A setting with an ideal induction process will…
- Make new team members feel welcomed and part of the team quickly.
- Ensure the ethos and culture of the setting is shared in a collaborative way with new team members.
- Develop the skills of new staff being able to confidently recognise and understand how your operate. Whist building the confidence of existing staff members as they become the leaders of this knowledge sharing.
- Enable new team members to feel able to share their own views along the way to refine process and practices.
Why does this matter?
The importance of team dynamics is highlighted through this process, showcasing how everyone plays a part and the different roles. This allows all staff from leadership to room teams to be less pressured and overwhelmed in delivering, alongside new staff having a spread out approach to learning.
The Early Years is a widely researched, applied to theory as well as practice. It brings out the different elements of a child’s learning based on the child. For the Teachers to be a consistent and powerful resource for the children they need to be connected with their environment, team and families. This induction process does that and makes team members feel welcomed. As can be seen in the reflection below…
[Get a video of Lucy talking about her experiences here?]
It is also helpful to recognise that everyone has a different way of adapting, learning and absorbing information. The key factor of establishing and having a productive induction means that you need to connect with the new staff joining and also making them part of the team as well as the new member of staff building relationships. This is why reassuring relationships and clear communication are central pillars in our organisation.
So what’s the actual process?
Here is how we do things at Always Growing, it could be a good starting point or reference to design and refine your own processes.
A key part of the culture manual is new team members recognising the value of their views from the very start of their time with us. We want all team members to bring their best selves to work and this is central to our culture. A key point on this is recognising we want to hear your voice, as only you have experienced early years in your own specific way and we feel a good culture is a combination of the fews of many people. This is captured well in the image here taken from our Culture Manual.
If you would like a sneak peak at our full culture manual please do email lewis@alwaysgrowing.co.uk and we would be happy to share.
Is changing your induction process worth it?
Put simply, yes! We have experienced great improvements from implementing this process. Here is a brief overview of some more detail on the benefits.
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This robust, spread out and in the moment induction process.
It is focused on building relationships whilst learning new things as well as having constructive professional discussions and learning about the company ethos and culture.
Try the GIST – good ideas for starting things…
- Is you current process clear? Ask your most recent what they think and learn from their feedback.
- Reflect on your current induction process. Are there missed opportunities for building relationships in it?
Want to learn more?
- If you are interested in doing more for your managers read this Famly article featuring the Always Growing Directors.
- Here are two more articles linked to the importance of building relationships with someone at work from Positive Psychology and 2iRecruit.
- Want to go deeper? Consider this book about achieving lifelong success from Simon Sinek called The Infinite Game