One of the biggest pains we hear about from our Human Resources contacts is inductions. It seems no matter who we speak to, there isn't anyone who likes doing them. Introducing a new team member should be exciting, the problem is, it is hard to get excited about something that involves THAT much paper!

HR Induction prep is a must, often the printer needs to be booked out and warmed up before it can print the ream of induction documents required for every new employee. Whether they are signing up for a job for life or are offering two-week paternity cover, the amount of paperwork is the same.  Of course, it is rare that all of this paperwork is kept in the same place, owing to the fact that what a new starter needs to see is based on what they are here to do, making the whole process feel like the adult, less fattening and fun, version of pick and mix.

Code of Conduct, Staff Handbooks, Accident Policies, Driving for Work Policies, IT Policies, DSE Policies alongside a hundred others including, of course, the policy for reading policies and that's all in the first hour. Then we move into the Health and Safety side of things and this is where it gets messy. Risk assessments, method statements, and COSHH information for every task the staff member may do. All these need printing in duplicate to allow for a signed, filed copy and a copy for your new starter to take away. There is no time for reading the documents during the actual induction, so you send your new starter off hoping that they realise the importance of the content and do set aside a little time for at least a cursory glance.


Once all that is done, the staff member is sent out into the world of work, where they are offered a combination of on-the-job training, HR training courses and perhaps additional external courses. Each course or learning exercise, whether formal or not, needs ticking off your list and signing to prove competency. This is by far the greatest challenge in the process to date; the department get their claws into the new starter and don't want to spare them for external courses, or the employee feels that they do not have time. After a long email string, the training is booked and refreshers have been diarised for the next 20 years, only for the staff member to call in sick on the day and for everything to need to be changed.

Let's take a minute to review this process: We have paid for a ream of paperwork to be printed, half of which is stored in an overflowing filing cabinet, never to be seen again. The other half has about a 50% chance of being read by your new starter, the task is just so overwhelming no one ever really knows where to begin.  We also paid for the new starter to have all the relevant training courses, along with the time then spent tracking all the above and diarising reminders for refreshers and review dates. It has been a long week! And the CEO just popped in to let you know he is taking on two temp workers next week and ask you to induct them.

Stop! You don't need to have a mental breakdown, we promise. Creating a new user in CRAMS takes just 16 clicks and less than 60 seconds, less if they have a singular occupation. Once created they will be assigned to every occupation-specific document, policy and training course they need, in less than it takes to boil an average kettle. Don't believe us?

It costs from £2 per user, per month, for CRAMS, all users can log on, read all CRAMS, policies, and news and complete any of the inclusive e-learning courses which are assigned to them. Users have instant access to a full library of COSHH Safety Data Sheets (SDS), one for every product used by the company, which are version checked every month, your staff are notified if they're updated. Your staff also have the access to log on to report accidents, incidents or hazards from anywhere, at any time, on any internet-enabled device.

If they are a temp worker, you can use CRAMS exactly as mentioned above and when the temp workers contract is up, you can disable them. When a user is disabled you do not pay for their subscription, but their information is held in the database, free of charge. If the temp worker returns, their account can be reactivated, they are billed by the month from the reactivation date, and all their previous acknowledgments, course completions and competencies are restored on the system, so they only need to review things which have changed.

CRAMS then acts as a human resource management system software, looking after your team all the way through their employment journey, from their first day to their last.  Keeping them in the know about any changes you make to processes and policies, notifying them when it's time to review a new, modified or renewed document, as well as reminding them of expiring competency training.