Managing service provider empowerment: a case study of induction of contractors in a private sector organisation.
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Date
2021
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Abstract
This research study focused on induction and onboarding of external contractors rendering
service at Paradise Aluminium Smelter. The case company had been swamped with several
external contractors’ recordable classified injuries in the financial year June 2019 to 2021. This
made it impossible to attain the company safety goal of achieving zero accident vision. This
dissertation aimed to establish induction and onboarding programmes that were in place in a
private sector company, Paradise Aluminium Smelter for external contractors. The study aimed
to establish if the induction and onboarding programmes for external contractors at Paradise
Aluminium Smelter were effective enough to protect external contractors from causing
accidents and other mistakes and to establish improvement (if any) that needed to be made to
the induction and onboarding programmes to ensure better socialisation of external contractors.
The induction and onboarding programmes were presented as intervention strategies to curb
the high number of accidents and incidents involving external contractors. This was a
qualitative study. A case study method and interpretivist approach were used in this study. The
target population of the study were external contracting employees who attended the induction
and onboarding programmes at the case company from 2019 to 2021. Purposive sampling was
used to select participants. Focus groups and semi-structured interviews were used to collect
data. Paradise Aluminium Smelter’s induction and onboarding programmes seemed to have
limitations when it comes to execution and monitoring. The following were areas of concern:
information overload; HR invisibility after the initial two day’s induction classroom training;
the sole use of traditional classroom approach in isolation to the online induction training; the
lack of mentoring, monitoring and feedback systems. There were no clearly defined schedules,
methods and tools to assess the effectiveness of the induction and onboarding programmes and
thereby, external contractors had many knowledge gaps that caused them to make unnecessary
mistakes and eventually caused accidents which could all be reduced by identifying gaps and
reducing the induction and onboarding programmes limitations. The study concluded that
induction and onboarding programmes were of great value to the organisation and employees
if they were well planned, jointly executed, assessed and continuously monitored as these
programmes serve to impart knowledge, skills and information to new employees more so
about their new jobs and their working environment. This investigative piece of research
concluded that induction and onboarding were of paramount importance in any operation.
Description
Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.