Blog · Aug 2026
What to actually measure in week one
You won't know if a hire is good in week one. You will know whether onboarding is working — if you're watching the right few things.
Four early signals
- Access complete by day two — Every tool logged into. Blocked access is the most common silent delay.
- One small thing shipped — A tiny real contribution beats a week of reading for confidence.
- Questions are being asked — Silence usually means stuck, not fluent.
- Required reading finished — If it isn't done by Friday, the list is too long or nobody said it mattered.
What not to measure
Hours online, message volume, and meeting attendance tell you almost nothing about ramp-up. They just teach the new person to perform being busy.
Turn it into a checkpoint
End week one with a 20-minute conversation against those four signals. Anything red is an onboarding problem to fix this week — not a performance note for later.
Run this plan in Runway
Save it as a role template once, then every future hire in that role starts with the same plan and their own progress view.
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