This is the third case study that demonstrates the work of a Performance Specialist in an organisation. (You can view the first and second here). The point of these case studies up to now has been to show that training is not the only solution to a performance problem; this one shows that a training solution may not be the best solution for induction.
A line manager was concerned that the company's traditional induction workshop took place so irregularly that a new employee was often in post for a good few weeks if not months before s/he attended it. The situation had now come to a head as one of his new employees had resigned before attending it and stated one of the reasons to be due to the obvious lack of interest of the company in integrating her into it.
The training manager's response might well have been to turn it into an online induction course which would be available to all employees as soon as they joined the company, but instead they asked the Performance Specialist to take a look ...
The Performance Specialist met with the line manager concerned together with some recent new hires in his team to find out more about the issues. In addition to the delay in getting a place on the workshop, it also transpired that the content of the workshop focused on presentations about the history, vision and mission of the organisation rather than on practical issues like where you got your PC from and where you purchased your lunch and refreshment card. These things the new hires had to find out for themselves in the early days and although their colleagues were willing to help out and answer their questions, they were unable to spend too much time with them because of their own workload. However, as a solution to the problem it was clear they were not interested in taking what would be the equivalent of a day's workshop as an online course.
The Performance Specialist wondered if induction shouldn't actually start BEFORE the new hires stepped through the door on the first day, and the employees unanimously agreed that this would be ideal. The Performance Specialist suggested setting up a social network type space where new hires could go before they started work as well as after they had joined up to find information about the company (this might be in the form of presentations, documents, etc), how to get set up in the first few days of being in the company as well as providing place where they could ask questions and post their comments and views. Those in the meeting thought this would be a good idea, so she asked them if they would be prepared to help with the project in terms of populating it with useful content, as well as helping to answer the questions of new people. She explained that as more and more people joined the group over time, then their participation would be reduced. However, they were all happy to become the pioneers to form the group.
The Performance Specialist then took the idea to both HR and Training to get their feedback on it, and the idea was received favourably. It was certainly a much cheaper option than creating an online induction programme. Once the space had been set up and was ready to go, then HR would invite all new hires to join it as soon as they had accepted a job offer. HR and Training decided they would also take the opportunity to change the format of the induction workshop and make it more of a networking event.
The Performance Specialist set up the group space using a freely available networking platform and made it a private group so that only those invited could join it. She first invited those from the meeting to sign up and they set up their own profiles with their pictures and information about themselves. They each then took it upon themselves to find useful resources to populate the group space. The Performance Specialist wrote the welcome message on the site's front page which also explained the purpose of the site, and so the Welcome to XYZ Company space was ready to go. HR sent out the first invitations, and the new hires began to sign up and fill out their profiles. They asked questions in the discussion forum which were quickly answered and which sometimes led to further resources or links being added to the site.
After about 6 weeks the Performance Specialist ran an informal survey to get their feedback. They all felt that this was a very welcoming approach and that as they had established relationships with colleagues before they had arrived, it was very easy to fit in. They also knew where to go to get themselves sorted out on the first day. The face-to-face networking event then allowed them to meet people in the flesh they had come to know in the group space. It was therefore decided to continue the Welcome group indefinitely.
