Most of what determines whether an offshore hire works is settled in the first fortnight, and most of that is settled before the person arrives.
What has to exist before day one
Accounts and access, tested by somebody logging in. The written role. Three examples of correct output and two of incorrect, with a sentence on what is wrong with each. A named person on your side who answers questions, and who is not on leave that week.
Missing access is the commonest failure and the most expensive: a person paid to sit for three days while a permission is arranged loses the momentum of a first week and learns, correctly, that they are not important.
Day one
Not a task list. Introductions, tools, a walk through the role, and one small real piece of work finished the same day.
Finishing something on the first day matters more than its size. It establishes the loop that the rest of the arrangement runs on: work, submit, feedback, correct.
Week one
Small tasks with same-day feedback. A short call every day, at a fixed time, that happens whether or not there is anything to discuss. Questions actively invited and answered quickly, because the cost of a question is minutes and the cost of a guess is a week.
Expect a lot of questions. A quiet first week is not a good sign; it usually means the person has decided not to ask.
Week two
Larger tasks, feedback within a day rather than the same hour, and the person beginning to correct the documentation where it is wrong. That last is the signal to watch for: somebody improving the procedure has understood the work rather than memorised it.
Five ways it goes wrong
Access not ready. Covered above and worth repeating because it is avoidable entirely.
No named person. Questions go to whoever is available, answers conflict, and the person learns that asking produces confusion.
The briefer is away. A start date scheduled against the client's calendar rather than the provider's convenience is worth insisting on.
Everything at once. The full role in week one produces somebody doing five things badly. Add tasks as each becomes routine.
Recordings instead of a person. A library of videos is a supplement. A first fortnight consisting of watching them is a fortnight of no feedback, and the entry on documentation explains what recordings are and are not good for.
The supervisor on site
Under staff leasing there is somebody in the office responsible for the person's employment, attendance and wellbeing, and they are not managing the work. Meet them in the first week, and agree what you will raise with them and what you will raise with the person directly.
Getting that line wrong in either direction causes trouble, and the entry on feedback sets out where it should sit.
What good looks like at the end of week two
The person completes the routine work without asking. Questions have dropped but not stopped. The documentation has been corrected in at least two places. And you have spent a lot of time, which is the cost the model in the first part of this journal told you to expect.
What to tell your own team first
Before the person starts, not after. A team that meets a new colleague on a call without warning assumes the arrangement means something about their own jobs, and that assumption is expensive to correct later.
Say what the role is, what it is not, and who briefs it. Where the new person is taking over work somebody currently does, say that too and say what that person will be doing instead.
The thirty-day check
Half an hour, with the person, on the arrangement rather than the work. What has been unclear, what took longest to learn, what they wish they had been told in week one.
The answers improve the onboarding for the next hire, and there is usually a next hire.
Onboarding the second person
Much cheaper, and only if the first produced documentation. Where it did not, the second onboarding costs the same as the first and the business concludes that offshoring does not get easier.