COMPANY DIDN’T GIVE NEW STAFF PROPER TRAINING, STRAIGHT AWAY THROW HIM TO DIE

Is it just me or do most companies in SG have atrocious/non-existent onboarding process for new hires?

I’ve worked at 5 companies so far and only 1 of them had any sort of proper training for me to learn the systems and intranet.

The other 4 just have me dumped straight to my desk on the first day and I”m somehow expected to know everything… I get that one way to learn is to ask around colleagues, but it’s a tedious way and runs the risk of me eventually becoming an annoyance if I keep asking questions.

But seriously why cant these companies just make a PDF user guide or something? Wouldnt that help the hundreds of new hires joining the company in the future? Also how do other new hires even grapple either when theres zero guidances for them?

Netizens’ comments

1. Knowledge management is an investment. Many companies don’t see the ROI in it, not high enough anyway.
2. SMEs or MNCs?
   Most companies? Nah. Is it uncommon? Probably not. But personally I’ve never faced this issue in 15+ years of working in Singapore (all MNCs).
   Saw that you’re a fresh grad – maybe the companies you worked at expected your internship supervisors to guide you instead of going through the onboarding process for full-time staff. Not ideal but sadly not uncommon.
3. I’m at an MNC. There was nothing to onboard me to hit the ground running in my new role. Had to create documentation, SOPs and dashboards which took a year to complete by myself.
   Fortunately for my subordinates in the different markets in APAC who later joined us, they had a smooth on-boarding. Ngl, while it was tiresome, it made me glad that people were using my training materials.
4. Companies dont want to spend time and money to train new employees because theyre afraid theyll jump ship after 1-2 years, but if the employees dont get proper training, they will be overwhelmed with work and unable to cope, causing them to be burnt out and leave. Its just a weird cycle
5. I think also the fact that systems and SOPs changes so frequently nowadays no one bothers to update the onboarding deck in event of a random new hire joining.