30-60-90 day plan for HR managers

A new HR manager walks into two jobs at once. One is inherited and urgent: open employee relations cases, leaves in progress, a benefits renewal date that will not move, filing deadlines. The other is the reason they were hired: making the company better at managing people. A 30-60-90 day plan for an HR manager has to secure the first before starting the second, and it has to give the hiring manager, often a COO, CFO or founder, a way to check both without being an HR specialist.

The general template for any role is the 30-60-90 day plan template for new hires. This page is specific to an HR manager in a small or mid-sized company, typically the senior HR person on site or one step below a head of people.

Days 1-30: Find out what is open and what is due

The first month is an audit. Not a formal one, but a structured look at every place where the company could be exposed or where an employee is waiting on HR. The goal is that by day 30 nothing urgent is unknown.

• Open cases. Every active employee relations matter, investigation, accommodation request, leave of absence and pending termination, with its status, next step and documentation. Cases handled by the previous HR person or by managers directly both count.
• Compliance calendar. Every recurring deadline for the next 12 months: benefits renewal and open enrollment, required filings such as the EEO-1 if the company is large enough to file one, required trainings in the states where employees work, and posting requirements.
• I-9 and personnel files. A sample check of Form I-9s and personnel files for completeness. The I-9 audit checklist gives a structured way to do this without reviewing every file in week two.
• Handbook and policies. Read the handbook against current practice. Where the two disagree, write it down; that list is the start of the day-60 work.
• HRIS and payroll data. Pull a headcount report and reconcile it against payroll. Mismatches in job titles, managers, locations or employment status are common, and they break every report the HR manager will be asked for later.
• People. One-to-ones with every member of the leadership team and most people managers, asking the same two questions: what does HR do well here, and what do you wish it did?

Deliverable by day 30: a written HR risk and priorities memo, covering open cases, compliance gaps with dates, data problems and the three things leaders most want from HR.

Days 31-60: Fix the foundations and take over the calendar

• Close or hand to counsel every compliance gap found in the audit, in order of exposure.
• Own the compliance calendar from here on, with reminders owned by named people, not just an inbox.
• Clean the HRIS data so headcount, manager hierarchy and job titles match payroll.
• Update the handbook sections that are outdated or contradict practice, reviewed by employment counsel where needed.
• Run at least one employee relations case from intake to close personally, with documentation the hiring manager or counsel could defend.
• Propose the first people priority, drawn from the leadership conversations, with a scope and a date.

Deliverable by day 60: an agreed people priority for the next two quarters, and a monthly HR report (headcount, hires, exits, open cases) built from clean data.

Days 61-90: Own a people priority

• Launch the first phase of the agreed priority. Common examples: a manager training series on feedback and documentation, salary bands for the roles most affected by pay transparency rules, a structured onboarding program, or an exit interview process whose results actually get read.
• Present the first quarterly people review to leadership: turnover and where it clusters, time to hire, open risks and what HR recommends.
• Set a working rhythm with managers: how they raise issues, what HR expects them to document, and how fast HR responds.

Deliverable by day 90: the first phase of the priority delivered, and a quarterly people review that leadership used to make at least one decision.

What "on track" looks like

A filled example

How a non-HR hiring manager can judge the work

Many HR managers report to someone who has never worked in HR, which makes the check-ins harder to run. Three questions work without specialist knowledge:

1. "Show me the list." Open cases, compliance dates, data gaps. A good HR manager has lists, with owners and dates. If the answer is a description instead of a list, that is the problem.
2. "What did the managers say?" An HR manager who has spent real time with line managers can repeat back specific complaints and requests. One who has not will talk about best practice.
3. "What would you need counsel for?" A good HR manager knows where the edge of their judgment is and names it. One who never brings in employment counsel on a difficult matter, or brings them in on everything, has a calibration problem worth discussing.

What the hiring manager owes the new HR manager

• Admin access to the HRIS, payroll reports, benefits broker contacts and personnel files in week one.
• A list of anything the hiring manager knows is sensitive: a past claim, a manager with repeated complaints, a pending restructuring.
• An introduction to employment counsel, with an agreed budget or approval process for using them.
• An explicit statement to managers that the HR manager owns people processes, so managers stop routing issues around them.

Common mistakes

Adapting the plan

• Multi-state or remote workforce: expand the day-30 compliance calendar by state; pay transparency, leave and training rules differ, and the pay transparency laws by state guide is a starting point for job posting obligations.
• Company with high turnover: make exit data the first priority; how to analyse exit interview data covers turning exit conversations into a pattern leaders can act on.
• HR manager with a team: add one-to-ones with each HR team member in week one and a day-60 goal to redistribute case load based on what they found.

If you are still hiring, the HR generalist screening questions cover much of the case-handling judgment an HR manager also needs, and can be extended with questions about owning a compliance calendar and presenting to leadership.