. So, like, what are the core things we want them to walk away with on day one? And then how do we then integrate the rest, you know, through their whatever time period, thirty six year, ninety days, or even longer if you want for your org? I think what's really interesting that we do here at Rippling is that your laptop, all of your systems, like your computer, like, everything is set up before day one, and we set that expectation that, like, you can log in to Slack and your email and, like, here's the basic security trainings that you need to take. I think it just really helps set things off on the right foot where you can just dive deep into the role and not do kind of some of those more boring aspects of onboarding. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you. We used to so before I took over onboarding, we used to have a so, yes, like, that's a huge part of Rippling. Right? And that's, like, such a benefit. But we used to have this, like it was one hour, but it ended up always being, like, two hours of, like, tech setup. And and when I took over onboarding, I was like, why are we doing this? Like, we have this great product. Like, what what is missing here? And it's, like, it's some of our own in it's not, like, an issue with the product. It's more of, like, our own internal setup of things. Right? Like, how do you join different Slack channels? All of those things. And so we started to be created, my team, a new hire tech setup guide of how exactly how they should set up their computer for Rippling. And we send that to them four days before you know, four or five days before they start. And then every day, we're like, hey. Did you set up your tech? Here's a checklist for this. And so very, very rarely does someone show up on their first day, and, like, they are not like, they've not they're they are. ready to go. That is a huge difference. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Two more questions for you, Sarah. The first is what analytics are you looking at within Rippling so you can monitor what has been done, what hasn't been done, like what people are putting in their LMS? Kind of walk us through how you can see at a thousand foot view how things are progressing. Yeah. I mean, for for us, I mean, especially from the LMS perspective, like, we all of our live sessions, we use live courses in LMS. And so, you know, we do we do throughout the ninety days. And, again, depending on your role, your location, things like that, you you're in different sessions. And so for us, we can really look holistically at a high level, like, who has come, who hasn't. Again, we have those workflows set up where it's like, if they didn't scan that QR code and an hour passes, you know, then their manager is being notified. Like, hey. This person missed this. And so, like, we're enrolling them in in the next one, and it's on and going back to some manager accountability there as well. So that's a really important one. I you know, for me, just, like, utilizing our reports tool, like, I'm a huge proponent of that, of just, like, being able to look holistically around, like, you know, even the non fun stuff, like compliance training and those things that is also part of onboarding. You know, I use Rippling AI the other day. I asked, like, how many people, you know, are outstanding from a harassment training perspective. You know, we're we're going into a big April is a big month for us to, like, focus on compliance training and things like that. So having that so for me, it's more around, like, being able to pull these reports to really clearly understand, like, where we set. And then I also I created so Rippling has dashboards, and I'm gonna talk about that. But, like, a lot of times, I go I what I do is I pull in all of this survey data, all of this LMS data into, like, a dashboard or even, like, a custom app that I have. It's just, the information I wanna see Yep. as a, you know, an l and d person who, like I don't care as much about the HR stuff. No offense. But, like, for from an l and d perspective, it like, I get to customize that for myself. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So you you kinda get the context of how many folks have completed all of the elements that you're building, and then you can layer on the sentiment scores through pulse surveys and new hire milestones. And they can paint, like, a pretty clear picture of where things are going well and where some of the focus areas are. So that's awesome. We we you you touched on this a bit. I wanna double click on it. But how did you scale onboarding for a hybrid environment? And some folks here are managing, like, a fully remote environment. How do you think about kind of engaging folks and making sure that they feel part of the culture even if they aren't in a physical office? Yeah. I mean, I even had put it in the comments, like, early on. I know, like, the comments were were bump in. But, like, even when we think about, like, lunch, right, like, are you whatever you're creating for an in person perspective, how are you replicating is not the right word, but, like, what essentially, like, what are you doing to almost, like, fill that same cultural gap or time gap, you know, with that person? And so, like, even for us, like, we often will do, like, for our, like, remote employees. Like, we'll have, like, maybe a remote only AMA. Ask me anything. Or they're, like, talking to another remote employee about you know, who's been here for four years, who's really successful being remote. And so I think there's that piece too where there's, like, how much of it like, where's the Venn diagram? Right? And we try to fit as much as we can in the middle of that where, like, they are interacting with each other because we are a hybrid environment. So, like, we don't wanna have just a virtual onboarding and just a live onboarding because that's not indicative of our culture. And so, like, how do we bring everyone together? How do we focus, again, breakout rooms and things like that? And then how do we keep that connection going? And part of that is, like, that global Slack channel where people are in there, and they're really talking in their first couple weeks and and months here. So, like, to us, that's, like, the biggest piece. Like, how do we keep everyone connected despite the fact that we're all in different locations? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. One more question. I promise, and then we'll stop grilling you. When you think about your onboarding program and how what you want new hires to think, feel, and do, what was that North Star for you? Yeah. I mean, it with with Rippling, we like I said earlier, we have such unique ways of working. We have so many, like, Rippling isms. You know? And someone had told me a while ago, and it really it really impacted how I thought about onboarding of, like, we we move so fast, and so many of our, like, Rippling isms and our culture and our way of working actually isn't codified anywhere. It's, you know, it's a Slack message that our COO puts in, you know, general about his thought on something. And then if you'd happen to be if you happen to be one of those couple thousand people who catch it and you get it and you got it, it's like you've now embedded that in your way of working. But then what about people who may might have been on vacation with and then 16 other messages came through or a year later when a new hire starts. And so for me, when I really think about, like it it was going through and, like, really thinking about, like, co like, like, what are our almost I hate to say code of conduct. Right? But, like, our way of our like, what makes a Rippling a Rippling? And, Yeah. like, what is our responsibility to capture all of those things and teach those and give new hires, like, set them up for success with that in a way that hasn't been done before? And I think that's a it plagues a lot of organizations. They're just like, especially in a hyper growth like ours. Like, these are things that have always been done. How do we now have to formalize it? And that to me is, like, I see my job of, like, formalizing our ways of working in a way that really enables our new hires to not have to, like, go and find it or learn it the hard way. That to me is, like, the north star. It's like, no. I want them to learn it the easy way so they can get to work, and they can get started, and they can feel productive. That's a huge that that's the number one for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Giving them clarity with the basics, getting managers on board, and then allowing that tailoring by department. Those seem to be, like, the three critical ingredients to an an onboarding program success. Yeah. And it's you know, we we can we can overcomplicate it. You know? It's my my nature. It's the feedback I always get is, like, stop overengineering, and that's my advice to everyone here too. Like, you know, 10 per if you're at 0% onboarding, 10% is gonna make someone's day. You know? If you're at 10%, get it to the next 20%. I think we try to get to, like, zero to a 100. That's my mindset, and it always backfires on me. So it's like, how do I just make it 10% better? Great. Now I just made it 10% more better. Yeah. And that's my to everyone here is, like, what is one piece you can take from today and go and apply and let that let that live for thirty days, sixty days, then add another one. In a year, you'll now have this, like, fully built out onboarding program. You don't have to do it all in just a day. You can if you want to. But there's only so many hours. Well, so actionable. Thank you again, Sarah, for dropping these pearls of wisdom. Team's still watching at home. The resources are in the docs tab. We added some PDFs there. Apologies for that snafu. So please feel free to grab and go them as you're heading out. Keep an eye out in your inbox for a copy of today's recording and your SHRM credit. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Thank you.