Onboarding for new employees

Why it matters

The instruction obligation is clear: the employer has to make sure a new employee is introduced to safety routines and the protective equipment the work requires before the work starts. In a small company, in practice, it rarely becomes a structured flow. It becomes “follow Mads today and you will pick it up.” That usually works — right up until an accident happens and the question is whether the new journeyman was actually instructed, and whether it can be documented.

On top of that lies a more everyday concern. It is hard to be new, and it is especially hard if no one has time to walk through the things you should know. The onboarding pack makes it fair for the apprentice, for the journeyman running the training, and for the owner.

What it will look like

You create an onboarding pack per role — for example one for apprentices, one for experienced journeymen coming from another company, one for summer helpers. The pack collects what new employees have to go through: a summary of the company’s WRA, trade-specific work instructions, an introduction to the chemicals used in daily work, the fire-drill routine, fall protection or hot-work if relevant, and a first-week check-in.

When you hire someone, you send the pack. The new employee opens it on their phone. Each item is a small, finished piece — a work instruction to read and sign off on, a video to watch, a safety data sheet to go through. Progress is visible, so both the employee and the owner can see what is left. Once the pack is complete, the sign-offs are archived as part of the company’s documentation — the same format as regular work instructions.

When there is more than one kind of employee

A carpentry business may need one onboarding pack for apprentices and another for Polish journeymen starting on a single job. An electrical contractor may split service and contract technicians because the risk is not the same. You build the packs that make sense for you, and can reuse items across them — one shared fire-drill routine is a single instruction that sits inside three different packs.

Want to help shape how onboarding works for your kind of company? Get in touch.