Online Induction >> Employee Induction
Published 20/11/2024

New Employee Induction
- Guide for Creating Employee Inductions

All new employees need to go through a proper and comprehensive induction before they start work and being their job. A new employee induction should consist of a mixture of payroll and HR setup materials, an online employee handbook, induction pack, a safety induction covering important workplace safety topics and procedures, presentations, policies to acknowledge and understand, new employee checklist and assessments and workplace courses that help onboard the employee into the organisation.

New Employee Inductions through to annual staff re-inductions
New employees might go through a series of different inductions ranging from workplace, project or role specific inductions and progress through critical workplace topics, procedures and policies in order to be job ready. Existing employees might be re-inducted annually on these materials for ongoing compliance. Policies and procedures change throughout the year and so it's important that re-inductions cover the awareness and training around those changes. All employee types should go through an employee induction from casual employees, part time, full time and managers, the information they are inducted on could be the difference between an incident happening in the workplace or leading to better staff retention.

What are the best ways to construct an effective new employee induction? What is the best platform for delivery employee inductions and what to include in it?

View Templates, Forms and Examples

Best Steps to Include in a New Employee Induction

Employee inductions can be comprehensive, there's a lot of material to cover across ever increasingly complex workplaces. From HR policies and procedures through to safety and site specific induction content. What are the best steps to have in your employee induction structure and what sort of things should you include?

Collecting materials from new starters such as payroll information, required HR setup details, signing forms and entering in new starter information
Collecting emergency contact details, next of kin, who to contact in the event of an emergency
Known medical issues that could affect role / working safely on site
Going through a safety induction and presentation in order to understand important workplace safety topics and ensuring that all new employees can work on site safely
Completion of HR and workplace specific courses especially around topics such as bullying and harassment, code of conduct, sexual harassment, drugs and alcohol.
Acknowledgement of HR policies and procedures
Testing their understanding through an assessment
New Employee Training Plan
Staff Induction Policy
Induction Manual for New Employees
Ensuring new employees acknowledge and understand their job role and expectations

Pre-Day 1 Employee Induction Steps
Before a new staff member begins their journey joining an organisation, it's important to make sure they are job ready and often the induction process might kick off before day 1 with a pre-day 1 induction workflow. This might consist of an SMS or email that excites the new starter and shows what a great culture the organisation has with a can't wait for you to start message, a meet the team video, a what to expect on your first day overview, any preparation materials and then finally taking them to their employee induction and kick starting that process.

Staff Induction steps and Re-Inductions
These steps would be a mix of online forms, check lists, document libraries, presentations and assessments and form the basis of a staff induction. Best practice would see a new employee be inducted before they arrive on site and all employees go through an annual staff induction process for re-inductions. An organisation is constantly changing and growing and so the induction should reflect those changes too! It's important to make sure that at least annually staff are being re-inducted too on what's changed. Are there new policies to be aware of? new procedures and workplace changes to be inducted on?

See more on: What makes a good employee induction?

Read more on What to include in your new employee induction

View our full Employee Induction Online

Common ways to deliver the employee induction

You might have a mix of face to face and online for the best new employee induction experience. New staff might initially go through an online induction going through the above steps and then once starting the role, do additional face to face onboarding activities such as a workplace tour, introductions to team members and line manager follow ups for that personal touch.

Online
Face to face
Mobile App

An employee induction might consist of multiple delivery methods, ranging from an initial online component with follow up parts that might be face to face.

Want to try out an online employee induction setup? Get started right here:

Create an Employee Induction

Most common slides in a new employee induction slideshow presentation

We've put together the most common slides that organisations have in their new employee inductions, here we go!

Who the management are
Site access / access hours / workplace opening hours
Overview of the organisation and its mission
HR manager details and overview
How to report an incident or hazard
Code of conduct
Bullying and harassment policy
Sexual harassment policy and how to report it
Drugs and alcohol policy and how to report it
Off limit areas to avoid
Hazards to be aware of
Dress code
Meet the team
First aid kit location
Emergency procedures
Information Security Awareness

Setting up your induction plan for new employees

The first six months of a new employees journey are super critical to help onboard them correctly into the organisation, ensure they understand everything they need to do their job role, become an expert at their job and build positive culture so that they want to stay working at the organisation too. Part of this involves building in a performance appraisal system and performance appraisal steps into their induction plan from day 1. Establishing what their role tasks actually area, what does performance look like that is good, what do poor expectations look like and how are these areas measured.

An induction plan is important for a new staff member entering a company because it helps familiarize them with the company culture, policies, procedures, and processes. It also gives them the opportunity to meet their colleagues and get a better understanding of their role. An induction plan allows a new staff member to get off to a good start by providing them with a clear understanding of expectations and how to perform their job effectively. Additionally, an induction plan can help staff members feel more comfortable in their new environment and can help to promote employee engagement and retention.

An Induction isn't the same as an LMS

The induction is done at the start of an employees engagement with an organisation. This might be before they are setup as an employee and may have literally just got the phone call to say congratulations, you got the job. Commonly, the next step is to induct them into the organisation so that they are job ready for day one. This might involve sending them a link to register and begin the Online Induction in order to prepare them on important policies and procedures and getting them job ready. An LMS is about ongoing learning they might be assigned throughout the rest of their year working with the organisation. The induction might be done annually versus ongoing learning which could be done weekly, monthly or adhoc across the year. Ongoing training might include compliance training as part of an online training platform.

Give New Staff the Best Induction Experience

If you want to keep them, give them the best new staff induction! Retention of new staff can be strongly influenced by how you first engage them into the organisation. A new staff induction is one of the most central pieces to delivering that engagement and ensuring you welcome them into the organisation with a high impact and long lasting first impression. It's also the core piece for ensuring they are job ready on day one. A new staff induction goes beyond just their first day, you might have a week 1 induction, week 2, three month and six month milestone inductions too. A new staff induction will help introduce your new employees into the workplace, their team, their department and their role.

Benefits of a new staff induction

Obviously the core thing about a new staff induction is that it helps prepare new staff for their first day on the job but a good new staff induction setup goes far beyond job preparation, it can help ensure that:

- they provide the right materials ahead of their first day
- ensure new staff are compliant with important workplace polocies and procedures
- making sure new staff are aware of hazards, risks and safety procedures before they step foot through the door
- preparing the workplace for the new staff member which might include a manager checklist, IT setup, payrol setup and more.

Employee Induction Templates and Common Materials Library

Setting up an employee induction can be extremely time consuming if you don't know where to start and don't have any content or materials ready to use. To save time, we've prepared a massive library of common employee topics, workplace materials and employee specific induction content (especially for different employee roles types such as casual employees, full time, part time etc).

View templates, forms, checklists and courses

Online Employee Induction Hanbook

Every organisation is different but the core topics you need to cover in a new employee induction are mostly the same regardless of industry or region. The old school handbook has been thrown out the window and in todays fast tech paced world, a digital employee induction handbook is the way to go. Being able to digitally record they staff have gone through each section, viewed and acknowledged it including digital signing and even testing competency are several main benefits of an online handbook. The most common sections you might include are (and these are all found in our ready to go online employee induction handbook):

Induction Handbook Structure

- Welcome to the organisation, mission, vision and purpose
- Industrial awards and agreements based on the specific employee role
- Hours of work, rosters and timesheets
- Salary or rate of pay and superannuation details
- How work related expenses are dealt with
- Uniforms or dress code expectations
- Code of Conduct
- Leave entitlements (covering all leave types such as annual leave, personal leave, applying for leave, study leave, leave without pay, long service leave and carers leave)
- Shutdowns and stand downs
- Probation period
- Performance review process
- Important workplace topics around anti-discrimination, bullying and harassment, alcohol and drugs to name a few
- Smoking policy
- Anti-bribery and corruption
- Information technology setup and policies
- Internet and social media policy
- Emailing policy
- Private messages and private calls
- Motor vehicles policy
- Grievance and complaint procedures
- Health and safety induction
- Privacy policy

Employee Induction Manual

This structure might form part of your overall Employee Induction Manual which is not only issued to new employees but maintained and given to existing employees annually as a re-induction on what's changed (policies and procedures are constantly being updated and workplaces change and grow over the course of the year). It's important that the employee induction manual reflects these changes and is a living document / process, not a static one.

Frequently Asked Questions

When would an employee induction be needed?

Typically they are most useful when welcoming someone into a team with greater responsibilities or bringing on senior management. Whatever type of hire you're making it's important that all employees feel like part of the company culture right away, as this creates sense loyalty within your workforce and strengthens team morale overall

How often should you do an employee induction?

It's commonly annual, however you may also setup an ongoing progress based on stages. Smaller businesses may choose only two or three times per year for comprehensive orientations, larger organisations may find greater success by adding monthly staff inductions on top of any quarterly refreshers. This frequent schedule can help guarantee that everyone on board is up-to-date with policy changes whilst minimising lost time due to sick days or other absences during scheduled learner sessions.

What employee types might you often cover in an employee induction?

Commonly part time, full time, casual employees

What stages are common in an employee induction

The usual structure starts with formal introductions before progressing onto more focused educational resources such as safety sessions or introductory videos about company policies and procedures. More interactive elements like seminars or team building activities usually follow soon after that help cultivate relationships between yourself and other staff members within the organization. The last steps generally involve performing skills assessments, along with any required tests or training modules geared towards giving employees enough background knowledge about safety procedures or handling sensitive data security protocols.

Setup an Employee Induction

See how an online new employee induction can work for your organisation by looking at the online demo via the form above or try out a demo employee induction

Lookng to complete an Employee Induction?

Search for the employee induction right here:

Frequently Asked Questions

Why its important to induct new employees

Inducting new employees is a great way to get them acquainted with the expectations, policies and culture of an organization. It helps to both excite them about becoming part of the team as well as ensure they know what's expected of them. A proper induction gives new employees the confidence and knowledge they need to fit in quickly at their workplace.

How often should you induct existing employees?

Commonly existing employees are inducted yearly as the most common re-induction period. This is important to ensure existing employees are kept up to date on changes in the workplace such as policies and procedures or risks and hazards.

Written by Dr Jeremy Nunn Founder, CEO View Profile