All businesses need a way to induct their new staff into the business. So far it’s either paper based, computer based or purely verbal. This article is for those that want to use a computer based system.
Here’s an important tip. If you’re going to use an LMS (learning management system) and you plan on having a quiz at the end to test comprehension, consider an important factor – LMSs are built for staff (student) that might pass or fail and you may not accept a failure in your induction. You will need a process for managing staff that fail the induction – perhaps re-taking the induction until they pass.
The following list includes my top suggestions for how you can get an Induction system up and running for your business.
This list is in order of simplest to most comprehensive and complex and all are computer based:
- Teamaudits – this is a simple auditing platform allowing an auditor (the HR department) to establish a common list of questions to ask each staff member. The result is automatically put into a database for later review. This solution requires self-no hosting. Find out more at “teamaudits.com“.
- WordPress with the “WP-Pro-Quiz” plugin. This is a very simple solution allowing any WordPress administrator to create content and quizzes to prove comprehension. There is some coding required to extract data for reporting but it’s minimal and low cost. This solution may require hosting the website but you can get that done for you. See an example business using this for practice exams at “examkabam.com“.
- WordPress with the “WPLMS” plugins and theme. This is more serious than the options above. An experienced WordPress web-master is needed. The up-side is that WPLMS is well supported and not hard to look after.
- Moodle – the learning management system (LMS) of choice for half the worlds e-learning providers (give or take). Moodle is an excellent solution for online learning and testing and there are plenty of experts out there to help with content and quiz creation. You’re best off using a hosting service to host your Moodle. See “enterpriselms.com” for a hosting service.
The list I’ve provided above are either free or otherwise very low cost. Costs to factor in are:
- Staff time to build and manage the system.
- Hosting costs if you don’t host it yourself.
- Consultant time if you need help with the questions and structure.
- Software licenses such as the WordPress WPLMS add-on I’ve mentioned above.
The above should give you a nice head-start on your next induction system.
