A day-one to day-90 checklist for businesses with more than one location, split by who owns each step, so every new hire gets the same start whichever location they walk into.
A new hire decides whether to stay long before their first review. In 2025, 15% of people who started a new job had left it within three months, up from 6% the year before, according to Employ hiring data reported by Korn Ferry. That makes the first 90 days the window that matters most. It’s when people learn the job, find their footing with the team and decide whether this is a place worth staying. At a multi-location business, that window could look different at every site, depending on who happens to train them, and the hires you lose early are often the ones who got the weakest start.
This employee onboarding checklist gives every location the same first 90 days to work from. Each item says who owns it (HQ or HR, the location manager, or the new hire) and when it happens, from before day one through day 90. Use it as written, or trim what doesn’t fit your business and keep the structure.
Key takeaways
Get the paperwork done before day one, so the first shift is spent on the floor.
Give every item exactly one owner. Shared items are the ones that get skipped.
Keep the same core at every location, with a small local layer each manager fills in.
Hold 30, 60 and 90-day check-ins against a written goal.
Why onboarding drifts across locations
Onboarding drifts because it usually runs on whoever is doing it. Each location manager brings their own habits, shortcuts and sense of what a new hire needs to know first. Without one written version everyone works from, every site slowly builds its own.
It also competes for the manager’s time. Onboarding lands on top of running shifts, covering call-outs and hitting the numbers, so the steps that feel optional, like a 30-day check-in or a walkthrough of key policies, are the first to slip. A shared checklist keeps those steps from depending on how busy the week is.
The upside is that this is an easy place to stand out. Gallup found that only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job onboarding new employees, so a first 90 days that runs the same way at every location already puts you ahead of most.
Before day one
Item | Owner |
|---|---|
Send the paperwork packet for the position: W-4, state withholding form, I-9, direct deposit, handbook acknowledgement and any role agreements. | HQ/HR |
Create the employee record once and let it feed scheduling, training and payroll, so nobody types the same name into four tools. | HQ/HR |
Schedule the first two weeks of shifts alongside a named trainer or buddy. | Location manager |
Set out the uniform, keys or door codes, and a locker. Block 10 minutes on day one that isn’t during a rush. | Location manager |
Finish the forms and read the handbook before the first shift, so day one is spent learning the job, not doing paperwork. | New hire |
Two federal deadlines shape this phase. The employee completes Section 1 of Form I-9 no later than their first day of work for pay, and the employer completes Section 2 within three business days of that start (USCIS). Employers also report each new hire to their state within 20 days of hire, and some states require it sooner (HHS Office of Child Support Services). The W-4 sets federal withholding; most states have their own form too. This is general information, not legal advice. Check your state and local requirements.
Two steps in that list get harder as you grow. Handbook sign-offs need to hold up at every location, and our guide to the handbook acknowledgement process shows how to make that happen. Setting up accounts is the other: when managers have to add each new hire to several separate apps, the extra work adds up quickly, and we break down what that costs in the real cost of tool sprawl.
Day one
Item | Owner |
|---|---|
Walk the site: exits, safety equipment, the break area, and who to call when equipment breaks. | Location manager |
Introduce the team and walk through the shift’s real routine. Close with “here’s what tomorrow looks like.” | Location manager |
Check identity documents for I-9 Section 2 if that isn’t done yet, and confirm any forms still open. | Location manager |
Log in to the tools used every shift (schedule, time clock, team chat, training) with someone beside them to help. In Woven, all four are in one place, so there’s only one thing to set up. | New hire |
Share the brand welcome: a short leadership video, recorded once and played at every location. | HQ/HR |
That last item does more than it looks. In Franchise Business Review’s 2026 Franchising at Work report, “our senior management team communicates clearly and openly” scored 76%, one of the lowest items in the survey. Day one is the cheapest moment to start closing that gap.
First week
Item | Owner |
|---|---|
Start core training in this order: safety and compliance, then brand standards, then the tasks of the position. Short modules that fit into a shift. | New hire |
Watch the new hire do the two or three tasks that matter most (opening, a key service, closing) and sign them off in person. | Location manager |
Hold a 10-minute check-in at the end of the week: what’s clear, what isn’t, and what do you need? | Location manager |
Check that every new hire’s paperwork is complete and filed. If anything is missing, follow up with that location’s manager. | HQ/HR |
The first 30, 60 and 90 days
Paperwork takes days. Getting someone confident in the role takes closer to three months, which is why this checklist keeps going.
Day 30
Required courses finished.
First hands-on skills observed and signed off by the manager.
Set one specific, written goal with a date on it, such as “Run a close without a lead by day 45.” When someone is learning a lot at once, one manageable goal gives them something concrete to focus on, and because it’s specific and has a date, it doesn’t get lost in the day-to-day.
A quick check on whether the schedule is working for them.
Any open paperwork closed out.
Day 60
Review the day-30 goal together. If they hit it, set the next one; if not, agree on what would help.
Log any certifications the role needs (food handler, CPR, chemical safety at a car wash) with their expiry dates, so renewals don’t sneak up on you.
Day 90
Hold a 90-day review: what’s going well, where they want to grow, and the goal for the next few months.
Recognize the progress out loud, so they know the work they’ve put in has been noticed.
Now that they’re confident in their main role, start cross-training on a second station or position, if your business works that way.
How to keep it the same at every location
Split the checklist into a core and a local layer. HQ sets the core, and it’s identical everywhere. Each location manager fills in the local layer.
Fixed core (set by HQ) | Local layer (set by the location manager) |
|---|---|
Paperwork packet and deadlines | Site walkthrough and exits |
Safety and compliance training | Named trainer or buddy |
Brand standards training | Local equipment and who to call |
30, 60 and 90-day check-in format | Shift routines and opening or closing steps |
Build it by position, not by location. A stylist, a wash attendant and a front-desk associate each need their own version. Build each one once and use it everywhere.
Here’s what a car wash attendant’s first week might add to the core: chemical safety, including where the safety data sheets are kept; the tunnel stop procedure, practiced until it’s automatic; and greeting customers at the pay station. A salon’s version would swap those for service standards and the booking system.
Make the start automatic. When a hire is added, the paperwork, training and first-week tasks should show up on their own. If the process depends on a manager remembering, it will slip in the busy weeks.
Check completion by location. Here’s the math. At 30 locations hiring two people a month each, that’s 60 new hires a month. At about 25 checklist items per hire, it’s roughly 1,500 items a month. Nobody can track 1,500 items by text message. Review once a month which locations finished and which didn’t.
How Woven runs this checklist
Woven keeps this checklist in one place, from the first form to the 90-day review.
Paperwork before day one. When you add a new hire and turn on onboarding, they complete it themselves the first time they log in: agreements, policy acknowledgements, HR details and electronically signed documents. Woven includes W-4 and I-9 starter templates, documents can be attached to a position so the right packet goes out automatically, and fields pre-fill from the employee record. Signed documents are saved to the team member’s record.
Handbook and policies. New hires are prompted to acknowledge required policies on their first login, and a policy can re-prompt on a schedule across your locations.
Training that assigns itself. Enrollment rules give people the right courses by position and location when they’re hired, change position or move to a new location. Managers sign off hands-on skills through in-person observations, certificates are awarded on completion, and professional certifications are tracked with a warning before they expire.
First-week tasks. Task templates fire when someone is hired and land on the right person’s phone, with checklists and photo or signature proof when a step needs it.
Your HRIS. If you already onboard in an HRIS or payroll system, employee data can sync into Woven. See the full list of HR and payroll connections on our integrations page.
Having every onboarding step in one system pays off most when you run multiple locations, and even more when you’re bringing on a lot of people at once. When Hand & Stone brought new brands into its network, it used Woven to run the compliance checks remotely as each group of spas joined:
“We’ve acquired two brands over the past year at about 30 spas at a time. If we didn’t have Woven to do all of the compliance checks virtually, it would have been a whole different experience.”
Cindy Meiskin, Chief Experience Officer, Hand & Stone
For why onboarding matters so much to frontline retention, read the hidden reasons onboarding software is essential for frontline retention.
Frequently asked questions
What should an employee onboarding checklist include?
Pre-start paperwork, a day-one plan, first-week training and sign-offs, and check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days. Each item should name one owner: HQ or HR, the location manager, or the new hire.
How long should employee onboarding last?
The paperwork takes a few days. Getting someone confident in the role takes about 90 days, which is why the checklist runs that long.
What should be on a new hire’s first day?
A site walkthrough, introductions, the real shift routine, logins to the tools they’ll use every shift, any I-9 steps still open, and a clear picture of what tomorrow looks like.
Who owns onboarding in a franchise, the franchisor or the franchisee?
Usually the franchisee employs the new hire and runs their onboarding, while the brand supplies the standards and training content. The exact split depends on your franchise agreement.
What’s the difference between onboarding and training?
Onboarding is everything that gets a new hire ready to work and settled in: paperwork, access, introductions and check-ins. Training is the part that teaches the job, and it continues long after onboarding ends.
How do you onboard someone who works at more than one location?
Run the fixed core once, so paperwork and brand training aren’t repeated. Then give them the local layer at each location: a walkthrough, a contact person and the site’s own equipment.
Want the same first week at location 1 and location 30? Book a demo. Keeping new hires past day 90 is the next step: see how to reduce employee turnover across multiple locations.
A day-one to day-90 checklist for businesses with more than one location, split by who owns each step, so every new hire gets the same start whichever location they walk into.
A new hire decides whether to stay long before their first review. In 2025, 15% of people who started a new job had left it within three months, up from 6% the year before, according to Employ hiring data reported by Korn Ferry. That makes the first 90 days the window that matters most. It’s when people learn the job, find their footing with the team and decide whether this is a place worth staying. At a multi-location business, that window could look different at every site, depending on who happens to train them, and the hires you lose early are often the ones who got the weakest start.
This employee onboarding checklist gives every location the same first 90 days to work from. Each item says who owns it (HQ or HR, the location manager, or the new hire) and when it happens, from before day one through day 90. Use it as written, or trim what doesn’t fit your business and keep the structure.
Key takeaways
Get the paperwork done before day one, so the first shift is spent on the floor.
Give every item exactly one owner. Shared items are the ones that get skipped.
Keep the same core at every location, with a small local layer each manager fills in.
Hold 30, 60 and 90-day check-ins against a written goal.
Why onboarding drifts across locations
Onboarding drifts because it usually runs on whoever is doing it. Each location manager brings their own habits, shortcuts and sense of what a new hire needs to know first. Without one written version everyone works from, every site slowly builds its own.
It also competes for the manager’s time. Onboarding lands on top of running shifts, covering call-outs and hitting the numbers, so the steps that feel optional, like a 30-day check-in or a walkthrough of key policies, are the first to slip. A shared checklist keeps those steps from depending on how busy the week is.
The upside is that this is an easy place to stand out. Gallup found that only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job onboarding new employees, so a first 90 days that runs the same way at every location already puts you ahead of most.
Before day one
Item | Owner |
|---|---|
Send the paperwork packet for the position: W-4, state withholding form, I-9, direct deposit, handbook acknowledgement and any role agreements. | HQ/HR |
Create the employee record once and let it feed scheduling, training and payroll, so nobody types the same name into four tools. | HQ/HR |
Schedule the first two weeks of shifts alongside a named trainer or buddy. | Location manager |
Set out the uniform, keys or door codes, and a locker. Block 10 minutes on day one that isn’t during a rush. | Location manager |
Finish the forms and read the handbook before the first shift, so day one is spent learning the job, not doing paperwork. | New hire |
Two federal deadlines shape this phase. The employee completes Section 1 of Form I-9 no later than their first day of work for pay, and the employer completes Section 2 within three business days of that start (USCIS). Employers also report each new hire to their state within 20 days of hire, and some states require it sooner (HHS Office of Child Support Services). The W-4 sets federal withholding; most states have their own form too. This is general information, not legal advice. Check your state and local requirements.
Two steps in that list get harder as you grow. Handbook sign-offs need to hold up at every location, and our guide to the handbook acknowledgement process shows how to make that happen. Setting up accounts is the other: when managers have to add each new hire to several separate apps, the extra work adds up quickly, and we break down what that costs in the real cost of tool sprawl.
Day one
Item | Owner |
|---|---|
Walk the site: exits, safety equipment, the break area, and who to call when equipment breaks. | Location manager |
Introduce the team and walk through the shift’s real routine. Close with “here’s what tomorrow looks like.” | Location manager |
Check identity documents for I-9 Section 2 if that isn’t done yet, and confirm any forms still open. | Location manager |
Log in to the tools used every shift (schedule, time clock, team chat, training) with someone beside them to help. In Woven, all four are in one place, so there’s only one thing to set up. | New hire |
Share the brand welcome: a short leadership video, recorded once and played at every location. | HQ/HR |
That last item does more than it looks. In Franchise Business Review’s 2026 Franchising at Work report, “our senior management team communicates clearly and openly” scored 76%, one of the lowest items in the survey. Day one is the cheapest moment to start closing that gap.
First week
Item | Owner |
|---|---|
Start core training in this order: safety and compliance, then brand standards, then the tasks of the position. Short modules that fit into a shift. | New hire |
Watch the new hire do the two or three tasks that matter most (opening, a key service, closing) and sign them off in person. | Location manager |
Hold a 10-minute check-in at the end of the week: what’s clear, what isn’t, and what do you need? | Location manager |
Check that every new hire’s paperwork is complete and filed. If anything is missing, follow up with that location’s manager. | HQ/HR |
The first 30, 60 and 90 days
Paperwork takes days. Getting someone confident in the role takes closer to three months, which is why this checklist keeps going.
Day 30
Required courses finished.
First hands-on skills observed and signed off by the manager.
Set one specific, written goal with a date on it, such as “Run a close without a lead by day 45.” When someone is learning a lot at once, one manageable goal gives them something concrete to focus on, and because it’s specific and has a date, it doesn’t get lost in the day-to-day.
A quick check on whether the schedule is working for them.
Any open paperwork closed out.
Day 60
Review the day-30 goal together. If they hit it, set the next one; if not, agree on what would help.
Log any certifications the role needs (food handler, CPR, chemical safety at a car wash) with their expiry dates, so renewals don’t sneak up on you.
Day 90
Hold a 90-day review: what’s going well, where they want to grow, and the goal for the next few months.
Recognize the progress out loud, so they know the work they’ve put in has been noticed.
Now that they’re confident in their main role, start cross-training on a second station or position, if your business works that way.
How to keep it the same at every location
Split the checklist into a core and a local layer. HQ sets the core, and it’s identical everywhere. Each location manager fills in the local layer.
Fixed core (set by HQ) | Local layer (set by the location manager) |
|---|---|
Paperwork packet and deadlines | Site walkthrough and exits |
Safety and compliance training | Named trainer or buddy |
Brand standards training | Local equipment and who to call |
30, 60 and 90-day check-in format | Shift routines and opening or closing steps |
Build it by position, not by location. A stylist, a wash attendant and a front-desk associate each need their own version. Build each one once and use it everywhere.
Here’s what a car wash attendant’s first week might add to the core: chemical safety, including where the safety data sheets are kept; the tunnel stop procedure, practiced until it’s automatic; and greeting customers at the pay station. A salon’s version would swap those for service standards and the booking system.
Make the start automatic. When a hire is added, the paperwork, training and first-week tasks should show up on their own. If the process depends on a manager remembering, it will slip in the busy weeks.
Check completion by location. Here’s the math. At 30 locations hiring two people a month each, that’s 60 new hires a month. At about 25 checklist items per hire, it’s roughly 1,500 items a month. Nobody can track 1,500 items by text message. Review once a month which locations finished and which didn’t.
How Woven runs this checklist
Woven keeps this checklist in one place, from the first form to the 90-day review.
Paperwork before day one. When you add a new hire and turn on onboarding, they complete it themselves the first time they log in: agreements, policy acknowledgements, HR details and electronically signed documents. Woven includes W-4 and I-9 starter templates, documents can be attached to a position so the right packet goes out automatically, and fields pre-fill from the employee record. Signed documents are saved to the team member’s record.
Handbook and policies. New hires are prompted to acknowledge required policies on their first login, and a policy can re-prompt on a schedule across your locations.
Training that assigns itself. Enrollment rules give people the right courses by position and location when they’re hired, change position or move to a new location. Managers sign off hands-on skills through in-person observations, certificates are awarded on completion, and professional certifications are tracked with a warning before they expire.
First-week tasks. Task templates fire when someone is hired and land on the right person’s phone, with checklists and photo or signature proof when a step needs it.
Your HRIS. If you already onboard in an HRIS or payroll system, employee data can sync into Woven. See the full list of HR and payroll connections on our integrations page.
Having every onboarding step in one system pays off most when you run multiple locations, and even more when you’re bringing on a lot of people at once. When Hand & Stone brought new brands into its network, it used Woven to run the compliance checks remotely as each group of spas joined:
“We’ve acquired two brands over the past year at about 30 spas at a time. If we didn’t have Woven to do all of the compliance checks virtually, it would have been a whole different experience.”
Cindy Meiskin, Chief Experience Officer, Hand & Stone
For why onboarding matters so much to frontline retention, read the hidden reasons onboarding software is essential for frontline retention.
Frequently asked questions
What should an employee onboarding checklist include?
Pre-start paperwork, a day-one plan, first-week training and sign-offs, and check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days. Each item should name one owner: HQ or HR, the location manager, or the new hire.
How long should employee onboarding last?
The paperwork takes a few days. Getting someone confident in the role takes about 90 days, which is why the checklist runs that long.
What should be on a new hire’s first day?
A site walkthrough, introductions, the real shift routine, logins to the tools they’ll use every shift, any I-9 steps still open, and a clear picture of what tomorrow looks like.
Who owns onboarding in a franchise, the franchisor or the franchisee?
Usually the franchisee employs the new hire and runs their onboarding, while the brand supplies the standards and training content. The exact split depends on your franchise agreement.
What’s the difference between onboarding and training?
Onboarding is everything that gets a new hire ready to work and settled in: paperwork, access, introductions and check-ins. Training is the part that teaches the job, and it continues long after onboarding ends.
How do you onboard someone who works at more than one location?
Run the fixed core once, so paperwork and brand training aren’t repeated. Then give them the local layer at each location: a walkthrough, a contact person and the site’s own equipment.
Want the same first week at location 1 and location 30? Book a demo. Keeping new hires past day 90 is the next step: see how to reduce employee turnover across multiple locations.
