Picture a Monday in a mid-sized agency. A copywriter has joined. The account director is on a call, the art director is chasing a Pantone match, and the pitch deck is due on Friday. Nobody has the hour needed to explain things. So the explaining must already exist on paper.
What follows is a sheet for owners, studio heads and traffic managers. Specialist shops such as design agencies will tweak lines, and the wider picture sits on the marketing, advertising and creative agencies hub.
The sheet itself
Name, designation (copywriter, art director, motion artist, account executive, SEO analyst, media planner), reporting lead, buddy:
Before day one, by traffic manager: laptop imaged, Creative Cloud or Figma seat, Slack, shared drive limited to the joiner's accounts. Status: requested / confirmed working:
Before day one: client-side access (Meta Business Manager, Google Ads manager account, Search Console, Frame.io) requested through the client, never via a colleague's login:
Day 1 morning: one-line summary of each live retainer, the account lead, the approver at the client and the usual turnaround:
Day 1 afternoon: brand vault for the first client opened with the buddy, with the last three approved campaigns and the rejected ones:
Day 2: job-number timesheet explained; one trial entry logged and corrected:
Day 2: naming scheme and version rule (no 'final_final2'), plus where proofs and exports live:
Day 3: confidentiality undertaking signed, covering embargoed launches, pitch material and client data:
Day 3: licence tracker read (fonts, stock footage, music, influencer usage terms):
Day 4: first live task closed (caption set, banner resizes, rough cut trim) and marked up by the creative lead:
Day 5: twenty-minute talk with the owner or HR head, three questions: what confused you, what was missing, what to keep:
Signed by buddy, creative lead and joiner, with dates:Ownership: who ticks what
The traffic manager owns everything before day one. In a ten-person shop that may be the office coordinator. The buddy owns days one to four. The joiner ticks lines too. If only the manager marks the sheet, it records the manager's effort, not the joiner's understanding.
File the sheet. Review the batch after a quarter. The same gaps repeat: slow client access, no list of licensed typefaces, no explanation of what counts as a revision round. Fix those at source.
Why job numbers matter more than any slide
Retainers, hourly rate cards and fixed project fees all hide leakage between hours sold and hours spent. A joiner who books time against a job number from Tuesday builds a habit that protects margin for years. Someone taught in month three treats it as surveillance.
- Show one live job sheet with budgeted hours beside actual hours.
- Define a revision round, and say what turns a tweak into a fresh scope item.
- Name who sends extra-hours quotes, so a junior never says yes on a call.
- State how late-night delivery and weekend launches are approved and noted.
Etiquette nobody writes down
Juniors imitate. If the account lead answers every ping inside minutes, the junior copies that, and burns out by Diwali. Spell out the conventions.
- 1
Voice to the client
Account leads send files and settle approvals. Juniors draft and hand over.
- 2
After-hours pings
Fix the hour when replies stop. Name one launch phone holder for embargo nights.
- 3
Approval trail
A thumbs-up emoji is no sign-off. Email or the proofing tool is.
- 4
Portfolio use
No campaign goes into a personal reel or LinkedIn post until the client is live and the lead agrees.
Where week one tends to break
Four places fail often. Each has a cheap guard.
- Proofing tools: a joiner marks up in email while the client uses Ziflow or Frame.io comments. Show the one real channel for each client.
- Print and outdoor jobs: nobody explains bleed, trim and CMYK conversion to a digital hire. Pair them with the production artist for one job.
- Influencer and UGC work: usage rights, whitelisting windows and exclusivity clauses sit in a tracker few people open. Walk through one live row.
- Reporting decks: a media planner is handed last month's dashboard without the naming logic behind UTM tags. Share the tagging sheet on day two.
A first-week review that catches even two of these saves a client conversation later. Ask the buddy to note which of the four came up and add the answer to the sheet. Over a year this becomes a small field guide: the real quirks of your clients, your proofing tools and your production calendar, written by the people who stumbled on them first.
What Friday should show
Do not grade speed. Look for three signs. Did the hire ask early? Did the exports follow the naming scheme? Did the timesheet fill without a nudge? Craft shows later. These habits show now.
For the longer arc, read about onboarding in design agencies and about paperwork in video agencies.
