Periodically, we’ll share a real-life recruiting problem and tell you how one HR practitioner solved it. Today’s issue: getting new hires up to speed as quickly as possible.

Getting new employees up to speed took some doing. Our industry has lots of special terms and lingo that someone coming in off the street just wouldn’t know.

So during training, we spent time explaining the terms and what they meant. But it was a lot to absorb and people regularly got the terms mixed up during the first few months on the job.

We gave everyone a glossary of terms during training. Not surprisingly, those paper versions got misplaced. So we needed something that wouldn’t get lost.

So I turned to IT. Was there anyway to put our glossary on the company intranet? “Absolutely,” came the reply. They could even make it searchable and include links to other documents that could put the term in context.

Not only has the online version helped new hires get up to speed, but veterans are using it, too.

(Philip Martus, operations manager, Millard Group, Inc., Peterborough, NH)

Tags: intranet, orientation, Training