Onboarding a New House Manager — First 30 Days

This is a demanding role. Industry research on house managers found a median of 60 hours a week, the large majority living on-site, and most receiving no formal training in the prior year — people in this role usually learn by improvising. This checklist exists so a new manager isn't starting from nothing on day one.

Week 1 — safety and orientation

• Walk the house: emergency exits, fire extinguishers, first aid supplies, where medications are stored if your program handles that.
• Review emergency procedures: who to call for a medical emergency, a mental health crisis, or a safety incident, and in what order.
• Meet current residents and get a plain-language walkthrough of the house's actual rules and rhythms — not just the written rules, but how things really run day to day.
• Get logged into the app with the right role (staff or admin) and confirm access to what the role actually needs day to day: Check-ins, Chores, Drug testing, Incident reporting, Work orders.
• Shadow a curfew check-in and a chore verification so the mechanics are familiar before doing them solo.

Weeks 2-4 — core workflows

• Co-lead or lead a house meeting with someone experienced watching, before doing one alone.
• Practice documenting an incident properly — see the "Documenting a Relapse or Serious Rule Violation" template for the specific, behavior-based language this needs, and try the "Suggest tighter language" button on a practice entry to see how it tightens vague phrasing.
• Learn your program's drug test administration protocol end to end, including how results get recorded.
• Submit and track a Work Order for a maintenance issue, so the process is familiar before something urgent comes up.
• Understand the chore verification flow well enough to catch a chore marked complete that wasn't actually done.

Ongoing

• Keep your own certifications (CPR/First Aid, and anything else your program requires) recorded in Staff Credentials, and know when they're coming up for renewal — the Readiness page surfaces this automatically once it's entered.
• Know clearly what you're expected to handle yourself versus when to escalate to admin — write this down explicitly rather than leaving it to be discovered in the moment.
• This is a role where burnout is common and well-documented industry-wide, not a personal failing. Build in an actual day off, and say something to admin before you're already running on empty, not after.