The induction process is introducing new employees to their workplace, job, new surroundings and the people they will be working with. Induction also provides information to help new employees start work and generally ‘fit in’ and get to know people. Induction programs need to incorporate every aspect of a company. The purpose of Inductions is to ensure an effective integration of staff.
Line managers are the main people involved with induction programmes in most cases. The induction program will vary in nature, length of time, depth of detail dependant on the company and the job role. Some examples of people who may be part of your introduction:
Guided Tours are often one of the first things that are done on an induction so you have a feel for your surroundings that you will be working in. Some areas could be; Canteen, Toilets, Fire escapes, Offices and Parking. All the legal requirements are taken care of by the HR manager. Some more jobs the HR manager could be writing a manual for new employees about health and safety at work. There is usually some form of video/talk/presentation about the work place. These videos and talks also include information about the company’s core values and history. You are also informed about their aims and products/services.
A key part of an induction is letting the employee know about their rights and responsibilities. The terms and conditions need to be explained to them to make sure that they fully understand them. These include; salary, contracted hours, sick pay, pension. The clear outline role of the job needs to be reiterated to make the person confident and clear with what their exact job is within the company.
The above all needs to be done, if not it can have very bad effects on the company in many different ways.
- Employees won’t be sure of what they are doing so the chances of them making a mistake are greatly increased.
- Employee conductivity will not be as good as it can be.
- Damage to reputation could occur from the member of staff making mistakes.
- Low moral can occur if not fully introduced to every aspect of the job and staff member. They may feel confused and lonely in the job.
- If there is a poor induction there is an increased amount of staff leaving in the short term because they do not like the way the company is run. In turn this will cause extra expense through having to look for new applicants for that job role again.
Frederick Herzberg motivational theory : -
Frederick was born in 1923 and was a clinical psychologist and pioneer of ‘job enrichment’. He is regarded as one of the great original thinkers in management and motivational theory. Frederick’s theory can be compared with Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. They both state what is needed for happy employees and employers.
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Achievement – paragraph on each in detail explaining. Promotion and expansion of business
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recognition – thanks for work done, self belief that you did a good job
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Work itself – enriching work, enjoyable and people look forward to it.
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responsibility – Job enlargement/enrichment, being more important
- Fringe benefits = laptop, company car, mobile
Motivation through achievement is a non financial benefit. Workers have a need for achievement when working. If someone is ‘Achievement Motivated’ and therefore seeking achievement, they will be more likely to attain realistic but challenging tasks that they set. They feel proud and ambitious when completing a task. So they try something else and attempt to do one better. There is a strong need for feedback as to achievement and progress, and a need for a sense of accomplishment. People feel fulfilled through the work they do, but also you can get more satisfaction from promotions and bigger rewards than just achieving work that is set.
Money isn’t the best motivator as you may think, this is only a short term motivator. There is a strong need for feedback as to achievement and progress, and a need for a sense of accomplishment. Praise, respect, recognition, and a sense of belonging are far more powerful motivators than money. This is proven in Maslow’s theory in the triangle; money (resources) is placed quite low compared to everything else. Motivation is key to employees being productive, qualitative and wanting to improve work efficiency. If colleagues acknowledge the work you have done and make you feel appreciated.
Job enlargement and enrichment are key factors in an employee’s state of mind, if they are happy they work well and unhappy means less productive work. Job enlargement is adding more tasks to a workload but not really varying the challenge set. An enriched job should ideally contain a mixture of tasks with varying difficulty of completion. Feedback and encouragement are essential in keeping employees motivated and productive. When employees start at a new job, the company will usually have a mission statement to help guide them towards goals. Individual goals should also be set. He/she must know their place within the business and how important that they are to the whole operation and without them functioning properly everyone will suffer. Although many people work less well under threats and pressure some do not and it is generally more beneficial to everyone’s motivation that it is done positively.
Other areas of motivation include incentives to keep working hard. These incentives are usually financial and short term unless given regularly. Financial incentives are given for a variety of reasons, mainly because of hard work. They are given in sums of money to keep you working well. Bonuses are the most notable incentives; bonuses are often the result of meeting sales targets or finishing a large project. A lot of people who work in sales have specific targets to meet, if they exceed they get a bonus, this keeps them working to their best they can to ensure they get that bonus. Bonuses are only directly beneficial to the employees, the company as a whole will have to make significant profits with sales targets to make sure they easily cover their losses and make a profit. Also bonuses will be given to a number of employees at the same time, so dependant on the size of the company this could be a huge amount of money counted as a loss of profit.
Another good way to be rewarded is through employee shares; big companies like Virgin and Tesco have this. Tesco gives shares to employees after 3 months of working for them, these increase every year. But to withdraw shares in Tesco you must have worked there for 5 years to withdraw tax free. There is nothing to stop you from withdrawing these shares from Tesco after you’ve been given them. This can be treated like a bonus from Tesco if you choose to sell your shares in Tesco right away.
Through retail stores, Discounts can be given as incentives too. Tesco offers different levels of discounts dependant on how long you have been working for them. The longer you have worked there the larger the discounts are, this is again another incentive to work there for longer. If staff stay at Tesco for longer, it means less money on looking for new employees and the training needed for them.
Certain industry jobs pay on a piece by piece rate, the amount you produce dictates how much you get paid. This is being paid by Piece Rate. Companies that rely on constant output of products will use this, so they are always working to their full potential. So requirements can be set as a minimum production and a target for them to work towards. If they produce more than a certain amount they can be given bonuses etc. With piece rate payment, people can work for the minimum amount of time/units then finish. So targets can not always be guaranteed, especially if people go home early and the amount of products made needs to increase from the standard. This can make employees unreliable as they can go as they wish once their contracted amount is finished.
Job recruitment process
Company vacancy → Job description → Person specification → Job advert → Application forms → short list → Interview → References →appointment
Businesses need to make sure they have the correct amount of staff and making sure that it will be a productive move to gain extra staff. You don’t want to have new staff having very little to do. The following documents will need to be prepared for each new job recruitment process.
- Personal specification
- Job description
- Job advertisement
- Application form
Company vacancies – Vacancies can be available due to different reasons, some of these are from growth and expansion of the business stores. People changing job roles, work is always changing and so are the requirements – meaning that job skills required may change. Filling job vacancies are quite popular from staff leaving their job. Large businesses like supermarkets constantly need to recruit checkout staff, car part attendants and other employees. Dependant on the business there will always be turnover for staff throughout the year. Internal promotion is less common, when members of staff are promoted through the ranks to obtain a new job role, their old job role needs to be filled with someone else if they move up the ladder.
Job description – after all the roles for the job have been considered, a job description can be drawn up. This will describe how a particular employee will fit in with the organisation. I have gathered information from 3 workers at Tesco, none of which have ever seen their own job descriptions. Within a job description it needs to cover the following main areas:
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Title of the job – A very big part of the job description. This should give a good indication as to what the job entails ie “Finance officer” would say that it’s to do with managing spending and keeping budgets etc. Job titles can change over time, they can be used to inflate job importance. They can make lower down importance jobs seem more important like the “trolley pusher” being a car park attendant. It indicates that they are in charge of the whole car park making them feel important and valued.
- Who the employee is responsible too (boss) – this will give the employee status within the organisation and who they would be accountable to and for.
- Who the employee will be responsible for
- A small clear description of the roles and responsibilities within the organisation – skills and qualities will be needed to perform certain jobs and tasks relating to the job role. This makes clear what is expected of them by whichever job role they have.
