5 ways to improve your Employee Induction Training
Did you know that most people decide how long they will stay in their job within the first week? Organisations that fail to impress new talent risk losing them pretty quickly and a poor induction program process is often being blamed as the deciding factor.
Here are our 5 top-tips to secure your new recruit’s interest early with a solid and interactive employee induction training program. Done right and you will fast-track new staff from being hired to being productive and achieve legal compliance at the same time.
Early Engagement
It’s very important to engage with your new recruits early, making them feel welcome aboard, comfortable and clear on expectations.
A common problem for organisations still using manual induction programs is long delays. Factors that contribute to this situation are the availability of facilitators, room space and resources. Instead, use modern technology to your advantage and move your induction training to an online platform. Now your new employees can access your training instantly and get involved even before their first day on the job.
Plan it well
Don’t leave this important area to chance! At the very least, your Induction Training must cover how your new workercan to do their job safely and include important workplace rules.
A basic induction training program may look like this:
- Welcome message and an introduction to your corporate history & culture
- Your code of conduct
- Work Health and Safety Practices (Manual Handling, Chemicals, Machinery etc)
- HR Policies and Procedures (Bullying, Harassment, Social media etc)
- Emergency Procedures (Including Fire Response and Evacuation)
- Workplace orientation (Physical walk around)
- Performance Expectation (Supervisor to discuss Key Performance Indicators)
- Individual task training (To ensure competency before doing task unsupervised)
Once you have the objectives of your induction program and its general structure, you need a checklist to ensure completion of each point. This might involve the coordination with several people.
Use a modern learning system
Avoid monotonous induction training, be it paper based, classroom style or ‘death by Powerpoint’. Instead, use modern technology to make your presentations interactive and fun.
A modern Learning Management System (LMS) can host highly engaging training modules, including video, graphics, sound and ‘gamified’ learning activities. Assessments are auto-managed and provide instant feedback to the inductee. If you glance back at the last paragraph, a good online induction will take care of all steps between 1 to 5, leaving you to focus on the ‘on-the-job’ training instead.
Keep records of your training
As an employer, you are legally obliged to make sure your staff are trained to do their jobs safely and what to do in the event of a fire or other emergency.
No employer likes to dwell on the possibility of litigation, but an accident may result in legal action and a complete training record is invaluable in providing evidence and justification for your actions as a company.
If your current induction training still relies on paper-based evidence, this creates yet another reason for switching to an online LMS. Record keeping is automatically done and completions are visible in real-time.
Use a robust LMS
Like most forms of training, employee induction is nowadays mainly performed online, through a Learning Management System (LMS). Ideally, you want an LMS, like TANDI that can handle compliance training and offer ready-made modules that can be used ‘as is’ or modified to suit your environment.
At a minimum, an LMS suitable for employee induction training should offer:
- Compliant Safety and HR training modules
- Option to customise
- Easy enrolment of staff, including a bulk option
- Interactive modules, including tests and quizzes
- Auto-creation of a strong compliance record, including individual declarations
- Easy-to-use reporting
- Securely hosted data within Australia
- Easy to use and good support, so that you can concentrate on your induction program, not on troubleshooting
Conclusion
The benefits of induction training should be obvious by now. An online induction training program is the most effective and up-to-date way to introduce new recruits to your organisation.
TANDI Training and Inductions is an easy-to-use cloud LMS, making effective usage of your time and maximizes your compliance.