The Importance of Employee Induction

Employee induction is the process companies use to introduce new employees to the overall set up of the company and to its core principles.  Companies which value the coherence of the workforce also value the employee induction process and spend time working on perfecting it.  Although it is only one part of a company’s success, the induction process is very import in times of high employee turnover. 

So what steps should a company or small business take in order to improve the employee induction process?

Have a Point Person for Employee Induction

You should have one person whose central job it is to worry about how to carry out successful inductions.  Now, that does not mean that employee induction is the person’s only job.  Especially in small businesses, this would unfeasible.  However, there should be someone who has this as a major part of his or her job description.  In a large company, this person will probably need more than one person helping them to carryout this job.  Typically, of course, this person will be in HR.

You will need to train the induction point person to carry out this job properly.  One of the major mistakes companies make is that they expect people to know how to perform a successful employee induction without really training them how to do it.  A successful employee induction is more than handing someone a packet about the company and showing the new employee where his or her office is located.  The person who runs the employee must know what the company expects and be able to do it successfully.

The Mission Statement

Ideally, you should have an employee-company mission statement or pact.  This agreement should state the company’s general goals and the expectations the company has of its employees.  The most successful company cultures are those where the employees know exactly what the goals of the company are and how they fit into the plan of getting to those goals.  Employees who feel they are a part of something larger than their paychecks will tend to work harder and smarter for their employers.  The more your company feels like just a place your employees go to get paid, the more likely your company is to have morale problems.

The Lay of the Land

It is also important, however, to introduce your new employee not just to his or her own supervisor or department, but show the new employee the entire facility (and give them a sense of the scoop of the company).  The point-person should introduce the new employee to the head of each department and give them the contact information for those managers. 

The best companies are those where people know each other well enough to call on each other for clarification and help.  The better people know each other, the more likely they are to know each other’s abilities and talents.  For example, when employees know what languages other employees speak, they then know who they can go to should they run across an opportunity from another country.  In companies where employees don’t communicate, such opportunities simply go untapped.

Level of Employee Induction

The other consideration to take into mind is how long you want to spend inducing someone.  If it is only a minor worker—someone who you are only using in a very limited sense, you might not need to spend a great deal of time in inducing him or her.  On the other hand, if the new employee is in a position vital to your company, then you want to take the extra time to make sure they are fully integrated into your company’s philosophy and structure.

If you do this, you are sure to build a strong, loyal workforce.