9 Steps to an Effective Induction Training

This article is for all managers responsible for creating and implementing induction-training courses to welcome new recruits into any brand or store.

Induction is not only viable in big companies. Even if you are a family jeweler or a small boutique manager who is welcoming a new member into your team, you still need to create an orientation session to ensure a frictionless start of someone’s job.

If you follow these steps, you will have a very successful and effective introduction to your brand, which can be implemented on a one-to-one basis or as a group induction course.

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Induction courses are an essential element in any brand’s success as they create the ground on which every person in the company, brand or store builds on. This is the first contact with the new life of a newcomer into an established team so getting it right has a tremendous effect on the enthusiasm of staff members in any department.

Induction is also the first impression that your new recruits build about your company and it is a great means to confirm a better level of engagement within any team and, ultimately, create a higher staff retention rate for the future.

Having ineffective induction however, can kill one’s ambition and stop the momentum that all new recruits have when starting a new job. I actually met staff members who shared with me that they started thinking about looking for new jobs elsewhere after attending a bad induction session with their new company.

So in order to build a successful Induction training, I put together 9 components that you can follow, implement and customize according to your company’s needs and personality:

1. Keep it Simple and Coherent

Induction should be simple and focused with a clear message from start to finish.

When creating the induction material, keep in mind a short message that you want your newcomers to adopt and believe. This can be the tag line of your logo or the ultimate mission of your brand. Then you can build every section of the course to lead into one outcome.

Having conflicting messages can give a bad idea about the coherence of the company. This usually occurs when you have different managers presenting their departments to new recruits. The worst thing that can happen is to feel that each department is living in its own world and having different ethos. Make sure that all presenters know the clear and simple message you are trying to deliver.

Always use simple language that anyone can understand and never be tempted to use jargon, as your new recruits are unfamiliar with the details of your product or service yet. Using complicated language can lead to disengagement and a sense of overwhelming from your new recruits’ side.

2. Be ultra organised

There is nothing nicer than joining a company and feeling that everything is meticulously prepared to welcome you. From stationary to workspace and from personal introductions to knowing what your first task would be.

In order to have a well-organized course, always think ahead. Never leave anything to the day of delivery. Plan every minute in the course including deciding on accurate timings with department managers and other presenters. It is really unprofessional to take a group of new recruits to a department for introduction only to wait for the department manager to finish a phone call or finalize an email while everyone is awkwardly standing there not knowing where to look or what to do.

Always prepare a textbook that clearly illustrates all the information in the induction, to give as a printed material to participants upon joining. This book should be illustrative, visual and simple with easy to navigate tabs and chapters.

It is also a good idea to send the induction’s agenda to new recruits before attending the day along with some simple activities they can conduct beforehand like a little research about the brand or competitors or maybe a mystery-shopping visit to one of the company’s points of sale. This eliminates any worries participants might have about what to expect on day one in a new job.

3. Stories, stories, stories

What new comers need to know about your brand is not product knowledge; this is something they will acquire from their line manager. What they need to get is stories, which is an essential tool in selling luxury products and services. These stories can be about:

• History of the brand

• Why it is different

• Who the designer or creator is and facts about his/her/their lives

• Exciting achievements and timeline of the brand

• Brand adopters from celebrities to important figures in society

• Why do our customers buy our product or service?

• Where are we geographically and where are the brand’s biggest markets and why?

4. A new recruit is a new customer

Always think of your new recruits as your new customers. Pitch your company to them as you do to clients because the way you present your brand would be adopted and remembered by the new employees.

Also, when introducing company’s managers or departments and what their role is, you’ll have to build the message in a way that successfully sell it to the induction participants and make them buy the importance of the job that each department does for the company.

5. Share the glory and invite to build on it

Of course, it is important to present the achievements of the company to date but never let your new recruits feel that there is nothing left to be done.

Always convey a message that they are needed for the future success of the company. It is very helpful to present at this stage the areas in which the company is aiming to improve and how everyone is hoping that the new recruits can fulfill this.

New employees should be assured that this is the start of a challenging but rewarding stage in their career and that there is plenty of opportunity for them to make their mark.

6. Set the rules

Induction is also an opportunity to present the rules within the company. The ongoing atmosphere that needs to be maintained. Rules should be simple, convincing and agreeable. In this section of the course, you can present:

• Health and safety rules

• Dress code

• Policies and ethics

• Departmental structures and reporting

• HR procedures

• Etc.

It is helpful to have these printed into the textbook, which is given to every new employee.

7. Share the big picture

You are welcoming new partners into your company so always treat them as so.

Share with the participants the main strategy of the company, what is planned for the near future and what are the aims set by the CEO or the board of directors. Make this specific and detailed. Reveal some information that is unknown to outsiders. This always gives the sense of importance to new recruits whatever their position in the company is. And more importantly, it keeps everyone in the company focused on the general plan.

8. Give the tools

For any new employee to succeed, they need to know what tools are available for them to do their job. Here, I am not talking about stationary but about the support that different departments or people in the company can offer.

I worked with many brands whose staff members simply don’t know what is available for them in their company. An example is a brand that sponsors a major charity event, and never informs its employees that invitations are available for their clients to attend. Which can have a great impact on solidifying the relationship between salespeople and loyal customers.

Another example is lack of knowledge that the IT department has facilities and is willing to help others in the company create a professional presentation or the marketing department offering help with writing a specialized email about a product in preparation of a major sales meeting.

It is a very good idea to ask department managers to list all the tools, skills and facilities that they can offer to colleagues from other departments in the company. This list (and contact details) should also be included in the induction textbook.

9. Organise the follow up

Lastly, never think that your job ends when the induction session is finished. Two extra steps are very important and should not be ignored:

• Ask for the participants’ feedback either by filling a short questionnaire or, if time allows, by discussing the whole training with you personally.

This gives you an idea on which elements of the induction are successful and which ones need to improve.

Feedback can also provide you with new ideas that your new recruits may have seen in an induction elsewhere or simply they feel that it can be helpful to future participants.

• Provide your participants with a personalized road map. This is to let them know where to go from here, introduce them to their managers/departments, and let them know that they can come back to you should they need any clarifications.

I hope that you enjoyed and benefited from this article and would really appreciate your opinion by commenting below.

Thank you

Said Chaarawi 2017

www.chaarawi.com

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