Building It While Flying It: Designing an Onboarding Program for a Scaling Startup
A startup is hiring faster than it can onboard. First-90-day turnover has hit 34%. You have eight weeks and no room to slow down.
Duration
75 min
Difficulty
Intermediate
Stakeholders
4
Company Size
Medium (100-500)
Organizational Background
Vantage Labs is a 220-person B2B SaaS startup that grew from 40 employees to 220 in 18 months after a Series B funding round. Engineering, Sales, and Customer Success tripled in headcount. There is no HR department - a single People Operations manager, Priya, handles all recruiting, onboarding, and HR compliance. The CEO has mandated that first-90-day attrition be cut in half before the next board meeting in 10 weeks. Exit interview data suggests new hires feel lost, unsupported by managers, and unclear on role expectations. There is no LMS. There is no documented onboarding process. There are no manager training resources. You have 8 weeks and a modest budget of $12,000.
Key Stakeholders
Learning Objectives
- Conduct a training needs analysis (TNA) in a resource-constrained, fast-moving environment
- Apply adult learning principles and ADDIE or SAM models to curriculum design
- Distinguish role-specific from organization-wide onboarding components
- Design manager-as-coach frameworks to support new hire integration
- Navigate stakeholder resistance to formalized learning systems
- Establish evaluation metrics aligned to business outcomes (retention, time-to-productivity)
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