How to onboard new staff

Hiring and inducting new staff can be a stressful experience for a busy business, both for existing managers and employees, as well as the new hires.

Particularly for graduates fresh out of university, this is the start of a new chapter and they may be anxious about whether they’ll be up to the challenge. For you and your colleagues, you’re always taking a bit of a leap of faith in hiring a new person – even ones with stellar CVs – and you’ll want to make sure they get up to speed with how you and your team do things.

A lot of these anxieties can be put to rest with a well-designed induction process. The more time you spend thinking about your induction before the new staff member begins, the sooner they will become a fully productive member of the team, and the greater the chances of them staying with the company for the long term.

What does a good induction programme look like?

Since each business has different ways of doing things, induction programmes can look very different from one company to the next. Generally speaking, inductions will usually cover three main areas.

1. An overview of your company

• General introductions

Schedule time in the first few weeks for the new employee to meet their colleagues and to find out a bit about what everyone does. If you have a large business, it might be a good idea to stagger this meet-and-greet phase, so your new person isn’t immediately overloaded with lots of new names and faces.

• Overview of the business and communication lines

This can be folded into the meet-and-greets, or you might find it useful to keep these phases separate. The idea, though, is to give your employee a sense of how the business works on a day-to-day basis.

• Premises tour

Where are the toilets, emergency exits, fire extinguishers, and office supplies. This is also a good chance to make sure your employee has all the keys, alarm codes, swipe cards, and login details they’re likely to need.

2. Employment terms and conditions

This part of your induction covers the basics about your staff members’ employment: how many hours they’re expected to work; what sort of policies you have towards overtime; your dress standards; any policies you have around timekeeping or calling in sick; and any staff benefits or staff groups they might like to join.

You should also set aside a section of your induction to cover important policies dealing with things like personal calls or internet usage, or mandated policies such as health and safety, privacy or consumer rights.

It’s also important to be clear about how your disciplinary procedures work, and what sort of behaviour would constitute grounds for warnings or even dismissals. This can be an awkward conversation to have with a new hire but it’s important to be very clear about your expectations from the outset to avoid any confusion further down the track.

3. Job Requirements

This part of the induction covers matters relating to the specific job you’ve hired the employee to do. Do you need to train them how to use a piece of equipment or software? Where will they go if the need help with a particular task? What sort of training might they need in the future, and will you set aside a yearly training budget to help them stay up-to-date with new developments in their area?

How can you tailor your training to your employees’ needs?

You should plan to put all your new employees through some sort of induction programme but that doesn’t mean they all need to go through the same one. Permanent employees might need more comprehensive training than fixed-term employees or locums. It’s also worth revisiting your induction programmes every few years to make sure it’s still relevant.

You may also find it useful to think about combining the formal induction process with a more informal “buddy” system. This can be a great way to help your new staff member meet people around the business and to get a feel for how they fit into the overall structure. Choose buddies for your new hire who have a sound working knowledge of the company; who relate well to others; and can handle the random questions a new hire might have.