The page a new hire gets before day one: the week's schedule, a checklist, the people and the tools.
The night before a new job, the questions are small ones: what time, which door, what to wear, who to eat lunch with. Bea, the studio manager at a made-up design studio, answers them for the junior designer who starts on Monday, and takes her through to Friday at 4:00. The ten boxes can be ticked, but only as the new hire's own to-do list: nothing is saved, a reload clears them, and Bea never sees them.
Who it's for
Managers, office leads and founders at companies too small for an HR portal, writing to someone who has signed and starts within a week or two. Make one page per hire. A name in the greeting and a first task chosen for them tell a new person they were expected.
It doesn't replace the paperwork: contracts and tax forms go through whatever you already use.
What a good one contains
- Arrival, before anything else. Time, door, what to bring. Thea is asked to come at 9:30, so the studio has half an hour to get her desk ready.
- Day one by the hour. Eight entries from 9:30 to 5:00, most naming who she's with. The first day is the one people dread, so it gets the most detail.
- The other days in a few lines. Tuesday to Friday list only the fixed appointments.
- A first task that's small and real. Fitting a yogurt label to two new jar sizes. Someone who finishes actual work by Friday goes home feeling useful.
- A checklist split by when. Four items before Monday, six during the week, so she can see what's due before she walks in.
- People, with a line on what to ask them. Six of her fourteen colleagues, the ones she deals with that week. "Your first stop for anything practical" beats a job title.
- Tools, with the day each arrives. The file server comes after Tuesday's walkthrough, which explains why it's missing on Monday.
- The unwritten rules. Hours, Fridays ending at 4:00, closed shoes for the print room, who to text when sick.
What to leave off the page
A link gets forwarded, so some things don't belong on it:
- Passwords, door codes and the wifi key. The sample gives them one line: Bea hands passwords over in person on Monday.
- Phone numbers. Thea is told to text the number in Bea's welcome email.
- The handbook. It appears once, as a checklist item: 12 pages, attached to the email.
Walk the schedule yourself before you send it. If the page promises a working laptop at 9:45, someone has to set it up the week before. If Wednesday's coffee moves, fix the page, in the conversation where you made it, before she reads the old time.
How to send it
With a password. It goes to a personal address before the new hire has a work account, so a password in the welcome email is the simple choice. That keeps the schedule and your staff's names private.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
