At the Business Enterprise Centre, we appointed a new business advisor this week to help us keep up with the growing demand of our business advice services.
There are always unexpected things that you forget to prepare for such a change. For us, it was an email account and log in details to access our intranet. It got me thinking about how many businesses actually conduct a proper induction.
It’s critical to long term retention because if you get it right, it will lay the foundation for a positive long term relationship and if you get it wrong, new staff will commence with the wrong impression about your business.
Good induction programs can increase productivity and reduce short-term turnover of staff. It makes them feel welcome – starting a new job is daunting enough and leaving questions unanswered in the first few weeks of a new employee’s tenure won’t help the situation.
Give the new employee a copy of their job description with the roles clearly defined and ideally have a staff member that is familiar with the job role spend time to help the settle in process.
A typical induction program will include at least some of the following: any legal or regulatory requirements, introduction to terms and conditions of employment, a basic introduction to the company, and how the new employee’s job role fits in, a guided tour of the building, set-up of payroll details, introductions to key members of staff and provision of any specific job-role training they will need to fulfil their role.
