Induction Story – The Worst Ever?
A woman joins a small professional firm as a part timer because she has kids
and her hours supposedly were from 9 to 3pm.
She was taken around and she met the three partners who had interviewed her
and was introduced to a couple of admin staff who spent half an hour with
her. They then took her into client meetings one after the other. After the
first meeting two of the partners had a fight right in front of her desk, a
rather bitter argument that was left unresolved both walking off in opposite
directions. (Now, they resolved their differences later, but she didn’t see
that)
Then she was back in her next client meeting. This continued until 3pm when
one of the partners said “Look, I’m flying out tonight for a week. Could you
please type out those notes and email them to me so I can review them first
thing in the morningâ€.
Now, no-one had told her how to do this, how to write up a client report. So
she worked at it and did her best and finally completed them at 6pm.
She went home hysterical and talked to her husband who agreed with her about
how bad it was. She rang in the morning to say she wasn’t coming back.
They had broken at least four of the cardinal rules on how to induct new
staff. Could she have been a bit more robust? Absolutely. But to her, it
just didn’t seem a nice place to work. And it was her perception that
mattered.