You have four days to get 15 new hires ready. Here is the plan, day by day and hour by hour.
This article is part of the Small Business Series: 13 short, practical articles for small and mid-sized businesses that want to compete with the big players without being their size. They all revolve around one idea: what your people know how to do is your biggest advantage, as long as it doesn't live only in someone's head. We'll look at how to put it in writing, teach it fast, prove it to your customers and measure it. A new article every Monday.
First: not everything gets taught on Monday
The most common mistake with a big group is trying to teach everything on day one. Fifteen people in a room, eight hours of information, and by Tuesday nobody remembers much.
The answer is to spread it out. What a new hire needs to know fits into three boxes:
| Box | What goes here | When |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Before day one | Welcome, schedule, where to show up, what to bring, basic rules, safety basics, the company in five minutes. | Thursday to Sunday |
| 2. On the floor | What you learn with your hands: the equipment, real customers, the pace of the shift. | Monday and the first week |
| 3. On the platform | Full procedures, products, policies, special cases. | Weeks 1 to 4, little by little |
With that split, Monday stops being a class and becomes a first day of work, with support.
Thursday: decide what the bare minimum is
- First hour. List what a new hire must know so they don't cause harm on day one: safety, how to treat customers, handling money, what is never done. Ten points at most.
- Second hour. Set up the pairs. Give each new hire an experienced person to work with during the first week. If you don't have enough, use groups of three.
- Third hour. Write the welcome message: where to show up, what time, who to ask for, what to bring and what will happen on Monday.
Friday: turn it into something they can study on their own
- In the morning. Turn your ten points into a short module, twenty to thirty minutes, with five questions at the end.
- In the afternoon. Send it to all fifteen people with the welcome message and a clear deadline: before Monday. Get the mentors together for fifteen minutes and explain their role.
Check how training time before day one is treated under the labor rules where you are. The healthy choice is to treat it as work time.
Weekend: check who made it
On Sunday afternoon, look at who finished the module and who didn't. Send a friendly message to anyone who didn't. It's not to scold them. It's to find out if they had trouble with access or with time.
Monday, hour by hour
Adjust the times to your shift. What matters is the order.
| Time | What happens | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00 – 0:20 | Short welcome. Go over the ten points from the module out loud. | Confirm the basics, not repeat everything. |
| 0:20 – 1:00 | Tour of the workplace. | So they know where everything is and who to ask. |
| 1:00 – 3:00 | First tasks next to their mentor. | Learn by doing, with someone beside them. |
| 3:00 – 3:20 | Break and group Q&A. | Clear up doubts before they turn into mistakes. |
| 3:20 – 6:30 | More tasks, with less help each time. | Build confidence. |
| 6:30 – 7:00 | Wrap-up: three questions for each person. | What did you learn? What wasn't clear? What do you need tomorrow? |
Tuesday to Friday: a little every day
Each day, fifteen or twenty minutes on the platform and the rest on the floor. On Friday, a short quiz on what they covered that week. That tells you who is ready to work alone and who needs another week with a mentor.
If this happens often, it's not an emergency
Once, it's a crisis. Several times a year, it's a sign: you're missing an onboarding process that's ready before you need it.
The good news is that this week's plan is already your first draft. The Friday module, the ten-point list, the Monday schedule and the quiz the following Friday. Save them. Next time you don't start on a Thursday. You start with everything done.
With SHIFT LMS, the module you built on Friday is saved as a course. Next time you just assign it to the new group and see in a report who finished it before day one.
Frequently asked questions
What if someone didn't do the module before Monday?
Give them half an hour at the start of Monday to do it, before they go to the floor. Don't skip it. Those ten points are what prevent accidents and costly mistakes.
I don't have enough experienced people to be mentors.
Make groups of three new hires per mentor and rotate mentors by shift. And put the roles where a mistake costs the most first.
When will I know if it worked?
At the end of the first week, with the short quiz. And after 30 days, by counting how many of the fifteen people are still there and how many already work on their own.
Does this happen to you often?
On October 20, we'll give you the calculator to find out how much it costs you each year.
All 13 articles in the series
- September 28When the person who knew leaves, what they knew leaves too
- October 5Your onboarding lives in one person's head (and that person gets tired)
- October 1215 people start on Monday. Today is Thursday. ← you are here
- October 19Your best employee stopped performing. Don't fire them yet.
- October 26You know what turnover costs you. Here's what to do with that number.
- November 2The 40-page manual nobody read
- November 9The question that knocks you out of the bid
- November 16Your distributor sells your product badly. The distributor isn't the problem.
- November 23Your know-how lives in three people. That's why you can't open the fourth location
- November 30What you need to be able to prove if there's an accident tomorrow
- December 7The appendix that wins proposals
- December 14Much of your turnover happens in the first 90 days
- December 212027 budget: how to justify training when no department asks for it
Ready to transform your corporate training?
See real results from companies that train with SHIFT — or talk to our team.