A few days before someone starts, the question everyone asks is simple: are we ready? The usual answer is a percentage, or a checklist with most of the boxes ticked. Both can be misleading in the same way. They count tasks; they don’t tell you which of the open ones will actually stop the person from starting.
Percentages hide the one thing that matters
Imagine a new hire with twenty preboarding tasks, nineteen of them done. That sounds excellent. But if the one open task is the signed contract, or building access, or the laptop, the person cannot really start on Monday. Nineteen out of twenty is a measure of effort, not of readiness.
That is why, in DayOneFlow, a percentage is never the headline. Tasks that would prevent a start are marked as critical blockers in the onboarding plan, and while any of them is open, the new hire is Not ready — whatever the percentage says. The level comes first, in words; the percentage is supporting detail.
Four questions for every blocker
Knowing that something is in the way is only half useful. To act on it, every blocker has to answer four questions:
- What is blocked?
- Who owns it?
- When is it due?
- What would resolve it?
A red flag that answers none of these creates a meeting. A line that says “Building access — Facilities (Sam) — due Thursday — Sam marks it done once the badge is ready” creates an action. The difference is small on screen and large in practice.
No owner is a blocker in itself
The most dangerous task in any plan is the one that belongs to nobody. It happens more often than you’d think: the plan says “the manager” but no manager has been assigned yet, or the person who owned the task has left the team. The task still exists on paper, and nobody is going to do it.
So unowned work should never be silent. In DayOneFlow such a task stays in the plan, is labelled “No owner — HR to assign”, counts as something that needs attention, and lands in HR’s queue. Assigning a manager to the new hire moves their manager tasks over automatically.
Overrides are allowed — with a reason
Real life doesn’t always wait for a checklist. Sometimes a person starts with a critical item still open because there is a sensible workaround. That should be possible, but it should be a decision rather than an accident. Marking someone ready to join while a critical item is open asks for a reason, and the reason is kept in the history.
Equally, being marked ready shouldn’t make the open items disappear. Readiness keeps listing them until they are done.
Readiness should be derived, not maintained
A separate “readiness checklist” that someone updates by hand will drift from reality. When readiness is calculated from the tasks themselves — their status, owner and due date — it is always current. Nobody has to remember to update the dashboard; doing the work updates it.
A few practical habits
- Keep critical blockers few. If everything is critical, nothing is. Reserve the flag for tasks without which the person truly cannot start.
- Give every task an owner type in the plan — new hire, HR, manager or a named colleague — rather than “someone”.
- Set due dates relative to the start date, with enough lead time for the slowest task.
- Look at readiness a week before the start date, not the evening before. That is when a blocker is still easy to clear.
The details are in our documentation on joining readiness.