A new employee, especially if he is young or new to factory life, has an inevitable feeling of strangeness among new surroundings and new people. He needs to be welcomed and helped to feel at home. Even if he is accustomed to factory work, the kind of welcome he receives in his first few days can have an effect on his attitude to his job. It is worthwhile therefore giving some attention to a new employee, and setting aside the necessary time on his first morning to give him undivided attention.

It is usually convenient to have a list of the things new employees should have explained to them. This list obviously needs to be made especially for the factory concerned, but might include some of the following points: the kind of work done in the department systems (e.g. production control) in use in the factory safety practices and rules company rules and procedures payment of wages and bonuses canteen and welfare facilities works clubs and recreational facilities.

Some large companies have induction courses for new employees, but such courses are a supplement to the induction given by the supervisor and are not a substitute for it. In a small company with no induction course, the whole of the responsibility is on the supervisor.
A new employee should be introduced to his colleagues, and should know at least some members of senior management and be able to recognize them.

During the first few days, there will be a number of matters on which a new employee may need information, and it is reasonable to give one man in the department the job of looking after him in this period.

All management involves delegation, and no one can delegate confidently except to people who have received the proper training to enable them to do their job efficiently. Training is therefore an integral part of line management, not an extra. It is true that most medium and large companies have training officers who do most of the training, but they do so as a service to line management. Line managers therefore have a major interest in what training is done and in how efficiently it is carried out.

Apprentice training in small companies is frequently entirely the responsibility of supervisors. The traditional theory of apprenticeship is that the apprentice spends his time working under the supervision of a master craftsman, learning the skills of the trade. The relationship is one of master and pupil. While serving his time the apprentice will no doubt be useful in the department, especially in the later stages of his apprenticeship, and this is compatible with apprenticeship as people learn their work best by doing it. An apprentice usefulness is how ever a by-product; the primary object of apprenticeship is training and not the performance of work. It follows that the supervisor should regard his department as providing a service for the apprentice, not the apprentice for the department. It is the supervisor’s responsibility to see that the apprentice receives as sound training as possible, and he should not primarily regard him as a source of labor. The work given to an apprentice should be planned to give him the right experience.

Normally a supervisor will delegate much of the work of teaching the apprentice to a craftsman. The man selected should obviously know his job, because if he does not he will have little to show the apprentice. Nevertheless he should not be selected for his skill alone; some ability to teach is required, and if possible the man should have an interest in the welfare of young people.

A boy straight from school is a liability to a department; teaching him interferes with the work of the man who is doing it, and the teaching of basic skills is difficult to do in a production department. Not all companies have apprentice schools, but it is possible for those who do not to share facilities with other companies, or to use facilities provided by a technical college.

The next stage is for the apprentice to go into one of the production departments, and during the remainder of his apprenticeship he should widen and deepen his skills. To be able to do this, it is necessary for him to get a varied experience, and most training programmers specify what this experience should be. It will involve moving the apprentice from one job to another and perhaps from one department to another. The fact that apprentices are moved about in this way tempts some supervisors to neglect giving them suitable job experience. Obviously it is troublesome to spend time training people on a job when they are moved on again as soon as they become proficient, but this is what supervisors must be prepared to do. For a supervisor to keep apprentices occupied with trivial tasks because of the short time they are available is a neglect of his training responsibilities.