Onboarding a teammate onto client work
New people get productive when the board already answers who, what and why — without a week of shadowing.
Ayush ShahHiring is expensive. Making the hire wait a week to understand how each client works is more expensive, and it is usually avoidable.
Most agency onboarding fails in the same place: the important context is tribal. Who prefers Slack over email. Which folder is real. Why this retainer always slips in week three.
Put the map on the board
A new teammate should open a client and see open work, recent decisions and the files that matter without asking. If they still need a tour for every account, the system is the onboarding debt.
Roles beat heroics
Clear assignees and subscriptions mean the new person can take a lane without inheriting every notification in the agency. Quiet by default beats a firehose they learn to ignore.
Documents next to the work
Brand notes, briefs and 'why we stopped doing it the other way' belong beside the board, not in a wiki nobody opens. Six months later the new hire still finds them.
The first week test
By day five they should be able to move a real task for a real client without pinging the person who hired them for the password to a drive. If they cannot, fix the board — not the welcome deck.