How to make your Staff Inductions and Refreshers more Effective

Staff induction is about integrating new employees into companies as quickly as possible, in order to help them become committed to the company, work safely and reach their full potential.

Successful companies understand that that a well-oriented employee will approach a new job with heightened confidence resulting in better performance. They are also more likely to be committed to the company reducing the costs associated with high employee turnover.

For many companies, induction is a perfunctory process.  It usually involves a manager who would prefer to be working on other jobs talking through a PowerPoint presentation.  This is usually followed by introductions and a tour of the premises.

According to Randolph Cirilo & Brian H Kleiner from Management Research News 2003, they found that effective orientation programmes generally last longer than their standard counterparts, provide more substantive content, utilize more vivid presentation techniques and participative learning methods and require more involvement from management and other staff members.

So how do you make your induction process more effective?

There are two types of inductions – company and job.

Company induction training is all about communicating the company’s core values and its nature, in order to motivate new employees to adopt behaviours that translate into action on a daily basis.  It is about shaping staff’s work values and sense of identity with the company.

Typical information includes a company introduction, history, nature of the business, organisational philosophy, human resources policies and procedures.

In the Cirilo and Kleiner Management Research News article, it was found that highly effective induction training painted a vivid and detailed picture of the firm and used corporate story-telling techniques.

In "Mastering the Rockefeller Habits" author Verne Harnish also concludes that corporate storytelling is crucial for successful staff indoctrination.  He believes that a little bit of story and legend is needed to cement the bond between the CEO (or other senior manager) and employee.

For example, US company Nordstrom is renowned for its customer service.  Their orientation of new hires consists of telling stories about heroic customer service (e.g., the employee who ironed a shirt for a customer who had a job interview on the day of the purchase). Effective induction training allows for the new employee to possess a good sense of what actions are valued and how they can manifest it in their own behaviour. But what about companies who really need to ensure that their new staff do their tasks well and safely?  How do you drill in the safety message?

According to an article by Steve Osborn in The Safety & Health Practitioner June 2007, formal job induction training must deal with performing specific tasks safely, information about duty of care (both the company and workers) along with standard emergency procedures.

In particular management expectations with respect to health and safety need to be addressed along with certain standards of behaviour being made a condition of employment.

In this article, it was found that staff need to be inducted but also refreshed annually.  More importantly, business leaders should be involved and be seen to be involved.

As mentioned earlier, company-specific stories are a useful means of communicating the firm's history, traditions, and values. This technique can also be skillfully transferred to show new employees how to do their jobs safely and correctly by talking about how others have done their job in the past.  It has also been found to be an effective communication method to change poor behaviour or attitudes within companies about the importance of safety.

In order to use corporate story-telling in your company, think about some examples where a staff member has worked safely and avoided an incident by thinking ahead.  Was their an employee who worked safely despite his colleagues urging him to do otherwise that resulted in an accident being avoided?

Corporate story-telling can easily be incorporated into induction training videos. The story can be told by senior managers or those involved with the story.  This only involves a small amount of time to be filmed which can be used to show many staff across many locations for years to come. Reenactments can be filmed to make the story come to life.

Stories frame information so that it is meaningful, memorable and understandable. They provide a power tool for communication, problem solving and perpetuating important company values. Can you think of ways to include storytelling in your inductions?  What legendary stories do you have in your organisation?