How To Successfully Induct New Employees (+ Free Checklist) - Improve Your Business | Episode 14
Whether you're a solo operator hiring your first employee - or you have five, ten or fifty staff members, getting the induction process right is critical to the future of your business.
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Kia ora,
Welcome to episode 14 of the IYB Newsletter, where we share highly actionable insights and training tips to help you Improve Your Business, 3 minutes at a time.
This week's newsletter is on the subject of 'inductions'. Whether you're a one-person band just hiring your first employee - or you have five, ten or fifty staff members, getting the induction process right is critical to the future of your business – and the new employee.
Why Do Inductions?
The programme for new employee induction is not a luxury; it’s an absolute necessity. Most people remember their first day at a job for the rest of their lives. When thinking about inductions, we must consider it in this context.
Those first few days can be filled with concern, anxiety, apprehension, and curiosity. If managers don’t put in the effort to make the new staff member feel like they’re part of the team, those initial feelings will remain for a long time and can even leave permanent scars.
In other words, it can harm that person's performance for the length of their employment. New staff often never recover if they get off to a bad start.
Good induction processes result in better staff performance and overall company results. Bad (or nonexistent) induction processes lead to high staff turnover and unpleasant surprises.
What’s The Purpose Of An Induction?
The main reasons for properly onboarding a new employee are:
Help new staff develop favourable impressions of the organisation, their jobs, and co-workers.
Make new employees feel needed, welcome, and accepted within the organisation.
To prevent future problems by getting employees started on the right foot from the outset.
New Employee Induction Checklist
Here’s a simple ‘new employee induction checklist’ to help make onboarding easier for your business:
Share your performance expectations of the new employee and get confirmation that they can meet your expectations.
Invite them to share their workplace expectations and ensure that they’re realistic.
Introduce the new employee to their co-workers.
Secure the necessary tools, equipment, uniforms and passes required to do their job.
Give the new employee essential information about the products and services you sell.
Take the new employee for a tour of the site or plant and provide a health and safety induction.
Inform them about break times, eating areas, parking areas, toilets, and washing facilities.
If you have an employee handbook, go through it with them in person on the first day (if you provide the handbook for them to take away, it’s usually not realistic to expect that they will read it on their own).
If you don’t have an employee handbook, it’s a good idea to set aside time to discuss any relevant policies and procedures in your workplace.
Allow the new employee to ask questions and discuss anything they aren’t sure about.
Schedule follow-up meetings to ensure they are being appropriately onboarded and to address any issues that may arise.
Please note: this is only a basic checklist and is by no means comprehensive. Please feel free to make a copy of this list and adapt it to suit your business's specific needs.
Induction Success Tips
Here are some tips to help ensure that your new employee induction is a success:
Keep existing staff in the loop: Let your other employees know you’ve hired someone before they show up for the first day. Existing employees should be encouraged to help the new team member feel comfortable and find the ropes.
Don’t rush the onboarding: Inductions can be overwhelming, and it’s easy to assume that other people can readily understand things we already know. Sometimes, we fail to appreciate just how much there is to learn. Give the employee time to digest each item you share before moving on to the next point.
Encourage questions: There’s only so much information that one person can absorb on any given occasion. Your new employee will likely forget some of what you told them, so make sure they feel like they can come to you with questions.
Onwards And Upwards!
That's it for our 14th newsletter. We hope that you’re finding the information shared in our newsletters helpful. Please reply with any comments or feedback - we read every one.
To your success,
Bernie Hanvey & Callum Armstrong
Quote of the week:
“If you are lucky enough to be someone’s employer, then you have a moral obligation to make sure people do look forward to coming to work in the morning.”
- John Mackey