Big Wins for New HR Leaders: Your 90 Day Roadmap in a New Role
You got the job—woohoo!
Now what?
Stepping into a new HR leadership role is both exciting and overwhelming. You’ve earned the position because of your skills and vision, but the pressures of a new job, let alone a new leadership role, can be intense:
- The rest of the C-suite may be eager or even impatient to see impact.
- Your team may be desperate for guidance.
- And employees who need your support may have preconceived notions about HR that can make your job even more challenging.
It’s all eyes on you, especially in the first 90 days, but you don’t have to embark on this journey alone or fix everything at once.
About this 90-day roadmap
This roadmap is designed to help you prioritize and deliver high-value, realistic wins within your first 90 days on the job and set your teams up for long-term success. It focuses on four phases:
- Your first 14 days
- Days 15 to 30
- Days 31 to 60
- Days 61 to 90
While checklists are useful, they often miss the human side of the transition, and all the feelings that go with assuming a leadership role at a new company. You’re not just inheriting a set of processes—you’re stepping into people’s real-life experiences with those processes. And how you engage with that reality will set the tone for how you partner with and influence others to drive impact for your organization.
Use this roadmap to find the best path forward for you, your new team, and the organization you’re about to transform for the better.
Key takeaways
- Begin your role with a listening tour to understand the landscape, align with leadership, and build initial trust with your new team.
- Conduct a systems and compliance audit to identify productivity killers, mitigate legal risks, and ensure HR data is centralized for consistent reporting.
- Turn your insights into quick wins by simplifying onboarding, cleaning up the ATS, and establishing regular check-ins.
- Use your earned credibility to draft a strategic HR roadmap for the coming year, and propose small, meaningful policy and process updates.
“It has never failed me to be a committed student of the business. Understanding deeply what drives revenue, how your organization is measuring success, and how they think about investments in people or programs will serve you well as you become fluent in the measures and outcomes your senior leaders care most about.”
Kelsey Tarp | Director, HR Business Partners | BambooHR
Days 1–14: Start a listening tour
The first two weeks aren’t about making sweeping changes—they’re about learning what you’ve stepped into. Think of this as your listening tour, where you gather signals about what’s working well, what could be improved, and how people experience the culture day to day.
By the end of day 14, your goal is to:
- Understand the landscape.
- Identify allies as well as stakeholders you need to build or re-build trust with.
- Spot immediate risks or opportunities.
Meet with leadership and stakeholders
Align with leadership’s mission and vision. Some targeted questions for leaders include:
- What past HR initiatives or projects were considered a success? Which were not? And why?
- What keeps you up at night, and what would life be like if this pain point was improved by just 20%?
- What are the company’s top business goals and how does HR fit into achieving them?
These conversations give you a sense of senior leaders’ priorities and expectations and help you demonstrate your learning agility as a student of the business. They’ll also communicate how you plan to bring value to your spot at the table.
“There’s so much influence HR can have on a business. And there’s so much more to it than what people think. HR’s not just administrative. We deserve a seat at the table. I’m really passionate about that.”
Vanessa Brulotte | Employee Relations Partner | BambooHR
Schedule regular one-on-one meetings with your HR team and key managers to begin identifying low-hanging improvement opportunities as well as who may be a retention risk. Some targeted questions for these stakeholders include:
- When was your last really good day at work? What happened that day?
- What are your top minor and major frustrations?
- What’s working?
- What would you change if you could?
The themes you hear during these alignment conversations will point you toward bottlenecks worth fixing first.
“Something to ask your people leaders is, ‘What are the little things that are irritating, like a papercut?’ Repeat papercuts get infected eventually, and solving these little irritating issues for your team can be a great way to build goodwill for bigger changes in the future.”
Kelsey Tarp | Director, HR Business Partners | BambooHR
Days 15–30: Review current systems and processes
Now that you’ve heard from your people leaders, it’s time to raise the magnifying glass to your own team and the experience they create for other members of your organization. It’s also time to see for yourself what sort of tech stack you’re working with.
By the end of day 30, your goal is to:
Identify productivity killers hiding in your current processes as well as issues that could be exposing the organization to legal risk.
Conduct a satisfaction, systems, and compliance audit
Conduct an audit of the following systems and processes.
Employee experience
- How do employees describe their day-to-day interactions with HR?
- Are there recurring frustrations (slow response times, unclear policies, lack of visibility into processes)?
- Do new hires feel welcomed and supported in their first weeks, or are they left to figure things out on their own?
- What signals—positive or negative—are shaping how people perceive HR’s role in the company?
- Is there an existing mechanism or process for collecting honest employee feedback and data on satisfaction and wellbeing? If so, what is the current rating and what have trends been over time?
HR data and reporting
- What metrics are being tracked today, and are they relevant to business goals (e.g., retention, turnover, time-to-hire)?
- Are reports consistent, timely, and easy for leadership to understand?
- Is HR data stored in one central place or scattered across multiple systems and spreadsheets?
- How long does it take to produce a basic report, and could automation save time?
- Have we historically reported on data points or insights? Could we elevate the impact of reporting as a trusted advisor with insights about what really matters?
“A compelling story isn’t enough to drive change with leaders. To truly influence, you need both the data and the narrative. Data gives you the facts. The narrative provides the context and a call to action. It’s the difference between simply reporting the weather and telling someone how to prepare for a storm.”
Vanessa Brulotte | Employee Relations Partner | BambooHR
Applicant tracking
- Can hiring managers and recruiters easily see where candidates are in the process?
- Likewise, do candidates have visibility into where they are in the process? Or do they fall into communication gaps that can damage the employer brand?
- Is the system intuitive, or are managers avoiding it in favor of emails and side conversations?
- How do internal candidates experience the hiring process? Are they offered ways to develop and grow to be a stronger candidate next time if they are not selected?
- Are interview notes and data collected from interviews in the system of record, and do they offer clear support for how and why hires were made?
- Are job postings consistent, inclusive, and compliant, or does every role look different depending on who posted it?
Onboarding
- How much of onboarding is manual (printing, scanning, chasing signatures)?
- Do new hires receive a structured ramp-up plan, or is it ad hoc depending on the manager?
- Are compliance documents completed on time and stored in the right place?
- Beyond paperwork, does onboarding help employees feel connected to culture and expectations?
- Would hiring managers re-hire these team members again, or are there learnings for the next time we hire for this position?
“Connecting the dots for senior leaders between your HR data and what really matters to the business is the quickest route to credibility and impact in your role. Use the data to tell a story that influences a clear action or change. For example, ‘We could reduce attrition in our recently hired population if we provide a more realistic job preview about the challenges they’ll work through in the role.’”
Kelsey Tarp | Director, HR Business Partners | BambooHR
Performance management
- Are employees and managers aligned on goals, or do check-ins happen sporadically or once a year?
- Is feedback consistent, or dependent on each manager’s personal style?
- Are performance records stored in a system that allows tracking over time, or are they lost in spreadsheets?
- Do employees know how their work contributes to broader company objectives?
Payroll
- Are employees paid accurately and on time, or do errors and delays erode trust?
- Is payroll processing automated and integrated with time and benefits data, or manual and error-prone?
- How often do payroll corrections or retroactive adjustments occur?
- Do employees have easy access to pay stubs, tax forms, and salary history?
Time management
- Is time tracking accurate and compliant with labor laws?
- Can employees easily submit time-off requests and see balances, or do they need to contact HR for that information?
- Is overtime calculated correctly and fairly?
- Do managers have visibility into team schedules and workloads?
Benefits administration
- Do employees understand their benefits and enrollment options, or is HR fielding constant questions?
- Are enrollment and changes handled smoothly, or bogged down in paperwork?
- Is benefits data integrated with payroll, or siloed (causing mismatches)?
- Are your offerings competitive and supportive of employee wellbeing?
Compliance
- Are licenses, certifications, and mandatory training tracked proactively, or left to memory and sticky notes?
- Are employee records maintained securely and in line with retention requirements?
- Is the organization compliant with wage and hour laws, FMLA, ADA, and other relevant labor regulations?
- Are systems in place to ensure data privacy and security (especially employee PII)?
Compensation
- Does your organization have an established compensation philosophy, or do you need to create one?
- Is pay equitable across similar roles, or are there unexplained gaps?
- Are compensation bands documented, updated, and clearly communicated to managers?
- How does current pay strategy align with industry benchmarks and market data?
- Are managers equipped to have informed, consistent conversations about pay with their teams?
Build trust through communication
Introduce yourself to employees at an all-hands or through a short recorded message. Share as much as you’re comfortable with on a personal level, and don’t be shy about emphasizing your excitement for the role and your commitment to listening and learning.
Don’t underestimate the power of establishing a precedent for transparency early on. Such gestures will go a long way toward building trust and credibility with your new team, as will delivering impactful change during the next month and a half on the job.
Day 31–60: Claim the quick wins
Once you’ve mapped the landscape, it’s time to turn insights into action. These next six weeks are about making visible improvements that relieve your teams’ most acute pain points, reallocate time for ongoing strategic work, and prove your ability to deliver.
By the end of day 60, your goal is to:
- Establish credibility with your senior leaders by fixing what puts the organization at risk.
- Establish credibility with your people leaders, administrators, and employees by fixing what frustrates people most.
Organizations’ most egregious and easiest-to-fix pain points are often in applicant tracking, onboarding, and reporting.
Clean up your applicant tracking system (ATS)
Recruiting delays frustrate hiring managers and candidates alike, hold back productivity goals, and exacerbate the risk of burnout for overloaded employees.
“It feels like I get asked every day: ‘Where’s this person in the process?’” says the HR manager of a surgical consulting firm, describing their experience before using BambooHR® to fix their hiring and onboarding hangups. “I want to scream. I would love it if they could just go and look.”
Your big wins here will be in addressing the procedural hurdles that make your people want to pull their hair out.
- Set up templates for job postings, job offer or rejection letters, and other communications.
- Standardize, automate, and streamline interview scheduling, notation, and candidate ranking.
- Make it easy for hiring managers to see where candidates are in the process.
“As an HR leader, I want my team doing what only people can do—work that requires judgment, situational context, and relationship building. Have your tech do the administrative lifting for you. Set your team free to grow and develop against the kind of work that challenges them in the best way, not because it’s administratively complex.”
Kelsey Tarp | Director, HR Business Partners | BambooHR
Simplify onboarding and paperwork
Organizations have just 44 days to fully engage or permanently disappoint a new hire, which is why your onboarding strategy is so important. It’s often held back by snail-paced paperwork.
“I email employees documents they have to sign and send back,” says the HR manager of their process at the surgical consulting firm before switching to BambooHR. “Sometimes people don’t have the right systems on their computer to be able to fill them out correctly, so they’re printing them and taking pictures, then sending those back.”
Stories like this highlight why an audit is critical to formally identify manual, disconnected systems that create frustration for employees and eat up HR’s time.
Here are two options for you:
- Start by going digital: Replace printed packets, scanned forms, and email reminders with digital onboarding checklists and e-signatures. This one change can reduce hours of admin work, speed up new-hire integration, and instantly improve the employee experience.
- Level up: If you’re starting with satisfactory paperwork processes already, read The Definitive Guide to Onboarding or take our Onboarding Made Easy learning course to identify other low-hanging strategic wins that can make your onboarding a more memorable, engaging experience.
With buy-in from senior leaders, introduce regular, standardized alignment and performance check-ins
Start with simple, cadenced check-ins that keep managers in regular, productive communication with their direct reports and gauge alignment.
Even a lightweight framework that is introduced not as a requirement, but as best practice, will signal to leadership and employees that HR is invested in employee growth and development.
Consider using a method that facilitates double-blind self- and manager assessments. This way, one assessment doesn't influence the other before they’re both submitted. It’s also impactful to use a solution that standardizes goal-setting across the organization.
“Introducing standardized performance processes needs buy-in from senior leaders. But before that, get clear on what the norms are today and what your senior leaders role model. Recommend the new process as best practice, but be careful about making it a ‘requirement,’ especially 60 days in when you may not have the political capital to do that yet, or if you’ve joined a larger, more established organization.”
Kelsey Tarp | Director, HR Business Partners | BambooHR
Share early wins with leadership
- Communicate clearly and often about what you’re fixing and why.
- Provide updates throughout this phase using the data and anecdotal evidence that’s available to you.
- Get buy-in for an HRIS that not only addresses applicant tracking and onboarding pain points, but lets you generate easy-to-read, actionable reports with a click of a button.
Pinning down how you’re going to share the metrics that prove your impact is critical to do as soon as possible.
Not happy with how your new organization currently tracks and shares data? Click here to use our ROI calculator, which can help you make the case for investing in a complete HRIS.
Until then, make sure to share whatever metrics are available to you during this phase. Some examples of what this can look like are updates that generally assess or estimate the preliminary impact of your hiring and onboarding initiatives, such as:
- “We’ve reduced time-to-productivity by at least 50% by moving paperwork online.”
- “Managers can now see candidate status directly in the ATS, reducing the volume of update requests by 85%. HR can now use our time to more deeply assess relevant skills to meet our business needs.”
These updates will build confidence in your leadership as well as momentum for the strategic work to come.
Days 61–90: Prepare for day 91 and beyond
At this point in your journey in a new role, you’ll have earned credibility by relieving some of your teams’ most pressing pain points, setting them free to do great work for your organization.
The next 30 days are about turning that momentum into a sustainable action plan.
By the end of day 90, your goal is to:
- Have addressed the most critical pain points and compliance issues with a solid, tactical direction.
- Set a strategic direction for the next 6 to 12 months.
Draft a custom HR roadmap for the coming year
Use what you’ve learned in the listening and quick-wins phases of this guide to create a 6–12 month roadmap for your HR team.
Focus on initiatives that align with leadership’s goals and employee needs, such as:
- Continuing to level up employee growth and development
- Launching employee engagement surveys
- Improving benefits and open enrollment communications
- Upgrading reporting dashboards
- Refining your culture, retention, and employer brand strategies
A roadmap shows you didn’t just join the company to react to a situation that preceded you—you’re there to steer HR toward long-term impact.
Distribute a culture pulse survey
Company culture can be as hard to measure as it is to mold, but even a short, anonymous survey can surface blaring issues like a neon Start Here! sign in the dark. Paired with the data you’ve already started collecting, these survey results can provide context around why a specific department might have a particularly high turnover rate, for example, compared to other teams.
- Ask employees pointed questions, such as the following, that they can answer anonymously to encourage candor:
- What was most and least helpful in your onboarding experience?
- How would you rate the quality of communication on your team and in the company as a whole?
- What additional support, specifically, would allow you to perform better in your role?
- Use this feedback to prioritize future initiatives.
“You are an enabler, not the decider. Your role is to equip leaders with the information they need to make the right choice, and to empower your team members to drive their own growth. Remember to be their co-pilot, not their chauffeur.”
Tory Mair | Sr. HR Business Partner | BambooHR
Propose policy or process updates
Suggest small but meaningful updates.
You're three months into your new role and you’ve learned enough about the organization to start identifying policies and procedures that either need to be created or fine-tuned.
Maybe credential renewals need automated reminders, or the company’s PTO policies need clearer communication. Maybe employees feel micromanaged or burned out and you need to take a closer look at manager training.
These incremental changes will show employees that HR is listening closely to their feedback, encouraging increased participation in future surveys. It shows that HR and the organization are committed to modernizing while staying responsive to employee needs.
Position HR as a growth partner
Continue to harness your HR data to help you showcase how the processes you’ve improved have freed up time for the company’s people leaders and administrators, reduced risk and liability, and enhanced the employee experience.
As leadership recognizes HR not just as a compliance function, but as a partner in business growth, the more HR is set free to drive results. At the end of your first 90-day roadmap, you should be poised to continue building trust and making an impact throughout the rest of your first year.
“I work in BambooHR all day, every day. I live in it. It just makes everything so simple and my job so much easier. In the way that I’ve grown with my company and built out solutions. ... BambooHR has helped me get promotions and have more success in my role.”
Brianne Chamberlain | Sr. Executive Assistant | Large US-Based Retailer
No need to go it alone
During the first 90 days in a new HR leadership role, prioritization is a balancing act between driving immediate results and establishing a long-term vision. It’s a lot to take on, but you don’t have to fix everything at once or do any of this alone.
Instead, focus on:
- Listening first (days 1–14): Build trust and understand your landscape.
- Claiming quick wins (days 15–60): Solve painful bottlenecks to prove impact.
- Planning ahead (days 61–90): Use your credibility to set a strategic course.
Throughout, remember, progress matters more than perfection, and keep these final to-dos handy to refer to as often as you need:
- Lean on your HR team, industry peers, and the right tools to simplify the work.
- Be endlessly curious. Test ideas, and surround yourself with like-minded change-makers as much as possible.
Your new role is both a challenge and an opportunity, and with this first-90-day roadmap, you’re all set to embark on a career-defining journey with everything you need to reach your destination safely. Enjoy the ride!