How does your company train newbies?

Parks · Mar 15, 2022

What's the typical process of how your company either trained you or trains new hires? With having to go through so many employees in our industry especially on the ground hopefully this can be an insightful thread!

Fivepoints · Mar 16, 2022

Train them? We can't afford to train them. What if they leave?

Mark Chisholm · Mar 16, 2022

Fivepoints said:
Train them? We can't afford to train them. What if they leave?

Don't start that

Mark Chisholm · Mar 16, 2022

Parks said:
What's the typical process of how your company either trained you or trains new hires? With having to go through so many employees in our industry especially on the ground hopefully this can be an insightful thread!

That's a great question. Training is key and not everyone is cut out for this type of work.

We do on boarding with first day of training at our yard in the jobsite safety, chipper safety, typical timeline of a job... Then it's pairing with a mentor for the first part of employment where they shadow a veteran daily. This will go on for as long as the mentor sees necessary.

Phil · Mar 16, 2022

Mark Chisholm said:
That's a great question. Training is key and not everyone is cut out for this type of work.

We do on boarding with first day of training at our yard in the jobsite safety, chipper safety, typical timeline of a job... Then it's pairing with a mentor for the first part of employment where they shadow a veteran daily. This will go on for as long as the mentor sees necessary.

Do you have a formal documentation of progress? A list of demonstrated competencies so to speak that get signed off on? I always think back to my days in the boy scouts where each rank had a specific set of criteria you had to meet to advance and the book had it all together. You could always look in someone's book and see exactly where they were in the process. Seems overly formal but I always liked that organization of progress.

I work at an organization with 5 crews. its not uncommon for an individual to eventually transfer to another office. When I was a supervisor, I made everyone on my crew a big three ring binder. The binder was divided into sections for things like their old time sheets, time off requests, any injury paperwork they had to fill out, any equipment accident paperwork they had to fill out, any training they did, any certifications they held and the first sheet was their emergency contact form. The idea was it made things organized for me and if someone transferred, I could just send their binder with them to their new supervisor. All their info was there. Big boss man liked it, presented it to the other supervisors and everyone was just like, "nah, we aren't doing that." It never took lol. I still have mine and keep it updated.

flushcut · Mar 16, 2022

A bull whip is a great motivator. It allows you some distance so you don’t have to hover over them and you can easily snap the phone out of their hand at any moment when they want to post something to social media. Lol

Phil · Mar 16, 2022

flushcut said:
A bull whip is a great motivator. It allows you some distance so you don’t have to hover over them and you can easily snap the phone out of their hand at any moment when they want to post something to social media. Lol

Untapped market for the dog training industry.

southsoundtree · Mar 16, 2022

Intercoms !!!

Parks · Mar 16, 2022

I'm curious to see how many companies also actively send out new hires to climbing training courses. Some choose to have the climber start with no previous experience and some training versus working their way up from groundie.

Reach · Mar 16, 2022

After assessing skill level, we limit what we allow a new crew member to do, and assign another crew member to make sure the “new guy” keeps out of trouble and learns slowly how to do things the right way.

For those who want to climb, we will often set up a rope and harness at the shop and let the guy make a run up a rope, or hang someone from a crane and give him a ride to make sure they’re not going to be terrified the first time they leave the ground. If that goes well, we usually send him off to an ISA climbing class to get a good overview of the very basics, and then train him up from there.

We prefer to use a school for the initial instruction, as it is a formal training program that is independent from and unaffected by our production operation, so there is no pressure to perform like there may be here.

Fivepoints · Mar 16, 2022

Mark Chisholm said:
Don't start that

I was joking in case that was unclear.

We really like to put a com on the new guy. Helps to be talking to them like you are standing right next to them but are up in the bucket or climbing.