By Sarah-Jane Dale | June 27, 2024
Last Updated on April 2, 2025
Sarah-Jane Dale, Chief Operating Officer at Affina Organisation Development (part of the Skills for Care Group), discusses the importance of a great induction and how Skills for Care’s new managers’ toolkit is supporting social care employers to deliver an effective induction.
Inductions are a crucial period for new employees, significantly influencing retention, job performance and their overall feeling towards their new workplace and colleagues. A well-structured induction process is key to setting clear expectations and minimising the stress and anxiety often associated with starting a new job.
Adult social care can be a demanding and often emotionally challenging sector to work in, without the burden of a poorly thought-out induction process to create additional worry for new staff. In the end, poor inductions increase the likelihood that new team members will leave during this fledgling period, which costs you money and reduces the quality of care for those you support.
Getting the basics right
Ensuring new staff have all necessary details before their first day, such as access to information and key contacts, can help them feel prepared and supported from the outset. This is easy to achieve by making sure you contact them well before their start date and providing everything you expect them to need during their first day. This might include emailing them any necessary paperwork or sharing a Zoom or Microsoft Teams link for an online induction session.
It’s important to consider the diverse needs of new staff to enable them to feel valued and included from day one. This can involve accommodating various accessibility requirements and providing opportunities for new employees to disclose any specific needs beforehand. This is often as simple as enabling standard accessibility features, such as closed text captions during virtual induction sessions for people with a hearing impairment.
Regular and scheduled contact with new starters throughout their initial period ensures they know who to reach out to for support. Contact should be frequent during the initial stages as this is when staff are likely to have questions on a regular basis. Supported and confident staff are likely to perform better and stay with the organisation longer. It’s a good idea to schedule in catch ups with new staff but also make it clear that support is easily accessible whenever they need it.
Feedback is a critical component of any induction process. Inviting feedback on the induction experience demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement and helps refine the process for future hires. Regularly updating the induction programme ensures it remains effective and meets the evolving needs of new employees.
To assist organisations in delivering an effective induction, Skills for Care has launched a new induction toolkit for managers. This new toolkit can help managers plan and execute supportive and inclusive inductions, ensuring new staff are well-equipped with the knowledge and resources they need to perform their roles effectively and support the organisation in providing a safe, responsive and well-led service.
How to use the new induction toolkit for managers
Skills for Care’s new managers’ induction toolkit is designed to help managers plan and deliver a supportive and inclusive induction for new starters at all levels across all types of roles in adult social care.
The new toolkit supports you in helping new starters to feel included, how to be on-hand to provide regular support and how to ensure you equip them with the knowledge and resources they need to do their job effectively whilst supporting your organisation to deliver a safe, responsive and well-led service.
Suzanne Rosenberg, Head of Leadership, Learning and Talent at Lifeways Group, said,
‘This toolkit provides us with clear and professional resources to ensure that our new starters are given the training, information and guidance to succeed and grow in the organisation.’
When you access the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources that will help you prepare for the arrival of a new staff member and guide you through this initial period, broken down into helpful milestones, such as their first day, week, month and months three to six.
You’ll also find guidance on how to ensure you’re delivering an inclusive induction that considers the needs of disabled workers and is culturally aware and inclusive. This may involve making adjustments to your new staff’s working conditions and will outline what training you need to incorporate into your induction to ensure you’re creating an inclusive workplace.
You’ll find several checklist documents in the toolkit, which are intended to be used to keep track of the important stages of your new staff’s induction process. This includes a ‘pre-arrival’ checklist and a ’72-hours-out’ checklist. These ensure you’ve provided everything your new starter will need before they begin their job – from dress code to IT equipment and parking arrangements.
Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to read through these preparation documents as they are intended to help you get everything you need in order to deliver an effective induction from the first day.
Finally, there’s also information on how you can assess the effectiveness of your induction so you can improve the experience for future staff, including a review survey that you can use to gather feedback.
Find out more about Skills for Care’s induction toolkit here.
Sarah-Jane Dale is Chief Operating Officer at Affina Organisation Development (part of the Skills for Care Group).
You can read the previous blog from Skills for Care here.