Who Shows Them the Job

A new starter learns the job from one person. Which person, and under what conditions, decides the outcome more than any programme.

How it usually works

Whoever is free is told to show the new one the ropes.

With no adjustment to their own targets, no training in how to explain anything, and no say in whether they wanted to.

Which produces one of three outcomes: a good trainer who is penalised for it, a resentful one who does it badly, or a well-meaning one who teaches their own shortcuts.

All three are the arrangement's fault rather than the person's.

What a working scheme needs

Volunteers, not conscripts.

Selected on patience and clarity rather than on output.

Targets adjusted in the system for the days they are training, which is the single change that determines whether the scheme is real.

A small payment or recognition, which matters less than the target adjustment and matters.

And a limit: one new starter at a time, because two is supervision rather than buddying.

What to give them

A short list of what the person must be able to do by the end of each day.

Not a manual — a checklist of five or six things per day, in order.

Which turns "show them around" into something with a shape, and lets both parties see progress.

And a note of what to escalate: somebody struggling physically, somebody who seems unhappy, somebody asking about pay that the buddy should not answer.

Teaching the right method

Experienced operators develop shortcuts, some of which are unsafe and some of which break the process.

A buddy scheme propagates them faster than any training programme.

Which is an argument for a documented standard method that the buddy works from, and for occasionally checking what is actually being taught.

Ask a new starter at week two to describe how they do the task. The answer tells you what is being propagated.

Rotating the buddy

After the first few days, exposure to more than one experienced person is useful.

It shows the range of the job and stops the new starter inheriting one person's habits wholesale.

But keep one named person as the constant for the first week, because continuity is what the first week needs and variety is what the second can take.

What buddies get out of it

Recognition, a change from the routine, and a step toward a supervisory role for those who want one.

Which makes the scheme a development route as well as an onboarding one, and the people who are good at it are frequently your next supervisors.

Say that explicitly. It converts an imposition into an opportunity for the people who care about progression.

When it goes wrong

A buddy who consistently produces new starters who leave is a finding rather than a coincidence.

And one whose starters reach standard fastest is worth asking what they do, which is usually something specific and teachable.

Track outcomes by buddy, which requires one field on the start record and is almost never done.

The measure

Ninety-day survival by buddy.

Weeks to standard by buddy.

Proportion of starters with a named buddy at all, which on most sites is lower than the policy claims.

And whether target adjustments were actually applied, which is the check that tells you whether the scheme exists in practice or only in a document.

Documenting the standard method

A buddy scheme needs something to teach from, or it teaches whatever the buddy does.

Not a manual: a single page per task, with the sequence, the safe technique and the two or three things people commonly get wrong.

Written with the people who do the job, which takes an afternoon per task and produces something they will actually use.

And reviewed when the process changes, which is the part that lapses and which turns the page into a source of wrong information.