Evaluation of the University of Limpopo induction programme

Abstract

Every employee at any institution has to be inducted upon employment. Induction is a very important aspect of any organization to prepare the new and existing employees for the new environment or workplace. It is therefore very important for any institution to design induction programme that caters for the needs of its employees. Teaching institutions might require a different approach to induction as compared to industrial institutions. It is therefore incumbent of the institutions depending on the type of business to design their programmes to address the needs thereof. Every institution thus needs to come up with strategies to compete better both nationally and globally. University of Limpopo has very good policies on recruitment, selection, and employment. It is one of the traditional universities in South Africa, and it is based in Mankweng in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. This university faces many challenges such as staff retention. The university loses many knowledgeable employees to its competitors. Many speculations are that some of the challenges include the wellbeing of the staff members, and this starts immediately after employment and goes throughout. Induction is one of the challenges that the university is suspected of not performing adequately. This study was therefore designed to establish if the university is running a successful induction, to evaluate if this programme is effective and efficient, and assess if it meets the 21st century induction standards. The study was designed to apply the descriptive approaches, using structured questionnaires and interviews. The study population included at least 50 employees which 25 were academics and 25 non-academics. Relevant supporting departments were also sampled to participate in the study. Stratified sampling techniques were used during sampling. Both primary and secondary data was collected and analysed. Ethical guidelines set by the university were observed during the study. Relevant statistical techniques were applied to analyse the data. Findings the study suggest that very few employees were inducted. All levels of induction from the corporate, departmental, and local were not fully executed. Mentors and buddies were hardly used or only used on request by the new employees. Only a limited content of the induction was covered and this was not consistent with all employees inducted. The results of the study show that the duration of induction programme was also not consistent. In addition, the perceptions of the employees was that the university was doing poorly to induct employees. Conclusions drawn were that the university is doing poorly on induction. The programme was not consistent and effective. Very few employees were inducted on which just a brief orientation. It was however established that the CAE had a programme that was on average adequate to equip the academics for the working environment, but the same cannot be mentioned on the corporate induction.