HR generalist first 90 days checklist, week by week

Your first 90 days as an HR generalist have three jobs: learn how the place really works, make the basics reliable, and earn enough trust that people bring you problems early. This checklist breaks those jobs into a month each, with the questions to ask, the documents to find and the traps to avoid.

It works whether you’re the only HR person in a 70-person business or the newest member of a small team. Adjust the timing to your situation, but try to keep the order. Most new generalists who struggle do the third month’s work in the first week.

What your first 90 days are for

It helps to be clear about what HR is for before you decide what to do first. An HR function exists to help the organisation get, keep and get the best from the people it needs, fairly and within the law. Every item on your list should trace back to that.

In practice, the work splits three ways. Administrative work records what’s already been decided: contracts, leave, letters, payroll inputs. Operational work applies judgement to live cases: a complaint, a recruitment, a manager asking for advice. Strategic work shapes the future workforce. Each kind needs a different approach, so sort your tasks before you start them.

The order matters. Nobody will listen to your ideas about workforce planning while their payslip is wrong. So the first 90 days run roughly from listening, to fixing administration, to looking ahead.

Days 1 to 30: listen and find things

Your goal this month is to understand, not to change. You’ll be tempted to fix the first broken process you see. Write it down instead. You’ll have a better fix in six weeks, and you won’t have annoyed the person who built it.

Meet your stakeholders

Make a list of everyone with a stake in HR’s work, then meet as many as you can in the first three weeks. Include the quiet groups: payroll, finance, IT, safety representatives and any union delegate or staff committee.

Ask each of them the same three questions:

1. What’s working well in how HR supports you?
2. What’s the one people problem you’d most like solved this year?
3. What should I know that won’t be written down anywhere?

Write down their answers in their words. Patterns across ten conversations tell you far more than any one of them. The chapter on HR’s stakeholders shows how to map who needs what, and how to keep trust with groups that want different things.

Find the documents that set the rules

You can’t give reliable advice until you know where the rules live. Find, and note the location and date of:

• employment contract templates for each type of role
• any award, collective agreement or industry instrument that covers your staff
• the current employee handbook, and how many versions exist
• the payroll calendar, cut-off dates and who processes pay
• open cases: complaints, performance processes, injuries, return-to-work plans
• the starters and leavers expected in the next two months

Open cases come first. A complaint that has sat untouched since your predecessor left is a risk, and the person who raised it is waiting to see whether anything happens.

Days 31 to 60: make the basics reliable

By now you know where the problems are. This month, fix the administrative ones that hurt most people, and set up the habits that stop requests slipping through.

Set up triage and a request log

Generalist work arrives through the same channels whatever its weight. A leave question and an injury report can sit side by side in your inbox. Before you start each day, sort every request by three questions: when does harm happen if it waits, what does a mistake cost, and who should own it?

Then keep a simple log: date received, who from, what they asked, the owner and the date closed. A spreadsheet is enough. It means nothing depends on your memory, and it shows you which questions keep coming back. The chapter on the HR generalist’s day covers triage buckets and response times in full.

Pick one visible fix

Choose one administrative problem that annoys many people and fix the process behind it. Good candidates are letters written from scratch every time, a leave balance question answered by email dozens of times a month, or new starters arriving without equipment.

Pick something you can finish in a few weeks and that people will notice. One reliable improvement buys more credibility than five half-finished ones.

Agree response times

Write down how quickly common requests will get a response, agree them with your manager and tell people. “You’ll hear back within two working days” is more useful than “I’ll get to it”, because it lets people plan.

Days 61 to 90: look ahead

With the basics steadier, you can start the work that makes the biggest difference over time.

Audit the handbook

Read every policy in the handbook and note its owner, version and last review date. Flag any that are missing, out of date, contradict each other or don’t match the contract templates. Policies must also sit within the law and any agreement that covers your staff, so mark anything you need to check rather than guessing.

Don’t rewrite them all now. Rank them by risk and by how often people ask about them, then plan a schedule. The chapter on policies and the handbook shows how to write a policy people can follow on a bad day.

Bring one people issue to leadership

Go back to your stakeholder notes. Which people problem came up most often from senior people? Turnover in one team, a hard-to-fill role, a group of long-serving staff close to retirement? Write a one-page note: what you’ve found, what it’s likely to cost if nothing changes and one or two options. That note is your first strategic contribution.

Write a 12-month plan

End the 90 days with a short plan: what you’ve learned, what you’ve fixed, the three priorities for the next year and what you need to deliver them. Share it with your manager and ask them to challenge it.

Worked example: Tomasz at a joinery business

Tomasz joins Kestrel Joinery, an 80-person kitchen and cabinet maker, as its first dedicated HR generalist. Before him, the office manager handled HR on top of her other work.

Weeks 1 to 4. Tomasz meets the general manager, the three production supervisors, the payroll officer, the safety representative and a dozen staff on the factory floor. The same issue comes up four times: new apprentices leave within their first year. He also finds two handbook versions on the shared drive and an unanswered complaint from a machinist about a supervisor’s comments. He acknowledges the complaint in writing on day three and books a meeting for the following week.

Weeks 5 to 8. His request log shows that more than a third of his questions are about leave balances. He works with payroll to show staff how to check their own balance in the payroll system and adds the steps to the induction pack. He also agrees response times with the general manager and publishes them on the staff noticeboard.

Weeks 9 to 12. Tomasz removes the older handbook, lists every policy with its review date and finds the leave policy contradicts the contract template on notice for annual leave. He flags it for checking before he rewrites it. Then he brings the general manager a one-page note on apprentice turnover: who left, when, and what they said on the way out. Most left in the first six months, and most said nobody had checked in on them after their first week.

His 12-month plan has three priorities: an apprentice onboarding programme with check-ins at one, three and six months, a rewritten leave policy, and quarterly turnover reporting.

Your 90-day checklist

Timing	Do this	Done when
Days 1–30	Meet every stakeholder group and ask the same three questions	You have notes from at least ten people
Days 1–30	Find contracts, agreements, the handbook, payroll dates and open cases	You can say where each one lives
Days 1–30	Acknowledge every open case in writing	No case is waiting without a next step
Days 31–60	Set up triage and a request log	Every request has an owner and a date
Days 31–60	Fix one visible administrative problem	People notice it’s easier
Days 31–60	Agree and publish response times	Your manager has signed them off
Days 61–90	Audit the handbook for owners, versions and review dates	Each policy has a risk rating
Days 61–90	Bring one people issue to leadership in writing	You’ve had the conversation
Days 61–90	Write and share a 12-month plan	Your manager has challenged it

What to leave alone for now

Some things can wait until you understand the organisation.

• Big policy rewrites. Note the problems and rank them. Rewriting in week two means rewriting again in month four.
• Culture programmes. You don’t yet know the culture well enough to change it.
• Taking sides. Some managers will want you as their enforcer, and some employees will want you as their advocate. Your job is fair, consistent treatment for everyone.
• Doing managers’ jobs. Offer to help a manager plan a hard conversation. Don’t hold it for them.

If you’re still working out what the role should cover day to day, what an HR generalist actually does sets out the work across a typical week.

Closing thought

The first 90 days aren’t about proving how much you know. They’re about learning fast, being reliable on the small things and showing people that HR treats everyone fairly. If you get those right, the bigger work comes to you.

If you’d like a structured way to build these skills, the HR Generalist Essentials course covers each of them chapter by chapter.