There are no shortcuts to inducting people into your business. You need to look at it as an investment. If you invested $50,000 into the stock market, you would spend hours researching how to best invest your money. Yet, how many hours do you spend with a new employee when you invest a recurring $50,000 per annum into them?
Team members will be productive when you have the following in place in your business:
1) An induction program that outlines an overview of your business, the services that you offer and the expectations you have of their position.
How I encourage my clients to put together an induction program for new team members is in three parts and using PowerPoint as a presentation tool. You can then print out the presentation as slides and put into a clear presentation folder so that you can easily access the presentation and run through it with each new employee.
When your new team member enters the office, start the day by introducing them to all your team members and give them a housekeeping tour. Show them where the toilets are, the staff kitchen, where they can store their belongings, etc. Then spend time during your induction running through housekeeping items such as office hours, building hours, any building entrances or exits for after hours, how to use the telephones, etc.
1. Company Overview.
Run through what your business does, who is involved in the company, and your story about how the business came to be. As people understand diagrams, draw up an organisation chart detailing all the positions and people in the business. Make sure that you explain your vision, mission and guiding principles as well as the attitudes of your team and different rituals that you may have around things like 90 day planning, weekly goals, team meetings, etc. Also take the time to run through things like dress code and professional image including telephone answering.
As a guide, you should be able to easily spend about an hour running through this part of the program.
2. Services Your Business Offers.
No matter what their position in your company, they need to know what it is that you do and how you make your money. Every person in your business should be treated as a potential salesperson. After all, every person in your business has a network of potential clients.
3. Focus on their Role in the Business.
This is where you would spend most of your time together running through their operations manual to provide an overview of all the different aspects of their role. Your operations manual should outline instructions on every activity and area of responsibility in their role. The operations manual should also detail where they would find the templates that they need to be using and the server file structure and document naming conventions so that you can easily locate documents.
2) A position specific operations manual detailing the “how to” of their role.
It is imperative that when employees are inducted into your business, that there is an operations manual that is specific to their position.
For example, if you were hiring a receptionist, you would want to provide them with a manual on day one that has their job specification at the front outlining all their roles and responsibilities, and then has contents detailing how those activities are to be carried out. Those contents could include a section on looking after reception, answering the phones, taking messages, greeting visitors, keeping reception tidy. Depending on their role, it could also include things like recording mail in logs, stationery ordering, toner reordering, HR support, etc.
3) A Job Description outlining their accountabilities, responsibilities, and key performance indicators.
This is one of the most important parts of bringing a new team member on board. You need to be clear about your expectations for the role, and they need to know what they are meant to do. A Job Description should describe in detail the requirements for the person performing the position and should contain the following information:
- Company Overview
- Position Overview
- Accountabilities
- Consider what this role is accountable for in relation to the business objectives. Remember accountability cannot be delegated (whereas responsibilities can).
- Roles & Responsibilities
- Consider what the core responsibilities of the role are. Break them into sections, then elaborate in more detail within the section heading.
- Cover the day-to-day activities to be carried out by the position to achieve organisational objectives. Another way to think of it is “how would I know whether they are doing what is required of this role. What sorts of things would they be doing and be responsible for”.
- Performance Characteristics
- Detail the type of personal qualities, skills and attributes this person would need to have to be able to competently complete their role – and ensure that they are aligned with your business’s cultural values.
- Consider what qualifications this person would need to have. What is Essential? What is Desirable or nice to have?
- Personal Development
- Consider the career path this person could take within the company and how would this role assist them to grow into other areas.
- Also consider the personal development plans (or training) that this person may need to undertake in order to fulfil the position requirements.
4) Employee Checklists so you have everything ready for them on day one including business cards, office keys, email addresses, computer, etc.
As part of your HR process, you should have an employee checklist that allows you to check off all the actions required to ensure that everything is ready for when a new employee begins. This checklist would include things like:
- ensuring that all contracts and paperwork is returned
- getting office keys cut, organising security passes and car parking
- organising their desk, chair and computer
- loading up software and standard business templates into their computer
- ordering business cards, mobile phones, personal computing devices, etc.
- setting up email addresses
5) Regular performance reviews in their first three months of employment where you ask them what is required for them to be successful.
I always recommend conducting a 4 week, 8 week and 12 week performance review with new team members. The reason that I suggest this, is that it provides you with an opportunity to check in with your new team member to make sure that they’re enjoying the job. It also opens up the communication lines to ensure that you always have open and honest communication with this person in your business and that you are able to communicate your expectations of their performance and any opportunities for improvement.
After the Probation Period has been completed, I then always suggest a six monthly performance review.
Ask the team member to complete a self-appraisal or self-assessment form before they meet. The self assessment process gets them thinking about their contribution to your business and how they can improve their own performance. Often they highlight an area that saves you having to raise them. The process should also question how you can better communicate with them and identify what additional tools they require to make a difference in their role.
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