4 Responses

1. The funnel
   Hi

   I recently found myself in a similar situation.

   I use what I call a funnel effect, that lasts one week (but it can be as long or short as you like).

   Day 1 is very general, comapny objectives, health and safety etc. all the hygiene factors. As the days progress, the induction gets more and more specific to their job role, on day 5, they are performing their role under the guidance of a mentor, who in turn, signs them off as being competent.

   This induction is backed up with tick sheets for each day to give a framework and objectives to work to. A week after induction is evaluation day where you can do a short interview to the delegate and the mentor to check on everything.

   It seems to work really well as it truly is tailored to every individuals job role.

   I also put in courtesy guidelines for the mentors e.g. make yourself available all day on the first day, try and arrange to go to lunch with them etc. Happy inducting!!!

   Rich

2. Induction Training Re-vamp
   I’m currently working on a similar project. I spent much of my time assessing the current (old) induction and talking to the business. The changes I hope to make are solutions to the problems I discovered and improvements based on business feedback. I hope to avoid the ‘sheep dip’ approach. New starters will have a development plan created to suit their role and immediate needs. I’m separating what is essential (day 1) training, and what is nice to know – so the new induction will be a process, rather than a day. My aim is to make it relevant, value for time, interesting and help foster the building of relationships between new starters and the trainers. One big change is that the content will be broken up into smaller, easily digestible, chunks. Some of the content will be delivered over a few weeks, giving the learner time to settle into their role and understand the relevance/importance of the training. It may result in logistical challenges, but the end product should, hopefully, display higher levels of retention and better feedback. All I would say is do plenty of analysis, and design a solution to meet the business need, not a convenient timescale.

3. Induction
   I would start by asking the peoples managers what they need the newcomers to know early on and then I would seek out other recent starts and ask them what they would have liked to have been told/shown in the first week or so. This latter is to me perhaps the most important.

4. Add Quizes
   I’ve incorporated what I call the interactive quiz.

   Each group (about 3-4) has a quiz sheet… they are then sent off around the building to find out bits of information (e.g. what’s our vision, who’s the CEO, how many board members, etc).

   I also ask them to ask 1 questions extra per ‘stop’ on the tour. It also helps delegates put a face to a name (e.g. finance).

   THis approach couples a tour of main / key functions. It lasts about 30 minutes and will cover about an hours worth of training material in that time.

   I get good feedback from delegates.