Create an Effective Training Supervisor Onboarding Plan (30-60-90 Plan Template Included)

"Creating a culture of happy, engaged, and inspired employees starts with their onboarding experience," says Meighan Newhouse, CEO of Inspirant Group.

Yet, far too often, company onboarding isn't done well—studies show that 88% of organizations don't onboard new employees properly.

But as Newhouse highlights, creating fruitful onboarding experiences is worth the effort. It increases the retention, productivity, and loyalty of your new hires.

And your new training supervisors are no exception.

With recent research showing that every dollar invested in learning and development (L&D) results in nearly five dollars of additional revenue per employee, getting L&D right is as vital as ever.

This article will explain how to properly onboard your training supervisors using a constructive plan.

We'll step you through a practical 30-60-90 day template that ensures your new training supervisors are informed, motivated, and enabled to boost your organization's success through effective L&D.

✈️ Why is onboarding important for training supervisors?

Training supervisors play a crucial role: they direct and orchestrate the goals and aspirations of your L&D framework.

And with L&D becoming more strategic and influential in organizations, it's worth onboarding your training supervisors as effectively as possible.

By creating a welcoming, supportive, and motivating onboarding experience, you will boost the potential of your training supervisors and underpin your organization's L&D efforts.

📝 Training supervisor onboarding 30-60-90 day plan template

A constructive 30-60-90 day onboarding plan is how you can lay the foundations for successfully onboarding your training supervisors.

The plan should set clear milestones and realistic expectations, making it easier for them to start delivering value early in their new role.

Tip: Don't forget to boost their engagement and enjoyment by injecting some fun into the onboarding process!

Here's a checklist for an effective 30-60-90 day onboarding plan for your training supervisors.

‍Preparation

Prepare for their arrival by completing the necessary paperwork and administrative tasks.

Admin prep may not be very exciting, but it's vital to get it right. Inadequate onboarding preparation causes delays and inconveniences that will hinder progress for your new hires.

The key elements of preparation are:

✅ Onboarding paperwork—Your new hire should receive, read, and sign the documents for their role, including:

• Legal employment papers;
• Tax and compensation documents;
• Internal role-related documents, e.g., organizational charts, performance appraisal forms, hybrid work arrangements, and leave entitlements.
• Onboarding documentation covering your organization's tools, processes, company policies and procedures, vision statements, and company-specific intellectual property. 

✅ Access and hardware—Organize access to the required hardware and systems, e.g., laptop, phone, email, building access, etc., and include any L&D systems needed for their role.

✅ Team—Let your colleagues know about your new hire and set up onboarding meetings to strengthen social integrations and help them get comfortable in their role.

✅ Content refresh—Ensure that all organizational content and materials are up-to-date, including:

• An onboarding presentation to introduce your new hire to your organization, their colleagues, and their duties.

• Internal policies, IT training, and compliance procedures.
• Your organization's L&D framework and goals and a summary of past and future planned training programs.
• Any handover notes from predecessors.

✅ Match your new training supervisor with an onboarding buddy who will take care of their social integration. 

🆘 Do you need help identifying the right onboarding buddy? Say no more. Check out our templates you can use to match up buddies to new hires.

Preboarding

After completing the preparations, focus on making a great first impression for your new hire before they come on board. You can achieve this with a well-planned preboarding process.

✅ Sending a welcome package—Motivate them with company merchandise or other items to get them excited about joining their new role.

✅ Sending a welcome message—Set the tone of your relationship upfront with a welcome message that:

• Gives them helpful information.
• Demonstrates your organization's culture and perspective.
• Answers commonly asked questions.
• Initiates a sense of belonging with your organization, particularly for remote or hybrid roles.

➡️ Need suggestions for a memorable welcome package? Check out ten welcome package ideas to excite and inspire your new hires.

Day 1

On your new hire's first day, give them an engaging start:

✅ Arrange a welcome reception—Greet them with warmth and openness and team introductions. Spend time with them, and introduce them to an onboarding buddy who will guide them through their first day (and beyond).

✅ Sort out access logistics—Ensure they have access to the business premises, systems, hardware, and tools they need.

✅ Take them through orientation—Finalize admin work, discuss your organization's mission and vision, take them on a workplace tour, arrange any mandatory training, and acquaint them with your company's L&D systems and procedures.

Week 1

After a welcoming first day, continue helping your new hire settle in over their first week.

✅ Have 1:1 conversations—Discuss expectations and how you'll work together, build rapport, and answer any questions they have.

✅ Establish role clarity—Set out and explain the specific responsibilities of their role, including tasks, deliverables, processes, goals, and KPIs, such as:

• Identify and develop training needs.
• Manage training policy and procedures.
• Support third-party training vendors.
• Plan and facilitate a minimum number of training sessions per month.
• Develop and schedule continuing education workshops.
• Supervise training staff.
• Onboard new training hires.‍

✅ Communicate a role plan—Discuss their 30-60-90 day plan and make them aware of expected milestones and deliverables.

✅ Encourage networking—Highlight meetings that they should attend, introduce them to stakeholders, and engage them to get to know their colleagues through coffee or lunch roulettes (in-person or virtual).

✅ Initial assignment—Give them an early project. For example, they can evaluate and suggest improvements on an existing training course, supported by a business playbook that outlines your organization's L&D framework, processes, and goals.

✅ Celebrate—Cap off their first week with a message or quick meeting to celebrate their progress and build enthusiasm for the weeks ahead.

First 30 days

During the first month, focus on helping your new hire become proficient in their role.

✅ Communicate regularly—Check in with them regularly, e.g., using Slack, Teams, email, or in-person, and offer useful tips to help them be more effective in their new role.

✅ Check goal progress—Help them meet the core deliverables discussed in week 1.

✅ Onboarding buddy—Check in with their onboarding buddy and offer guidance.

➡️ Not sure of what buddy activities to include in your onboarding program? Check out Zavvy's ready-to-use buddy program template.

• Ask for feedback—Solicit feedback to clarify their expectations, build rapport, correct any misconceptions, and reinforce positive behavior.

➡️ Use our handy onboarding survey template to get efficient and effective feedback from your new hire.

First 60 days

By the second month, your new hire should make good progress and work well with their stakeholders. You can support them by:

✅ Offering training—As a training supervisor, your new hire knows all about the benefits of training. So give them access to them in-house or external training to boost their knowledge and skills.

✅ Reviewing and reiterating—Review their progress, answer any outstanding questions, reiterate the scope and purpose of their role, and check in with their onboarding buddy.

✅ Promoting strategic thinking—Ask them for feedback on your organization's training framework, their early impressions, and suggestions for future direction and improvement.

First 90 days

After three months, your new hire should be fully settled in and be working independently:

✅ Promote continued growth—Support their growth through continuous development and an effective employee development plan.

✅ Ask for more feedback—Solicit updated feedback and check in with their onboarding buddy.

✅ Recognize their contribution—Motivate and encourage them through recognition of what they've achieved to date

A final step and essential part of the onboarding process is to monitor actionable onboarding metrics to assess the effectiveness of your onboarding program and identify areas for improvement.

➡️ If you need more help with onboarding, check out these practical and helpful onboarding templates.

👀 What does an effective training supervisor onboarding process look like?

As we've seen, there's a lot that goes into onboarding! It's not always clear, therefore, what effective onboarding looks like.

A simple way to clarify this is to consider the 4 phases of onboarding and how they relate to training supervisor roles.

1. Preboarding

The paperwork, access rights, documentation, and welcome messages are done in this phase.

Tip: For training supervisors, be sure to include L&D system access and information about your organization's training framework.

2. Orientation

This is the welcoming phase and includes meet-and-greets, general company information, office walkarounds (or virtual show-arounds), and an introduction to your company culture.

Tip: Training supervisors should also meet third-party training vendors and focus on how company aspirations are supported by training. 

3. Role-specific training

This phase includes activities that are specific to your new training supervisor's role:

• Define clear expectations and deliverables.
• Assign early projects.
• Outline the scope and intent of your organization's training framework.
• Get them familiar with your L&D system.
• Provide role-specific training as required.
• Arrange an onboarding buddy.

 4. Ongoing development

As a longer-term phase of onboarding, support career growth and development opportunities for your new training supervisor through:

• Promoting personal goals.
• Regular competency assessments.
• Ongoing skills training.
• Forward-thinking succession planning.

⚙️ Why you need to automate your training supervisor onboarding process

Proper onboarding takes time and effort. And to do it well, you need a structured and thorough approach.

So, how can you create a consistent, repeatable, seamless onboarding experience for all your new hires?

💡 Automate!

Employ a structured and guided process by automating employee onboarding. You will save time, boost productivity, and create better, more reliable onboarding experiences for your training supervisor and other new hires.

➡️ See how our customers, Alasco and Storyblok, boosted their onboarding productivity and enhanced their new hires' onboarding experience (in-person and remote) through automation.

"[Zavvy's] Slack integration is so cool - and we want to get everything out of it: From automatically creating channels for new cohorts to reminding and engaging all stakeholders involved." Nina Hübner, Recruiting Manager at Alasco.

➡️ Start onboarding before day one with our easy-to-use preboarding template.

➡️ Set up your L&D new hires for success with Zavvy

At Zavvy, we know why onboarding matters and how to do it properly.

Your new training supervisors are essential for the success of your L&D program. Don't let them down with inadequate onboarding.

Create a lasting impression with a preboarding welcome and deliver an engaging and efficient onboarding experience through innovative onboarding software.

Follow up on the success of your onboarding program with:

• 🌱 People development cycles that will guide your training supervisors along their development path.
• 🔄 Feedback systems that can be customized as desired and that lead to a culture of growth and learning.
• 💪 Training programs that deliver step-by-step content instead of overwhelming learners.

Book a free demo to see how our automated employee enablement tools will take your employee experience to the next level.