The induction program is an important part of human resource management. No matter what size is a company induction is an important program for setting a new employee into their role as quickly as possible. First, every company invests on its employee and needs to make them productive and get returns from that investment sooner. Second, if recruitment process failed it worth to know to change a person, to hire new one again as soon as possible, because it costs time and money to keep or train someone who does not fit in specific position. I would like to represent the induction process of CCMS NGO where I worked for two years. The organization has around 40 employees and specific steps of employee onboarding.
Firstly, I would like to mention that in the organization there is no specialized HR employee and all processes related to HR is implemented by CEO who is also the founder of the NGO. I think this is the major reason that there is no formal procedure of induction process but there are several steps, which are implemented to set an employee to the role.
Step 1: Before the new employee starts
This is an important phase to prepare someone to feel more confident and be less stressful before he/she will arrive at the workplace as an employee. For this purpose, CCMS administrative employee, mainly administrative executive sends the pack of information to the newcomer. Information includes the job description, one to two pages, stated in an informal way, organizational structure, culture, mission, vision and implemented major projects. In that pack, a new employee can also find an information about a mentor who is allocated to provide an answer to day-to-day questions. Mentorship is also an important practice for a mentor to improve his or her supervisory skills. I had the experience to be a mentor for EU volunteers in the NGO and for sure can say that it is one of the important parts of the induction program. In addition, the workplace is prepared for the arrival of an employee.
Step 2: First day
First day CEO introduce a newcomer to the staff, shows workplace and arranges meetings with employees with whom newcomer will interact directly. In addition, CEO arranges a meeting with the mentor. In a break time, team-lunch is organized for socialization purposes. And the staff prepares banner with the name of a new recruit and “WELLCOME” which appears in the main hall when people enter for a lunch.
Step 3: Week first
In the first week, mentor represents all staff, who is doing what how they are collaborating, what specific tasks are connected to each other, and what the way of preferred communication is. In case of any question recruit can ask to the mentor or to CEO who’s office room do not have a door.
Some rules are explained in the first week mainly on the third day. These rules are connected with acceptable behavior in the workplace, what is unacceptable, what kind of consequences can be in case of unacceptable behavior, what are the common work practices and so on. In the third or fourth day, a new employee is assigned to some tasks of his/her job. This task is not difficult ones and the main purpose is to practice some theoretical information, which he/she gathered all this time.
Step 4: First month
Here new employee starts to implement all job and focus on his/her work tasks. A colleague who is more experienced in the sphere gives some support and answers arising questions. In this stage, feedbacks that are more constructive are an important part of induction and here employer finds what newcomer does good where he/she is strong what weak sides are. By these defining needs of training or another type of support. Training is the regular part of NGOs life and they are used efficiently.
Step 5: Last phase, three month
In this stage CEO and line manager if applicable for certain position are reviewing his/her performance and deciding whether to keep the employee or not. If they happy with a job that recruits does they decide to keep him/her. In another case, they decide what is wrong if there any possibility to improve some skills or change some responsibilities or not. Because it is not that easy to rid off from the recruit who spent three months in the organization as a lot of time and other resources are spent. However, eventually, the if recruit does not fit to the position he or she will be terminated.
To sum up, I can say that induction process is quite well in CCMS NGO but the main problem is that there is no formal procedure and this structure not always applicable as there are no people who have certain responsibilities in this sphere. And I was witness of several failures in the organization because of uncertainty, who is doing what, what comes after. If CEO is busy in a specific sphere the induction most probably will not have any organized form. And these failures also come from free space which is given to newcomer and the sense of work, responsibilities is “rusting” because of it. Eventually, I am sure that formal more organized and specific induction program is needed.
