Appointment: starting on the right foot
myHRexperts consider Leader, Culture, Appointment, Performance, Recognition and Wellbeing to be the six pillars of a best workplace. You are currently reading about the APPOINTMENT pillar.
Best Workplace Pillar 3 : Appointment
Develop a best practice induction program
Memorable leaders go out of their way to live their values. Those in leadership often forego indirect communication in favour or direct, clear, face-to-face communication. They are powerful storytellers, which makes them equally powerful engagers and inspiring figures.
In their extensively researched book, The Leadership Challenge, Jim Kouzes and Barry Pozner explained how the business world’s best leaders are those who consistently challenge, inspire, enable, model and encourage their employees. Let’s look at a few strategies that can help you make these learnable behaviours part of your approach to leadership:
Your challenge is to find the right balance between speed and meticulousness.
Start by determining the induction objectives. Not every part of your induction will be a must-have. Prioritise necessities and consider what information you can provide later.
Next, consider what channels, formats, and media will appeal to particular groups and how you might need to customise content. Remember that your messaging needs to speak to a multicultural and diverse workforce. During induction, there’s an opportunity to showcase your values and cultural features.
Comprehensive yet engaging induction programs use variety to maintain attention. For the best results, consider using different delivery methods. Consider everything from booklets to tours, demonstrations, videos, job rotations, guest speakers and online training.
Your induction program content will differ at least in part by business and position. But, there will be necessary information all new starters need.
Introduce all new employees to their key contacts and provide a quick overview of basic survival information. Take time to go over their working hours and time-keeping arrangements and recap their leave entitlements. Show them around the building and where facilities are if they are going to work in a shared environment.
Don’t overwhelm new people with an intimidating volume of printed information that they won’t have time to read, let alone absorb. But do make sure they can access product and service lists, policy and procedure handbooks, workplace maps, organisational charts and contact information.
An easy to navigate intranet is an ideal platform for detailed information. An intranet allows new employees to access the necessities immediately and return for more detail when relevant.
If your new employees have English as their second language, make sure material is available in that language. You may also like to use an interpreter to ease the process.
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