Induction Process for New Employee

If you are a large company, you most likely have a proper induction or onboarding system in place. HR is there to drive it and make sure all the boxes are ticked. Medium-sized businesses in South Africa, however, are quite a different story. Companies barely have disciplinary codes that are well-explained to employees, let alone the induction or onboarding process.

What is an induction process?

• Firstly, one needs to take note that it is a process!

• It integrates the new employee into the company culture, covering important documents/policies, safety, and, if applicable, role-specific training aligned with the new employee's job description.

• When you are finished with the process, you need to be sure that the new employee knows all the Company's rules and understands what they are supposed to do in their role.

• You also need to be sure that you have certain knowledge of the employee, such as “domicile address” and medical condition, to name two examples.

Example of a standard induction process together with recruitment:

Step 1: Recruitment

When you are busy with the recruitment process, make sure that the possible candidate fills in a declaration form declaring some important items such as medical condition, criminal record, prior employers worked for, and their domicile address, to name just a couple of examples. This is an extremely important document, as you can refer to it later regarding possible dishonesty in the disciplinary process.

When you went through your steps of recruitment and selected the best candidate you can start with the induction process.

Step 2: The Employment Contract

The employment contract is one of the most important documents that the employee will sign. Make sure that you get this signed before the employee starts to work. This means you need to give yourself some time between the recruitment process and the start date to start the process of signing the contract.

Draft the employment contract and send or give it to the new employee to read through. Arrange a date of signing the contract and policies that go with the contract, and make sure that you have enough time for questions.

Once this is done, the employee should understand what is expected of them in his/her job and what the rules of the company are.

If the employee needs to undergo a medical evaluation or polygraph test, make sure the contract states that they must pass the tests to become an employee. This will be the time to arrange these tests and make sure it is done as soon as possible.

After signing the employment contract and policies, the employee can start to work, depending on the company’s policy regarding medicals and other tests.

Step 3: Further induction in other areas

Make sure that you complete the induction process in the first week of employment to minimise risk for the company.

Other areas will be:

• Health and Safety in the company

• Any other policies that you want to be signed further and educated on to have proof that you did explain these policies to the new employee

• Disciplinary code of the company

• You might even want the new employee to write a short test to show that he understands key aspects of this

Conclusion

It is key to note that the above are pointers to a better induction process. Employers need to start making sure that new employees enter the company on your terms and that you can end the contract as quickly as possible if dishonesty is picked up. With a good induction process, one can also be quick to discipline and not be on the back foot, first having to educate and then discipline.