9 Responses

1. Are you looking for external help with the project?
   Pam

   We are an e-learning development company and specialise in online corporate induction programmes. I can put you in touch with several clients who have gone down this route to get a practitioners view.

   I would also be happy to show you examples and discuss your requirements in more detail.

   Please let me know if you would like more information.

   Kind regards
   Darren Hockley

2. Mix it up
   Hi

   We’ve worked with a few organisations to help them to redesign their induction programmes. E-learning can certainly be part of that mix. Its useful for dealing with some of the dull but necessary compliance sections as it provides a structured approach and allows you to verify that people have not only been through say Equal Opportunities or Performance Management training, but that they retained the knowledge to a sufficiently high level to pass.

   It’s not the only solution though. We’ve found that by mixing in games and quizzes to put across H&S, data security, diversity and other topics they come alive.

   Another approach is to invite senior employees who have ‘worked their way up’ to run sessions on the opporunities and training available at your company. New employees like to meet senior people and long standing employees love to enthuse about their careers. It adds life to sessions.

   If you’d like any help get in touch.

   Good luck with the project.
   Kind regards

   Claudine
   http://www.structuredtraining.com/

3. H&S fun
   Afternoon Pam,
   The current Health and Safety training that we offer in regards to fire extinguishers and exits is a sort of treasure hunt experience.

   I have a blue print of the building that I have scaled up and the newbies must use it to navigate to all exits in the building, at each one is a clue linking them to another area of the building and another piece of equipment.

   The clues are themed to the different departments they must go to so for example the fireblanket in the kitchen would be ‘ This will keep you ‘Toasty’ Warm’ (we have toasters in the kitchen under the fire blanket!)

   I run it on the first afternoon that new employees are in the building so that not only do they get a much better idea of the lay out of the building but the evaluation I have done later shows that the information is being transferred and sticking much better than before!

   Hopefully this will be off some help but consider the layout of your business and how many delegates would be moving around your building at once with a blueprint, would it become a fire hazard in itself?

   Unfortunately the rest of the necessary training for H&S and personnel is still pretty much I talk you listen and then filling in paper work but we are working on it!

4. Some ideas
   I have extensive experience of managing an accredited rolling induction process – here’s what we do. People will simply not retain volumes of information delivered in only one way. Whatever you do, you need to have different people involved in delivery, introducing different elements of the induction and using different ways of delivery. For example, one of the main points of our induction is to make new people feel really welcome and part of things so our Chief Executive always introduces and runs the first session (on the culture and history of the org). By seeing the ‘top person’ early on, the new starters felt important and saw that the org cared about them by making the senior managers accessible (all senior managers would join the group for a lunch to welcome the new staff on day one). Then, senior people from other depts would come and run sessions on the work of their own depts. For fun, each manager would give the new starters a clue to a puzzle (about their area of the business) and once they had all the clues, they could solve a puzzle or quiz to win a prize.

   We have also given the induction themes – originally, we saw the induction as a Pencil case and each day was an introduction to a new tool to put in their case, The tool being knowledge, skills or trainimng on a topic in one themed skills area, for example, day 1 was about culture and history of the org, day two was about HR/ Personnel/health & safety, day 3 was about putting customers first etc. We also actually really gave them a pencil case and gave them a new tool each day, pencil, pen, ruler etc

   We had a variety of diffent delivery methods i.e. videos, games etc and continually work on getting things right by getting feedback from inductees. Using the Honey & Mumford learning styles, we had appropriate activities and material for theorists, reflectors etc. We do have some e-learning, for example, but as some of the jobs didn’t actually need the staff to have PC skills, it wasn’t always appropriate Our induction lasted 6 weeks but not all in one go – staff had 2/3 days induction each week combined with meeting and working with people in their own section.
   Day 1, for example, always started with the new starters own manager meeting them and showing them round, introducing them to their new colleagues and then taking them to the first induction session which started about 11am on the first day.

   We also met the new staff, face to face, (in a neutral place), the week before they started – it could be a coffee shop, hotel etc. We bought them a drink, ran through the induction process with them, answered any initial questions and made sure they knew where they were going.

   That takes quite a commitment but one of the benefits was a much, much lower attrition rate than we had before this induction was introduced. Hope that helps

5. Teach self-service
   I would support the comments made about the use of e-learning for some elements of the programe.
   Not only is this a very efficient and cost-effective method of delivery, but it also establishes a principle that things are not just going to be put on a plate for them whilst working for you. They need to know that they will have put in some effort towards their induction and their onging career development.

6. Appropriateness
   I think I made the word up but it’s still important to consider whether e-learning really is appropriate to your sector. I still believe that in the main e-learning is truly disengaging, it can be used to great effect to help people become familiar with very simple processes but do you really want to dump your delegates in a room on their own to figure out the processes in the first week?

   I understand what others here are saying about users of e-learning demonstrating more commitment to learning – I just don’t agree with them. Unless you assess people’s learning styles then you can’t comfortably say anything about a learning experience except that it may work for some of them. What if you have a dyslexic staff member? Someone with visual impairment? And so on… And if your e-learning package is not designed with disabilities in mind, it will be discriminatory and could cost you a lot at tribunal. If it is designed with disabilities in mind I can almost guarantee that it will cost a lot more than you want to spend.

   I like the idea below of meeting with delegates before their induction to explain the process and get to know them one-to-one. I like the environment interactive exercises suggested by Emma. They would certainly add to the induction process but e-learning? It would take some convincing to make me incorporate it into induction, there’s definitely a place for e-learning but I think it comes much later in workplace development.

7. Thank you for your response
   Thank you to everyone who responded to my question. Was particularly interested in your approach Clive and our project group will certainly take your suggestions into account when redesigning our programme. Thank you also Emma – fun idea for getting necessary H&S info over to new starters.
   Pam Sneddon

8. one for clive
   Very interesting comments about Induction particularly as I am just reviewing our company’s induction programme. One question for Clive – are you the Clive Boorman who used to work at West Brom?

9. One for Claire
   Hi Claire (sorry Pam)

   Yes, it’s me.