If job candidates were worthy of being hired, they should be worthy of being trained properly and retained. So how should facility managers and maintenance managers accomplish this?

Well, it starts with a robust onboarding program. Retention begins with you, the new employee’s direct supervisor/manager. You must be committed to this new person and how they will complement your current team.

Onboarding is so much more than simply filling out forms and being handed a company manual (if one even exists). Key elements of such a program should be integrated into a comprehensive checklist and timeline to ensure nothing gets missed. This way, you can effectively immerse the employee into the new position quickly and efficiently.

Unfortunately, few organizations do this. According to a survey of human resource firms, more time is given to completing paperwork rather than actually integrating the new employee into the workplace culture.

Use A Checklist To Stay On Track

Mapping out the employee’s training journey will be a great guide for you and for the new hire. Perhaps you can break it into Week 1, Week 12, Week 36 segments (or whatever breakdown makes sense for your team). However you decide to design it, you will need a checklist to keep you organized and on track. One way to do this is to add the time factor to each element within the checklist as a starter. This checklist should, at a minimum, include: