What counts as an induction at a new job?

[BippityBopper]

I started a new job recently. I work in the marketing and communications team.

My induction has consisted of a brief tour of the office whilst three other staff were in. I then spent a week doing a series of mandatory training on things like data protection, health and safety, gender identity, safeguarding, and some others. None with a very strong relation to my role. I've only briefly spoke to my line manager and then been given a series of tasks to do for someone else (job related but it's not been easy to work efficiently as I'm still learning the ropes).

Is that a good enough induction?

Did you get to know were to go in a fire drill and where the loo is? That’s been about the sum total of most of my inductions so you are doing well!

Depends on how much on-job training is required.
I'd expect more regular and more time with my line manager to discuss structure, objectives and challengs in a bit more detail, but at my level I'd also expect to shape my own induction - buildling stakeholder list and planning intros, 121s with team, gathering useful data, site visits, shadowing etc. It's good when line manager/team have kept a new hire in mind and extend invitations to useful meetings/add to circulation for useful MI.

What do you think you need to know/see/hear/who to meet that you haven't already been briefed on?

Depends on the job, I was given a list of things I needed to find out/tick off. That was in Jan 2020 and I'm yet to complete it

Was shown both of those things so I guess they haven't done too bad.

Mine was similar! I think it's a marketing thing, usually you're hired as someone who knows what they're doing (even for entry level jobs they seem to expect quite a bit of background knowledge e.g. from a degree) so they expect you to just do it, and since we're supposed to be good at communications, I think they expect us to speak up if we need anything else.
That or I've worked in lots of shit marketing departments LMAO.

Sounds pretty good to me. Most things will be on the job anyway? I started a job just before lockdown and never got near a proper induction. It wasn't ideal but I've been promoted since so it obviously worked out ok.

Well my line manager has no clue about my rule. I asked about strategy, short term objectives and basically what I should be doing after the mandatory training. He didn't really know. He directed me to look at some documents on a drive, which I was unable to locate. I expressed that I was unable to locate the drive and I was told to email IT support. I did with no speedy response.

After four days in, I discovered by conversation with a colleague that I couldn't access the drive (or even Word or PowerPoint) as I wasn't set up on the virtual desktop. Something I had no clue about. It would have been useful to have been informed about that and how to navigate it when given my laptop. Would have been a great part of the induction.

I also asked about access to social media management and CRM systems. Seemingly no one on site knew. This was then passed on to the person who gave me a series of tasks to do instead of helping me with my queries at all. It's been difficult to do some of the tasks at pace as I'm very new in post.

Maybe I'm asking too much, but without a line manager related to my role, I'd have thought it essential to ensure a new staff member knew/had access to the basic tools and information to do their job.

I think I'm a bit of a fish out of water because my last workplace had a great induction period. But I guess loos and fire drills is the standard for acceptable 🤷🏻‍♀️.

How big is the employer?