First Week Schedule

You design the five days that decide whether a new hire feels they made the right choice. The standard: they never wonder where to be or what to do next, every account works before they need it, they meet the people who matter in a sensible order, they get real work early, and the days are not wall-to-wall meetings. A week planned at this level of detail takes an hour to build and saves the new hire days of confusion.

When to use

• "Plan Monday to Friday for Jo, she starts next week."
• "What should our new developer's first week look like?"
• "Set up the first-week calendar for the two sales hires."
• "Our last starter sat alone on day one. Never again."

What you need

• From the onboarding plan: name, role, manager, buddy, start date, time zone, office or remote, any adjustments requested.
• Calendars of the manager, buddy and key people (to find real free slots).
• Status of equipment and accounts (they must be ready the working day before).
• The day 30 goals, so the week points toward them.
• Access: calendars and the chat tool through connected apps or the agent's own browser signed in by the owner. You create invites as drafts or tentative holds; invites go to the new hire only after the owner approves. Without calendar access, deliver the schedule as a document and a list of invites for someone to create.

Method

1. Confirm readiness on day minus 2. Ask IT or the owner (ask_teammate) to confirm: laptop delivered or desk ready, login works, email, chat, calendar and the three to five tools needed in week one are provisioned and tested. If anything is not ready, tell the owner now and plan around it (paper-based or read-only work for that slot), never discover it on Monday.
2. Set the shape of each day. Use references/week-one-template.md. Rules of thumb:
   • Start day 1 later than usual (for example 10:00) so the manager is free to greet them.
   • No more than about 3 to 4 hours of meetings a day; leave blocks for reading, setup and practice.
   • Manager on day 1 (expectations and the 30/60/90 goals) and day 5 (how the week went).
   • Buddy every day, even for 15 minutes.
   • Lunch on day 1 with the team or buddy, in person or remote.
   • A first small, real result by day 3 to 5: a fix, a first customer reply reviewed by a colleague, a first reconciliation, a first small page edit.
3. Order the introductions. Day 1: manager, buddy, immediate team.
   • Day 2 to 3: closest collaborators and the people they will depend on.
   • Day 4 to 5: wider stakeholders and, where relevant, a customer or user conversation.
   • Six to ten introductions in total; more can wait.
4. Plan learning sessions. One or two short sessions a day (15 to 60 minutes) with different team members on how the work actually flows: the product, the customers, the main process or system, how decisions are made. Spreading them across the team builds connection as well as knowledge.
5. Respect time zones and needs. Put every slot in the new hire's local time and check it falls in their working hours. Build in any adjustments they asked for (breaks, written agendas, captions on calls, quiet space).
6. Write a welcome note and a day-1 "where to be" message. Address or link, time, who will meet them, what to bring (for example ID for the right-to-work check, if required in the country), dress if relevant, and a phone number for problems. Mention how the company will and will not contact them (for example, "we will never ask you to buy gift cards or change bank details by email"), because new starters are a common phishing target.
7. Draft invites. For each slot: title, purpose in one line, who, length, link.
   • Create them as tentative holds or drafts.
   • Show the full week with show_card and send nothing to the new hire until the owner approves.
8. Close the week. Friday check-in with the manager: what went well, what was confusing, what they need for week 2. Capture actions and update the onboarding checklist.

Judgement calls

• Part-time starters: spread the same content across their working days. Do not squeeze five days into three.
• A starter in a different time zone from the team: put team sessions in the overlap hours, use the rest for self-paced work, and pick a buddy whose hours overlap.
• A start mid-week or after a public holiday: compress days 1 and 2, and keep the first-result target.
• Equipment delayed: begin with introductions and reading. If the owner's security rules allow a personal device at all, use it only for non-sensitive tasks, with no access to production systems or secrets.
• Several starters at once: run shared sessions together (welcome, product, values) and keep manager and buddy time individual.
• Shift, site or frontline roles: the first week includes the safety induction and shadowing with a named trainer before working alone, as the law and company rules require.

Output

• first-week-<name>.md: a day-by-day table with times, session, who, purpose, preparation.
• Draft welcome and day-1 logistics message.
• Draft calendar invites (held, not sent) or a list of invites to create.
• A readiness note: what is confirmed ready, what is not and the workaround.

Week-at-a-glance card:

First week: <name>, <role>, starts <date> (<time zone>)
Readiness: laptop <ok>, accounts <ok>, building or tool access <ok>
Mon: welcome 10:00 with <manager>, setup, one-to-one, team lunch
Tue: product walkthrough, collaborator intro, shadowing
Wed: first task assigned, learning session
Thu: customer or user call, ask-anything session
Fri: first result delivered, week review with manager
Meeting hours: Mon <h> · Tue <h> · Wed <h> · Thu <h> · Fri <h>
Waiting for approval: welcome message, <n> invites

Checks before you finish

• Accounts and equipment confirmed working on day minus 2, or a workaround is planned.
• Every slot has a purpose, an owner and a time in the new hire's time zone.
• No day has more than about 4 hours of meetings.
• The manager meets them on day 1 and day 5; the buddy appears every day.
• There is one real, small piece of work due by day 3 to 5.
• Nothing has been sent to the new hire without the owner's approval.

Pitfalls

• The empty Monday. Laptop on the desk, nobody around, "read the wiki". Plan the first hour minute by minute.
• The meeting marathon. Twelve intro calls on day 2. People remember none of them. Spread them out.
• Setup on day one. Password resets and missing licences eat the first day. Test everything on day minus 2.
• Information without context. Sending 30 links is not onboarding. Each reading item needs a reason and a time slot.
• Forgetting remote starters. Remote hires need more structure, not less: scheduled buddy time and a virtual lunch.

See also: onboarding-plan for the 90-day plan this week sits inside.