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The WorkPlace

Compliments of the new season and best wishes to you all dedicated Patriot management and avid readers. Welcome on board Year 2019!

On my way to GC on the 2^nd January 2019 energised and refreshed from a restful and refreshing Christmas holiday in my home village, I found myself driving at snail pace behind the long haul truck laden with heavy goods. As the truck groaned under the immense load, I had a split second to cast my eye to my right and I got a glimpse of a new board for one nascent medium firm company located a few kilometres before Bokaa village.  That advert stimulates my mind to the realisation that the festive season and its associated pomp and fanfare were slowly but surely vanishing into thin air.

Paradoxically the struggling truck in front of me made a perfect analogy of what resembled the hard work that awaited almost all of us either self-employed or gainfully employed. The year had earnestly kick-started and with it, came a litany of resolutions, real or imagined. It was back to back-breaking work. I sincerely struggled to recollect and reconfigure my faculties in order to come up with a befitting topic let alone to write my first article for this novel and promising year, 2019. Honestly, I believe I am not the only one who felt bound by the mental hangover of the yesteryear and festive spirit.

In some way, most organisations are much alike. It is a general trend that both state-owned and private enterprises experience a temporary shutdown for festive season holidays around mid to late December of each year and year 2018 was not an exception. The same companies open their doors again for business around mid-January of the subsequent year.

So what does this mean to an organisation which closed for business or any other organisation that allowed its valuable employees to take a break? What comes to my mind as an HR practitioner is the necessity for re-induction of employees across the levels of the organisation. The core purpose of that re-induction is to remind them the rules of the game before their minds are congested by the activities ahead of them during the year. Therefore it’s an opportune time to focus on re-induction, particularly taking into consideration changes that will be ushered by the brand new year in relation to the company’s vision. As a result, it’s my fervent belief that HR practitioners should continually consider and embrace innovative ways they add value to the organisation and improve the performance metrics through developing mechanisms to boost both employees’ morale and productivity to ensure both short and long term organisational goals are attained. In doing that the HR function does not remain perennially moored in traditional theories but become a dynamic and agile profession to meet the organisation’s ever changing needs.

We recognise that there are underlying challenges in some organisations with regards to re-induction of employees returning from both short and long holidays. Depending on the type of leadership and management, re-induction should be an annual activity planned and enforced in an organisation. One of the challenges in organisations regarding the induction is that it is viewed wholly as a function of human resources. I do not agree with the perception. For me, induction is the responsibility of line business in an organisation and coordinated by Human Resources. 

Induction falls under the umbrella of staff development and more importantly a function of human resource. There are number of concerns about the impact of induction in the organisations. Questions are raised over everything from quality, time and importance of induction of employees in an organisation. I have witnessed or seen real evolution of HR processes including induction adding value in the scope of the organisation.

This hinges on driving behavioural change and it is about building enthusiasm for the employees.  Re-induction assists employees to familiarise themselves with the organisation expectation, processes and procedures, to refresh their knowledge and understanding of vision and more importantly the organisation strategy and goals.

According to Kearney (2010) and Snell (2000), re-induction should be centred on knowledge, skills and competency to clear cut understanding of the organisational culture, ethics and core values. Additionally, an induction programme can help motivate existing employees and increase retention in the employees. Employees have energy to assist customers when they are well motivated, aligned to organisational goals and encouraged. A weak induction can affect an organisation’s credibility externally and internally as well.

Organisation management should embrace and lead by example in the induction of existing employees. The ultimate goal for any organisation is to gain committed, engaged, loyal employees and this in turn results in increased motivation and performance. Once employees are motivated, they are most likely to be committed to stay, to improve their performance as they feel valued by organisation. It is natural for companies and managers to expect employees to perform to the best of their abilities at work. Induction can be that tool that managers can use to communicate their expectation for the year.

In conclusion, we are still in early days of the year and would encourage organisations to make use of proper induction to re-connect and re-engage with their employees. For industrial, mining and even banks it is critical to re-introduce your employees to your standard safety, security and ethics procedures and processes. Once again, compliments of the new season to you all. I sincerely believe that now the buzz of the festive will completely erase, I am looking forward to continuously share and educate the readers on different topics on interest.