The Three Ps: What great managers of offshore hires do in Week One

This article was written by Gregg Carey, CEO and Co-Founder of More Staffing, a US-based offshore staffing partner. More Staffing finds exceptional offshore talent your team can grow with. After the hire, every professional gets coaching, education, and fast support, which is why 94% stay. More Staffing has served 300+ clients, who hire at a fraction of the cost of an equivalent US role.

No week shapes an offshore hire more than the first one. And the manager shapes that week.

I’ve hired and managed Filipino remote professionals for my own companies for years. When a hire struggles early, the cause is often the same. The new hire starts, and nobody shows up for them. They wait for instructions that don’t come.

By Friday, they may have reached one of two conclusions. Either they made a bad decision taking the job, or they can coast without anyone noticing.

Both are very expensive. The first can end in a resignation. The second can turn into a performance problem you’ll spend months trying to fix.

The research points the same way. Gallup found that new hires are 3.4 times as likely to rate their onboarding as exceptional when their manager takes an active role.

A study that tracked new hires through their first 90 days found that when supervisors undermined them, more of them quit. When coworkers did the same, it made no direct difference.

A good onboarding program helps. But the manager is the bigger factor.

I break what great managers do in week one into three things. I call them the Three Ps.

• Presence: being easy to reach, and making sure your new hire knows they’re allowed to reach you.
• Plan: mapping the first week so clearly that your new hire never wonders what comes next.
• Positioning: showing, from day one, what kind of manager you are and what you expect.

This is unique to offshore hires. It works for anyone you hire remotely. Offshore adds a cultural layer, and I’ll get to that.

Presence: Are you easy to reach?

Presence means your new hire can find you, and knows they’re allowed to.

That sounds obvious, but in practice, it’s the first thing to slip. A busy week hits, the new hire gets a login and a folder of documents, then the manager disappears into their own work.

Here’s what presence should look like in week one:

• A scheduled meeting on day one. Not a quick hello. Significant time on the calendar.
• A check-in at the end of the week, also on the calendar.
• Short messages in between. “How’s it going? Any questions?” takes ten seconds on Slack.
• A clear statement that they are never interrupting you with a question about the business.

Microsoft studied this. Its people analytics team found that new hires who met their manager one-on-one in week one did better than those who didn’t. They built stronger networks, had better meetings, and worked better with others.

Remote work raises the stakes further. In an office, a new hire can see you. They can catch you in the hallway. Remotely, none of that happens by accident, and the isolation adds up fast. If you go quiet in week one, your new hire learns that quiet is how this relationship works.

Over time, they start replying as slowly as you do. You set the rhythm, whether you mean to or not.

This is where many retention problems start. In my experience, good people rarely leave over pay alone. They leave a manager who wasn’t there (or who’s there all the time, but that’s a different topic).

Plan: Does your new hire know what tomorrow looks like?

Plan means choreographing the first week to an uncomfortable degree of clarity.

I mean uncomfortable. Most managers stop at a welcome document and a list of tools. I want the new hire to know, for every day of week one, who they’re talking to, what they’re reading, and when they’ll debrief with me.

Give them the context, too. The company’s history. The founding story. How work actually moves from one person to the next. The more dots you connect for them, the sooner they stop guessing.

Then make it two-way. Don’t just pour information in. Ask them to share what they notice. What seems unclear. What they’d do differently. That forces them to engage with the material, and it gives you an early read on how they think.

Some managers push back. They expect a good hire to figure it out. That works for someone who already knows your business. Very few people do in week one.

The plan also does something the content alone can’t. It sets a tone. A detailed plan tells your new hire you took their arrival seriously. A blank calendar tells them the opposite.

Positioning: What kind of manager will they meet?

Positioning means deciding what kind of manager you are, and showing it from day one.

Your new hire is reading you all week. How fast you reply. What you praise. What you let slide. They’re building a picture of what you expect, whether you shape it or not.

So shape it.

Start with who you are. Your positioning has to match how you actually manage. If you like to move fast, say so. If you’re demanding, say so. If you’re heavy-handed about certain things, name them. A new hire can adjust to almost any style. What they can’t adjust to is a style that changes after week three.

For most managers, the right position has four parts:

• Easy to find. You want problems brought to you early.
• Empowering, not micromanaging. You trust them to own the work.
• Connected. Trust doesn’t mean absent.
• Urgent. You set the pace.

That last one gets overlooked. Urgency is one of the biggest levers a manager has. Set a fast pace in week one, and work can move twice as fast. Let timelines drift in week one, and they tend to stay slow.

Early expectations stick. Studies show that what a manager expects of people shapes how well they do. Week one is when those expectations form.

What changes with an offshore hire?

Less than most people think. The bigger shift is remote versus in-office. Everything above applies to a remote hire in Ohio as much as one in Manila.

But culture adds a layer. In my experience, Filipino professionals often start formal. I get called “sir” and “boss.” New hires wait for guidance. They don’t want to rock the boat, and they’re slow to raise a problem or question a plan.

That isn’t low initiative. It’s respect. In many work cultures, people show respect by waiting to be asked. That is changing, especially among younger workers who have worked with Western teams. Given time, the formality gives way. The humor and warmth come through, and the working relationship gets much deeper.

But you won’t get there by waiting. You have to call it out. Here’s what I say, in some form, to every new hire in their first week:

“Please understand, if you have anything to say about your role or the business, it’s impossible for you to be bothering me.”

Then I explain why. What they tell me is information I can act on. I value it. It’s how this team works.

Saying it once isn’t enough. I’ve said those exact words to my own team, and it still takes time. What convinces people is how you respond the first time someone speaks up. Managers who are open to input, and act on it, get far more of it than managers who are simply friendly.

When they ask their first question, answer it fast and thank them. When they flag their first problem, fix it or explain why you won’t. That’s when the words start to mean something.

What does week one buy you?

A lighter load later.

The time you put in at the start is the foundation. You’re not just teaching the job. You’re setting how the two of you will work together. Get that right in week one, and you’ll get the communication you want every day after, without chasing it. Skip it, and you’ll spend the next year managing the fallout.

That year is real. New employees take about 12 months to reach peak performance. Week one sets the direction of those twelve months.

Managing isn’t hard. But you have to care, you have to be clear, and you have to set expectations. Week one is where all three start.