How to do a new employee induction

When you have a new employee starting it can be helpful to have structure in place for that vital first day and impression. doing the 1st day induction right is very important in the future success of the new employee. Here is a check-list of a few things you should do on day one with the new hire for ensuring your new starter is clued in and ready to work. This process is otherwise known as onboarding, which many businesses do to mainly clarify workload, communication style and points of contact within the workplace.

General facilities

Show the employee around the site including where to access the toilets, kitchen area, fire exits and other important areas that they may need to know relating to their role. While doing the induction, remember to keep everything clear and structured, in a way that’s best for the new hire and you. To ensure everything goes well, consider doing a practice run through of how you intend to show the facilities, so you can keep it timely and have room for all of the induction related activities.

Meeting the team

Sooner or later it will be time to introduce the team, this is also best done in a timely and well thought-out way, so consider how your business operates, what quiet periods you typically have in the day, use those times as the time windows to introduce the new team member. This way you get both enough time to introduce and get to know the members and their duties, this also allows a chance to see them in action, performing their duties.

Health and safety

If you’re moving through the new employee induction at a good pace, you’ll be ready to talk about health and safety in the workplace. It’s very important that this is handled right and early in the onboarding process, you can do this by building a checklist of the most important and relevant health and safety guidelines you’ll need to go over. For all business, this would include first aid and fire policy, however each business may have unique health and safety policies in place these generally are the same across all businesses.

Consider any possible other health and safety related practices your business has and how you’ll work this in to the induction, as it’s important information you can’t afford to have be an afterthought.

Work station

Introduce them to their work space! It’s obvious and will most likely happen naturally as the induction goes on, but by having a well thought out approach to this is going to support the new hire in understanding the work culture of a business and how they’re expected to work.

Showing a new hire the in’s and out’s of their role at their work station help to build that important, communication based relationship earlier rather then later. This way your new start is ready to go and clear on what to use their work space for. This is best achieved by using a checklist to detail what they need to know and use with their work station, proper planning can set the tone for the role and future.

Right to work

In the UK we have rules surrounding someone’s right to work, this involves diverse steps that can diverge depending on the new hires citizen status. Generally it involves having a physical ID, a passport or drivers licence of some kind, bank details too as this helps verify what’s on the ID. This step is important and can get quite lengthy at times, so it’s best handled later in the induction as to not break up the pace built up so far. Right to work being as significant as it is, it’s important to get it right to avoid any issues later, this means, clarifying in absolute terms the stages of right to work processing, what next steps this involves if any and what to expect next.

Personal details

This will be the stage where you’ll want the new hire to be taking some time to go over the formalities, otherwise known as paperwork. However it can’t be understated how important this stage is, as this is where the important information businesses need is registered. This would be details like who specifically to contact in an emergency, next of kin contact details, this is the person in your life who you’re most willing to have accept information regarding you. There may be other details needed which will be present in whatever form they fill out, however it’s more important that this stage is made to be one that is handled well and doesn’t take too much time up.

Company policy

After your new hire is moving through the tasks of induction you’ll find a point where it will be appropriate to go over company policy, this will be the practices relating to workplace conduct. Simple things are better put first, like break times and lunch and then you’ll be free to talk about the more finer things, like process surrounding sickness and being late. This section is best done all in one go, preferably sooner then later during the induction as a new hire and you will benefit from this information being established early on.

Company values

You’ll want to find a slot in your induction plan to discuss company values. This is essentially what values to expect at the company, spend some time explaining the company values in clear details. Explaining how these values are communicated and enacted in the workplace and even outside of the workplace. For en example, a company value may be volunteering once a month with a local charity, or running some form of community program. This is one very specific example, but more and more businesses are embracing alternative company values. So company values are worth explaining to your employees at the onboarding stage, they’re a fun way to set the tone of what to expect at a workplace.

Having a day to show the new staff member around and go over induction bits is very important. You will often find that staff who stay long term are staff who had a good induction day. They need to know what is what and who is who.   One important part is meeting the team,   this is very important for a new team member to feel part of the team. 

HtE Recruitment News & Insights

This news and insights page has been written by Josh our Recruitment & Marketing Coordinator.  HtE Recruitment take no responsibility for this post.