Effective Onboarding: Communicating Expectations & Responsibilities

I believe great onboarding is beyond presentations and policies. It is about connecting and giving clarity. I personally meet every new hire to share our culture, expectations, and most importantly, what we expect from the specific roles. So during onboarding, I make sure new team members understand three things clearly: their goals, their role in the bigger picture, and how their work creates impact.

I recommend managers and team leaders do a “role clarity session” in the first week. Instead of just going through job descriptions, we talk about real scenarios. We recently hired a new project manager who joined the team in the middle of a big client project. It takes time for someone new to get up to speed and start contributing. I sat down with her for an hour and explained the project goals, team dynamics, and her key responsibilities. This one conversation gave her a lot of clarity and confidence. She didn’t have to figure it out on her own. She knew where to focus. Within days, she took full ownership of her tasks and got a grip on the project. Setting clear expectations and honest communication made a big difference in making the new hire feel comfortable and confident in her role.

I stopped just handing new hires a manual. The first thing I do now is schedule a quick chat to talk about big picture goals, using real examples from past campaigns. At WordsAtScale, this became our method since marketing changes so fast. We tried other ways, but this direct, conversational approach helped people find their footing quicker without getting lost in the details.

The best way to communicate expectations during onboarding is to integrate written communication with hands-on guidance. Each new hire receives a role roadmap with expectations set forth in terms of 30-, 60-, and 90-day plans with examples of success at each stage.

For example, there was some confusion about the prioritization of tasks for new technicians. We changed the orientation process to include observation sessions with senior team members who take them through practical projects to illustrate the decision-making process. This way, new employees moved from abstract job descriptions to practical understanding and became more confident quickly.

Effective communication during onboarding is paramount to building a strong foundation for new hires. I ensure clarity by providing a structured onboarding program tailored to our company’s core values and goals. For example, when onboarding a new team member in our creative department, we begin by walking them through our brand story—emphasizing the inspiration behind our trademark and its connection to our shared passion for outdoor photography. By pairing this with clear role-specific objectives and milestones, they gain an immediate understanding of their responsibilities and how their work contributes to our brand’s mission.

For new folks on construction teams, I always draw a simple chart showing how work gets handed off. It shows them the big picture right away. They see who they depend on and who’s waiting on them. Making those connections clear from the start avoids a ton of back-and-forth and confusion. It saves a lot of headaches down the road.

I give them a simple “30-60-90 day plan” that shows exactly what success looks like in their first 3 months.

When someone starts a new job, they often feel nervous and confused. They want to excel, but generally don’t know in what ways they can excel. “Just do your best” may sound nice, but it will just cause even more stress.

Here’s a useful strategic example:

On the first day, sit with the new recruit, handing them a written plan that outlines the first 90 days in 3 sections:

1- Days 1-30: The goal this month is to learn. Read, ask questions, complete trainings, meet the whole team, and get a basic understanding of our systems. Don’t worry about being perfect.

2- Days 31-60: This month, you will start doing the work under supervision. You will handle 3-5 customer calls that will be monitored by a teammate, and we will assist you. You are expected to make mistakes.

3- Days 61-90: You will be expected to handle 10-15 customer calls and solve most of the problems independently by the end of the month. You will know when to ask for help and be expected to handle the rest.

This works well because the new person knows what is expected of them. They don’t have to ask, “Am I doing okay?”

Meet with them biweekly to discuss the plan. Ask what’s working and what’s confusing. Adjust the plan as needed.

This eliminates the fear of uncertainty and replaces it with clear, achievable goals.

In an era of distributed teams and rapid change, the casual, osmotic learning that once defined a new employee’s first few months has largely disappeared. The stakes for establishing clarity from day one have therefore never been higher. Effective onboarding is no longer just a procedural checklist; it is the first and most critical intervention in a new hire’s long-term performance and engagement. The goal is not simply to transmit information but to build a foundation of psychological safety and mutual understanding that can withstand future ambiguity.

The most common mistake is treating expectations as a static document to be delivered, like a user manual for the job. A more effective approach is to reframe the process from a presentation to a dialogue. Instead of handing a new hire a finalized 30-60-90 day plan, a manager should present a thoughtful draft and treat it as the beginning of a conversation. This small shift reframes the new hire from a passive recipient of instruction into an active partner in defining their own success. It acknowledges their experience and invites them to apply their fresh perspective from the very beginning.

For instance, during a first-week check-in, a manager could share a screen with a draft of key first-quarter objectives. Instead of saying, “Here are your goals,” they might say, “This is our current thinking on what success looks like in this role for the next few months. Based on your expertise and what you’ve learned so far, what here seems clear? What feels ambitious or raises questions for you?” This invitation to critique and refine the plan does more than just clarify tasks.

This single conversation sets a powerful precedent. It implicitly communicates that curiosity is valued, that assumptions are meant to be questioned, and that leaders are open to being challenged. It replaces the anxiety of guessing what a manager wants with the confidence of co-authoring a shared definition of what is most important. In doing so, it communicates the most vital expectation of all: that clarity is a shared responsibility, not a one-way mandate.

We map them to their role requirements, rather than just providing generic expectations.

This not only clearly aligns what we want to see from their role activity, but shows a clear output that they understand as it’s in their ‘language’ (in terms of the processes and requirements to get to a desired output).

I make sure it is easy to understand, well-documented, and supported by real project situations. When new hires begin their onboarding journey, I provide them with a brief “project responsibility map” that shows their responsibilities clearly — the code pieces they are responsible for, testing steps, and communication channels. Later, within the first seven days, the new employee and I team up on an in-progress task to show them how it is done. One example is a recent one with a new developer where we worked together on a small DSP module: we went through the specification, agreed on the performance goals, and established a convenient code review process. This helped them see through the abstract task and have something tangible to deliver with confidence.

Before we put up a job ad for any position, we determine:

– Why we need that hire right now

– What this person should do

– What the KPIs are for this role

When someone starts working, we have a clear idea of what they should achieve, the tasks they will be doing every day, and what the timeline is for them. This helps with onboarding, but more importantly, we know right off the bat if we need a new hire for something or if we can get the job done by training someone from the existing team.

Give every new hire a mentor who isn’t their boss and whose entire job is to answer the “dumb” questions without judgment.

Your manager is the last person a new hire wants to ask, “Wait, what does ‘manage stakeholders’ actually mean here?” or “Who really calls the shots on this team?” Because that same manager is the one doing their performance review, people stay quiet, guess wrong, and waste months figuring things out the hard way.

So we split the load. The manager owns the “what.” Goals, KPIs, deadlines. The mentor owns the “how.” All the unwritten stuff nobody puts in the job description. In week one they sit down for half an hour and translate the corporate speak into plain English.

Instead of “align cross-functional stakeholders,” the mentor just says, “Look, keep Evelyn in design happy by sending her a quick bullet-point email every Friday. She hates Slack walls of text. Email is her love language.”

It’s ridiculously simple, but it instantly creates a safe space. New hires stop second-guessing, start moving faster, and feel like they’ve been handed the cheat codes instead of being dropped into the game blind. They go from anxious to confident in days instead of months, and honestly, everyone wishes they’d had this when they started.

My view is that onboarding should begin with story, not policy. When we onboard a new team member, we don’t hand them a handbook. We start with a barebones, simple story: “Here’s the problem we’re solving, the students we’re serving, and the freedom we want to create.” When we share context like this, it becomes the lens through which every expectation makes sense.

For example, when we onboarded a new digital curriculum designer just recently, I invited her to sit in on one of our live classrooms in her first week. She sat among students, saw them raise their hands with questions, saw their struggles, and only at that point did I say we’d be assigning her the task of “owning the weekly content set, gauging engagement, and iterating next time based on results.” At that point, the live class where she was a student made all of the expectations seem more like a mission rather than a duty.

The truth is, responsibilities should only be framed in purpose, not paperwork. It’s one thing to say, “update the curriculum deck,” it’s another thing to say, “you are helping students in 30+ countries learn at their own pace.” When people see the impact first, clarity will happen naturally.

During our onboarding process, we involve the leaders and team members who will work closely with the new hire to ensure expectations and responsibilities are communicated clearly. We encourage direct supervisors to schedule weekly one-on-ones with the new hire to check in and connect, helping employees adjust to their role. Consistent virtual meetings are especially important since our executive search firm is fully remote.

As the Chief Executive Officer of DeWitt Pharma, I have observed the dramatic effects of simple and clear expectations on new hires. Effective onboarding begins with clarity. In clinical roles, employees should know what to expect in their first few weeks and what good performance looks like. We employ a 90-day expectations framework that decomposes every role into succinct priorities, measurable results, and a consistent pathway that enables new hires to gain confidence from day one.

An example of this is our onboarding for new clinical trainers. On day one, we conduct an expectations briefing that lasts less than 30 minutes to outline early priorities, success metrics, and progression paths. New trainers start with safety training, live session observations, and skills assessments before shadowing sessions, then assisting and finally leading their own sessions. Most new trainers can lead their first session with oversight by week four. Weekly check-ins reinforce the process while providing an opportunity for questions. This combination of clarity and regular support ensures an easy transition into the role for every new team member.

We onboard every new hire with the “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” approach.

We walk them through what success really looks like in the role—not just the shiny parts, but also the stress points, the bottlenecks, and the kind of fires they might have to put out. Why? Because false expectations create resentment. Transparency builds trust.

For example, when we onboard a new video editor, I don’t just show them our best project reel—I show them a raw client request with unclear direction, a tight deadline, and a “can we fix it in post?” scenario. Then I walk them through how we actually navigated it as a team.

I also spell out non-negotiables: communication, deadlines, and accountability. I’d rather someone know from day one what “dropping the ball” looks like and how we handle it, instead of figuring that out the hard way.

Lastly, we give them room to grow. That means check-ins, access to department leads like Ethan (photo/sales) or Jake (client relations), and the freedom to suggest better ways of doing things. Expectations go both ways—we expect results, and they should expect mentorship.